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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Prisoner of Azkaban Chapters 18-20

It All Comes Together

These chapters are difficult to analyze because it's the climax of the story and the majority of the time is spent either with action or explaining the previous 17 chapters. Since she already does that, that doesn't leave much for me to do. I'll try pointing out little things I saw in these chapters.

So, Sirius is innocent, huh? When I first read the books, I didn't see that one coming. Rowling does a great job creating a wonderful plot twist. It seems that plot twists, whether in books, TV shows, or movies tend to come out of no where without much "meat" to back them up. Confused? I'll explain what I mean. An effective plot twist isn't just throwing in a surprise plot element from left field. It must have supporting evidence. Anyone could have written that Sirius turned out to be a good guy, but in this case, there is plenty of evidence throughout the book to back it up. For example, people in Azkaban heard Sirius muttering, "He's at Hogwarts." Everyone interpreted that to mean that he was talking about Harry, but it's totally plausible that he was talking about Pettigrew. It all makes sense.



I Would Like to Speak with Harry and Hermione Alone

One subtle, but important character trait of Dumbledore is that he always observes the "niceties." He's always patient and polite. One subtle example of this is in the way he refers to Harry and Hermione. Snape always refers to Harry as Potter. Hermione, to most professors is Miss Granger. Dumbledore does the courtesy of referring to them by their first names. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is another faculty member except perhaps Lupin who refers to Harry and Hermione by their first names. To me, this symbolizes so much about Dumbledore. By calling them by their first names, he's bringing himself down to their level. Instead of speaking down to school children, Dumbledore treats them with the respect that he would expect the students to treat others with. In return, he expects the same respect be given to teachers, i.e. Harry referring to Snape as Professor Snape. This applies to all beings as well. Dumbledore would extend the same courtesy to the minister of magic as he would a house elf. It's these small details that combine to form the greater picture of who Dumbledore is.

2 comments:

DiaNe said...

the plot twists are fun to read and even more fun to revisit. "Ohhh...that makes sense!"

Tianna said...

Dumbledore does call Ron and Hermione "Mr. Weasley" and "Miss Granger" on several occasions, too.

And the great part about supported plot twists is that it makes reading the books a second time so much more fun. And when the plot twists happen further on in the series, you can read the first books again with even more enjoyment!