Hello Readers,
This blog is a part of my classroom activity on Web Quest on Harry Potter series in we have to search three best online sources and give argument and illustration for given point by Dr. Dilip Barad. To know more about Web Quest task click here to read professor's blog.
click here to see web quest worksheet.
click here to see rubric evaluation.
1) Feminist reading of Harmione’s character in Harry Potter
Hermione Granger, a good, loyal friend of Harry Potter. She is a manifestation of the author herself within the text. “Hermione is me,” Rowling has said in several interviews, “A caricature of me when I was younger”. She is not only as a strong female character, an essential part of Harry's life, but also as a feminist protagonist in her own right. Hermione represents the bookish knowledge, she knows the spells very well and also knows how to apply it. In the first and second part she represents the good virtues like, friendship, loyalty. In any kind of situation she stands for Harry.
Hermione is the perfect example when examining the feminist principles in the novels. Throughout the series she has many strengths and weaknesses, but she is mostly criticized about her weaknesses as a character. At some time she becomes concious about her look, which becomes very problematic from feminine perspective.
Other female characters like Mrs. Weasley, who represents motherhood, caring nature. Ginny, Luna, ProMcGonagall, all has significant role, though they remains shallow under the patriarchal power.
2) Discourse on the purity of Blood and Harry Potter
In Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling includes several issues like racism discourse of blood like wizard blood, muggle blood.
1) Muggles (non-magical persons)
2) Muggle-borns (witches/wizards with magical abilities but non- magical parents)
3) half-bloods (witches/wizards who are not pure-blooded, but also not Muggle-born)
4) purebloods (those with complete magical ancestry)
5) Squibs (a non-magical child with magical parents
In the world of wizards Hermione portrayed as marginalized, she doesn't have pure-blood, her parents are muggles. She insulted many times by Draco Malfoy on the name of muggle blood.
3) Confronting reality by reading fantasy
Fantasy narratives are normality used to stand for a peculiar world that is present and seeable in the society. As one of the best-selling fantasy novels in history J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the philosopher's Stone introduces one of the most loved and traditional hero in the character of Harry Potter. Harry is an ordinary orphaned male child who is first unaware of the complicated hereafter that awaits him in Howgarts' school of Witchcraft and wizardry.
In the series of Harry Potter, J. k. Rowling introduces the fantasy universe of Howgarts but the novel also beyond that fantasy because Rowling gives message of real universe like good and evil, love and death and adulthood, morality, power and politics. The fiction character of harry Potter is an 11 year old orphan life with his typical tough of a cousin Dudley Dursiey together with similarity cruel aunt and uncle. Petunia and Vernon Dursley. His charming destiny begins when he is summoned to the Howgarts's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by the school master Albus Dumbledor. As he grows up faces his journey and adventures with his friends Hermione Gramger and Ron Weasley and learnt life lesson through different circumstances and also Rowling used many real things and event in the novel so we can see reality with fantasy elements.
4) Self-Help culture and Harry Potter
Harry Potter has given many lessons which can make these books as self help books. For instance, finding happiness in dark times, doing duty honestly even if people don’t like you, recognize friend in disguise, loyalty, sacrifice, friendship, persistency, these all are the topics which can be taken as self help. But there is something more than this which make this books different from others self help cultured books. Those books asks to find reason of failure in one’s own self. It sooths the political agenda of government, who tells people that there is something lacking in you and not in the system. Harry Potter differs from these culture. Harry Potter teach us to question the authority. It teaches to doubt power also not only own self. It also teach us to fight against the power. We can take example of Dumbledore’s army, which was trained by Harry. That army was to fight against the Ministry of Magic. So it doesn’t sooths the agenda of government. It is rather teaching that question authority is betterment for society.
5) The discourse of Power and Politics in Harry Potter
Whole Harry Potter series has the dynamics of power politics. Questioning authority is base of good democracy, but when power is not ready for criticism or in the name of reformation when power controls and separate people then they don’t accepts questions as something good, but rather they take it as disloyalty towards the authority. This started happening in Hogwarts also when government started interfering the education. Education is base of people. They learn to ask question when they are educating themselves. But when people from Ministry of Magic has become professor in school the atmosphere has started changing. Umbridge is a member of Ministry of Magic, she came in to education. Very first thing which she did was she started giving punishment for asking questions and started separating those who asks question. When fellow teachers ask her anything she accuse them of being disloyal to the authority. She has taken all the freedom of students. There are more restriction on students in the name of discipline. Whole Hogwarts has changed because of her large list of rules and strict application of those rules. This is how they have controlled the resistance.
After all these things Voldemort is coming in to the power because the death eaters are now becoming professor at Hogwarts. Those professors has strictly act on the idea of Voldemort. That idea was of pure blood. They have started catching those who are not belongs to pure blood. This is how they make the non pure bloods, Others. On this idea of Others they have started killing muggles and half blood people. So this is how power politics works in the Harry Potter.
Harry Potter is one of the classic works in children's literature. J. K. Rowling's sharp wit, humour and imagination are unrivaled in children's literature. Rowling's Harry Potter is masterpiece children literature, she used magic and fantasy because it is said that we can explore many life lesson from children literature. Rowling explored reality through fantasy. We can connect our day today experiences with the characters of the novel. How to make our own decision, how to overcome our emotional attachment and be ready to tackle ever problem of life. So, in this way we can say that Harry Potter series is for children to old age people.
7) Speculative literature and Harry Potter
Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre encompassing fiction with elements that do not exist in the real world, often in the context of supernatural, futuristic or other imaginative themes. This includes, but is not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, superhero fiction, science fantasy, horror, utopian and dystopian fiction, supernatural fiction as well as combinations thereof. Hence, Harry Potter series also a speculative fiction we can say because it is full of imagination and fabtasy, there are imaginative world of magic which are do not exits in the real world. There many scientific elwment like many kind of liquids are used to change look. So, we can say the novel is best example of speculative fiction.
8) The theme of Choice and Chance
"It is our choice, that show what we truly are, for more than our abilities” says Dumbledore. By and large Harry Potter series has been worked on idea of choice or better to say it has emphasised on choice. We can see that from the very beginning, from sorting hat to the Harry going in to the forest. The choice is the one which matters. There are phases where chance work more than choice, but choice is the one who dominate the narrative.
Voldemort has believed that his downfall is because of chance every time. He believed that it was chance that Harry happens to caught him or defeat him. But in the case of Harry it mostly a choice of Harry which had lead him to do, what he has able to do in the all series. May be Rowling wants to make magical world, which is not dominated by the fate. Things happens because people choose to act on them. If we talk about prophecies, then even it is not fate driven. Prophecies becomes true because characters choose to act according the prophecies. Harry’s mother choose to sacrifice her self for her son and that is why Harry is alive. Same way at the end Harry choose to sacrifice himself to protect the Hogwarts. Harry choose to let Voldemort apply killing charm on him. Because of that killing charm one horcrux which Voldemort has unknowingly left in inside Harry and that got destructed by Voldemort himself that was a chance. At some level chance is taking over choice. As in fourth part, “Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire” here name of Harry comes as pure chance and then he don’t even have choice to withdraw it. So here it is like one has to do something compulsory. But then in last two part Harry, Hermione and Ron choose to find every horcrux and destroy it, so here choice is more powerful then chance. This is how Harry Potter has theme of choice and chance.
9) The theme of Love and Death
Love and death are the major themes in J. k. Rowling's fantasy novel and she also said that these series all about death and love. She justifies her point by presenting the characters of Ron and Hermione who are in love from the very beginning even they are fighting with each other. Further, the love between Harry and Dumbledore, Lily's love for Harry, harry's love for his friends, etc. In the other death also a crucial element in the novel. At the very beginning of the story we heart that Harry's parents have died, and in due course both we and Harry learn that they were murdered. The Shadow of death hangs over Harry; he learns that he, too, was intended to be a victim, but spared in a way no-one can explain. He narrowly escapes death again at the close of the first two books, and third is concerned with his pursuit by an escaped murderer. At the end of the fourth book, a school friend is killed before his eyes, and he himself barely escapes again. In the fifth book he loses his newly regained godfather, and in the sixth even his great and seemingly indestructible mentor, Dumbledore. Yes, death is a constant visitor to Harry's world.
10) Moral and Philosophical reading of Harry Potter
Harry and Voldemort, different moral values. Harry's moral values becomes the weapon to defeat the Voldemort. In his acceptance of his mortality, “the boy who lived” is able more fully and wholly to live. Voldemort in the quest to be immortal he loses his moral values. In the end of many books Dumbuldore give Harry some kind of moral lessons like about love, choices, friendship. Throughout the Harry Potter series there are two distinct types of characters, morally good and bad. On the good side there is characters such as, Harry, Hermione, Ron, Dumbledore. While on the bad side Draco, Umbridge, Voldemort. Those who are in the favour of good moral values they gain the love of readers.
11) Christianity and Harry Potter Series
Harry Potter series directly have no relation with Christianity. Many critics say that the novel is anti-christianity because there are many thing in the fiction are ant Christian like magic. Magic js abondon in Christianity so Rowling written an anti christian work. In addition, there is not any kind of church for prayer even the good fights with powerful evil force though they do not pray to God for survival. All the characters fights and save themselves without any divinity power. But there are couple of scenes which somehow connected with Christianity like Christmas celebration and after the death of Albus Dambledor we see the view like heaven. So, at last we can say that Harry Potter is ant Christian fiction.
12) What is your opinion on this:
As per the Mitchel Foucault's theory "Power and Knowledge. J. K. Rowling similarly conveys the message that question the power because what is written is not always true in the post truth era. These lines by Rowling is also relevant in the present era, we see in many political leaders and media who keep on speaking lies for remaining in the power and also there are many speeches or write fake history. So, we have to cross check everything rather than follow blindly.
Harry Potter, the novel conveys the message which is don't like by reader and many who watched the movie. Because protagonist, the half blood wins over the pure blood, which can be not digest. And what can be assume about media and press it can not be truth also.
work cited
http://www.fcome.org/portfolio-view/f-is-for-a-feminist-reading-of-harry-potter/
http://chintavan.blogspot.com/2017/03/webquest-harry-potter-think-and-write.html?m=1
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Pure-blood
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