Sunday, December 07, 2008

Nerd Alert: Analyzing Harry Potter

In the middle of rereading Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban, I am struck by two thoughts: 


First, of all the individual characters whose lives were ruined by Voldemort, there is none whose tale is more tragic than Sirius Black's. Imagine how he was feeling, and all the thoughts going through his head, as he begged Hagrid to hand Harry over to him. And then consider what happened to him afterward. The fate of the 4 best friends, the Marauders, is tragic, and Sirius' the most seriously tragic. 


Second, all of this trouble between Voldemort and Harry could have been avoided if Voldemort had just used a plain old knife and slashed baby Harry's head off, instead of using a fancy magic wand. Oh right, but he was against all things Muggle. Ultimately, Voldemort's pride was the source- the very root and cause- of his own demise.

4 comments:

sarahsookyung said...

lol! great post! true a knife or even better, a gun would have been more efficient, but that would have been far less entertaining for us muggle HP fans. Without avada kedavra, what reason did we have to live for the past 6 years?

David said...

Interesting points. On one hand I hear what you are saying about using a knife. But on the other hand unless he had reason to believe that something would happen when he used magic on Harry why not use a spell rather than a knife? Maybe it wasn't being pompous, but just reasonable given his knowledge at the time.

And if the "magic of love" protecting Harry was so powerful do you think something would have prevented the use of a knife just like the spell was stopped? Or does magical protection only have power over other magic?

Beki said...

I'm going to go with magical protection only really protects against magic.

As for your first point, I thought about that before, and that would have to be the worst 'reward' for being a good friend. Even when we try to escape into fiction the world is cruel.

JC said...

what the hell are you talking about????