I am so glad that Mrs. Watson is letting us read Harry Potter in class this semester! I fell in love with the series when I was in middle school, and I never get tired of re-reading the books. One of the things that I love the most about the way that J.K. Rowling writes, is the fact that she is able to cater to so many different crowds through her writing. Her vocabulary is easy enough for kids to understand. Though the HP books are pretty thick, Rowling finds a way to make ever chapter flow and never get tedious. In contrast to Tolkien (I'm not hating on him or anything), whose choice of words in his writing made his books heavy, and not so easy to grasp.
In the first part of this book, and all other HP books, I always dreaded reading about Harry's misfortunes stuck in the Dursley's household. I always anticipated the moment that he would finally be able to leave their house at the end of summer and go back to Hogwarts. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry endured a long summer at the Dursley's depressed because he had not received any letters from his friends. He soon discovered that Dobby a house elf was holding all of his letters as a part of his plan to keep Harry from going back to Hogwarts. I have to admit that the first time I was introduced to Dobby in this book back in 8th grade, I was soo annoyed with him! His thinking wasn't too bright, and he only made things worse for Harry by producing a levitating spell in the kitchen, and getting Harry locked up in his room. Though in a way doing all of those things to Harry was his goal in order to keep him from going back to Hogwarts, Dobby ended up getting Harry almost expelled from school and (as is later revealed) made him miss the Hogwarts train...*ooh, that was a small spoiler*.
All in all, I felt that in this first part of the book Dobby was introduced as sort of a nuisance, whose motives were good but were just not carried out correctly.
No comments:
Post a Comment