Days 6 & 7 : June 28th and 29th, 2011
Current Book : Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, page 82
Total pages read : 1,166 of 4,100 (28% completed)
These past two days have been a lot busier than the rest of the summer, and I haven’t been able to get in as many pages. On Wednesday I went to Cedar Point with the amazing Dawn Purcell and Zach Jones and we had some great HP discussions. Links to their own "Harry Potter Challenge" blogs are on the left. Do it! So anyway, I figured I should just combine the past two days into one entry so as not to waste your time with two short ones. So here we go!
I finished the 3rd book and got just a little way into the 4th! One of my favorite things about re-reading is that it brings back how I felt when I first read them. I remember feeling really confused near the end of Prisoner of Azkaban; primarily when Dumbledore comes in and instructs Hermione that “three turns should do it”, and especially when the truth about the betrayal of the Potters is revealed in the Shrieking Shack. I remember being so confused because the trio thinks they have things figured out, but their beliefs and deductions are really shattered. It was a different experience than the “mystery novel” endings of Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets.
As I finished reading Prisoner of Azkaban, I realized that I really hate how the 3rd movie was directed. The 1st and 2nd were very similar to the books, but man does the 3rd one just butcher and mangle the timeline. Sure, when you’re transferring a book into a movie there’s bound to be a lot that just has to be changed. But in the 3rd movie some things are changed and added for no reason. Things like future-Hermione throwing the shell-like stone at past-Harry’s head to get the past-trio to move out of Hagrid’s Hut, etc. But where this really frustrated me was the area of Lupin. I think the character Lupin is great and is really important to Harry. But when I re-read the 3rd book I realized that the relationship between Lupin and Harry isn’t really that strong, but it’s portrayed as being very tight-knit in the movies. In the books, Lupin is very distant when he explains to Harry why he didn’t want him to face a boggart, he’s reluctant when Harry wants lessons to defend himself against Dementors and tells him to wait until a better time, and once he’s back from his last werewolf-bout he forgets he’s agreed to help Harry. Of course, he does act as a mentor figure, but the way I saw it was that he’s more of a literary tool to link Harry to Sirius and his father. When Sirius comes along, that is who Harry is interested in. It’s all he can think about during the hour that he thinks he may be able to live with Sirius instead of the Dursleys. I don't know, I just feel like the focus of the movie is really off. But that's just my opinion.
On to the bits of the books that got my attention. This one really got me thinking about how much Voldemort's wrath pushed people apart, but at the same time, pulled them together. "You don't understand!" whined Pettigrew. "He would have killed me, Sirius!" "THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!" roared Black. "DIED RATHER THAN BETRAY YOUR FRIENDS, AS WE WOULD HAVE DONE FOR YOU!" What Voldemort's reign was doing was putting people's character to the test. Some people crumbled, like Pettigrew. But others stood strong and were connected in ways they never believed possible, like Sirius, Remus, James, and Lily. This kind of love is what saved Harry, what held the trio together, and ultimately is what gave Harry the strength to defeat Voldemort in the end. As Jo Rowling put it so well in a past interview, "Love wins. It does win. We know it wins!".
And on a less serious note, this quote was the first to make me laugh out loud in GoF. Harry is talking about Mrs. Weasley, and Mr. Dursley describes her as "dumpy". "Harry frowned. He thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone "dumpy", when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall."
GOTTA GO, time to catch up! Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts or ideas :)
Only 2,937 pages to go!
1 comment:
I like what you say about Lupin here -- how they aren't as close in the books as they are in the movies. Here's my 2 cents on it -- Harry wants to be closer than Lupin will allow. At the end, Harry really wants to see Lupin before he leaves, and Lupin isn't affectionate or emotional at all -- not even a handshake. Harry was looking for something in Lupin that Lupin doesn't want to give him, but Harry eventually gets it via Sirius -- a connection to his parents, a father-like figure...etc. I think this reflects on Lupin's character -- he hesitates on letting others get close to him because he's a werewolf and worries about what they'll think and/or what he could do to them. That's why he's always so surprised when people trust him and want to befriend him -- he can hardly believe it when he gets such great friends at Hogwarts, and he eventually tries to push Tonks away too.
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