Individual Text Feature Repost: Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone

Samantha-Rose Patino

Lit 4333

Professor Gregory

23 February 2017

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

            Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was the beginning of the Harry Potter Franchise for J.K. Rowling. The book was first published in England in 1997 under the title Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone, but once it came to american audiences the title was changed to the one we are familiar with today. The book follows the life of a young orphaned boy. This young boy is stuck in the home of a terrible family who mistreats him. Then one day he finds out the reason he has never fit in and has had these mysterious things happen around him, is in fact because he is part of a hidden community where magic exists. He finds out he is a wizard. It is in that moment the protagonist’s, Harry, life changes forever.

            The story begins with the unfortunate circumstances that surround Harry’s placement with the Dursely’s. Harry’s parents have been murdered by an evil man named Lord Voldemort. This man also tried to kill Harry but wasn’t able to. To protect Harry from any further harm Dumbledore and his ally Professor McGonagll leave Harry in a basket with a note on the front steps of the Dursely’s house. Years go by and we revisit Harry as a ten year old. The Durseley’s treat him horribly. He lives as basically their servant and is forced to sleep under the stairs in a cupboard.

            At this time in Harry’s life mysterious events begin to happen around him. At the Dursely’s son Dudley’s birthday party, Harry is blamed for a boa constrictor getting lose at the zoo. Also around this time, letters begin to arrive for Harry. Mr. Dursley refuses to let Harry read them though. The amount of letters that keep arriving for Harry becomes overwhelming, so the family leaves their home on Harry’s birthday. Fortunately, a giant named Hagrid finds Harry and finally delivers the letter that changes everything. Harry finds out about his true calling as a wizard and learns he’s been invited to attend a school for wizards. Hagrid rescues Harry from the Dursely’s and they begin preparing for his new life at Hogwart’s Wizarding School.  

            At Hogwart’s Harry makes friends quickly and is sorted into the same house team that his parents were part of. Unfortunately mysterious events contine to plague Harry at Hogwarts though. Harry gets into altercations with his Professor Snape, a slytherin boy Malfoy, a troll stuck in the girl’s bathroom, a hexed broom at a quidditch match, and Harry eventually finds out that Hogwart’s is full of secrets and only him and his friends can save the school. For Christmas, Harry receives his father’s invisibility cloak and he uses it to figure out what is happening at the school and learns that all these mysterious events are happening because Lord Voldemort is trying to steal the Sorceror’s Stone from Hogwart’s Enchanted Forest. 

            Harry, Ron, and Hermoine eventually devise a plan to steal the stone so they can protect it from Lord Voldemort. The trio get through the different levels of protection, but eventually they get to the stone. When Harry finds the stone, he finds Professor Quirrell. Professor Quirrell is acting strange and is taking orders from an unsettling voice. Finally Quirrell’s behavior makes sense once he reveals that Lord Voldemort is inhabiting his body. Quirrell attacks Harry but is burned and Harry faints from the altercation. Once his fainting spell passes, Dumledore explains everything to Harry. At the end of the year banquet, Dumbledore awards Harry’s House Team points for him and his friends bravery. All these points take the win from the Slytherin house and Gryfindor ends up winning the house cup that year. Unfortunately the story ends with Harry having to return to the Dursely’s for the summer, but readers are left with hope for what will happen in the upcoming year.

            Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone was the first book of the Harry Potter franchise. It was this text that captured audiences hearts around the world and what catapulted J.K. Rowling’s success. In the text it’s ironic when Professor McGonagall says to Dumbledore,  “There won’t be a child in our world who doesn’t know his name” because that’s in fact what has happened today. Children all over the world have grown up with this series and the franchise created around it.  It’s encouraged children to read more and some would even say it is what jump started the young adult genre again. There are countless articles all over the internet that explain what the Harry Potter franchise taught generations of children. These lessons start at tolerance and go through difficult topics like grief and depression as well. The impacts Harry Potter had on our culture can be seen everywhere though. We have new vocabulary in our dictionaries and we even have an entire theme park in existence because of the ideas J.K. Rowling published.  It’s astounding and authors everywhere have been trying to recreate the Harry Potter epidemic with their own literature. So, my question is what is it about the first book of this series that created this phenomenon and why hasn’t it been able to be duplicated?  I believe that by figuring out the answer to this question, it will help me with my own style of writing and figuring out how to make my own works of literature more successful.