Harry

Harry’s outer appearance

Harry is a small boy like a lot of others. He has a thin face with a scar on his forehead which is shaped like a lightning. His hair is black and grows as it likes. Something very special are his bright green eyes behind damaged glasses which are held together with a lot of Sellotape. In the Muggle World he has to wear all the old clothes of Dudley, his cousin, who is much bigger and because of that Harry looks quite smaller. (Page 27/28: “He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was.”)
 
 

Personality

He’s a kind of a brave boy but not always. He’s also frightened in a lot of situations. But he forgets his fears when he´s got to help his friends (Chap. Hallowe’en).

Sometimes he’s very frustrated because he thinks that he’s a really bad wizard, for example when he was trying for the first time to perform a transfiguration (page 147: “By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match.”). Some teachers even discriminate him because he’s very popular, for example Snape in the potions lessons (page 150-151: “ ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Harry. Snape’s lips curled into a sneer. ‘Tut, tut – fame clearly isn’t everything.’ “).

If he promises someone something, he’ll stand for it (situation on page 193: Hermione: ” ‘If they hadn’t found me, I’d be dead now. Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club.”)
 

Harry in the wizarding world

To really understand Harry’s status in the wizarding world you have to look at his special history. The downfall of Voldemort, the strongest and most feared darkest wizard for ages,  is the key to Harry’s celebrity. Because somehow after  killing his parents Voldemort wasn’t able to kill the infant Harry. This way Voldemort‘s spell was broken and he turned into something half human and fled. Harry is absolutely clueless about his great history and about his parents being great wizards until he enters the wizarding world. But everybody knows his story and recognizes him by his lightning shaped scar. He switches from where he is not being recognized at all to where people feel honored to talk to him. Every bad stereotype in the muggle world turns into the total extreme in his new life. He is well known, he finds the friends he always wished for, he is accepted and appreciated and in school he is a natural seeker (the position in Quidditch with the highest prestige at all).
So now, how does he handle this switch from on extreme into the other?

He is very nervous to begin with. Best example is just before getting sorting sorted by the sorting hat ("Harry’s heart gave a horrible jolt. A test?"  Pg.127). You can see that he is very afraid to fail. He is in a new surrounding, basically a new life for him, and he knows that a lot of people have huge expectations in him because they only see him as the famous Harry Potter with all the tales told about him and not as what he really is (Hagrid: „Harry Potter, not a wizard – you wait, you’ll be right famous at Hogwarts.“). Everybody is keen to see how he will deal with his life at Hogwarts. Harry doesn’t like his popularity at all and rather is annoyed by it („Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his dormitory next day. ... He wished they wouldn’t.“ pg. 144). He often wishes not to be that famous Harry Potter at all. Another negative aspect of his celebrity for him is that when Harry, Ron and Hermione lose 150 points in the House Cup, Harry is hated for it the most because he is the one all the attention lays on („from being one of the most popular and admired people at school, Harry was suddenly the most hated.“ Pg. 265).Harry’s magical life begins when he meets of Hagrid. He is the first man who tells him that he is a wizard (p. 55) . The Dursleys haven’t told Harry anything about this. And so he is very surprised although it is true that crazy things have happened in his life. Like his hair which grew in one night several inches after his aunt cut it very short (p. 32). Also he had an experience with a snake which has a conversation with Harry (p. 36).

With his journey to Hogwarts, the wizard school, he comes into the magical world. There he is a very famous person because of his past. He is even mentioned in magical books like ”Modern Magical History”, “The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts” and “Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century” (p. 117).

But Harry isn’t very happy about this because everybody has huge expectations in him. He doesn’t know anything about the wizard world and so he feels a bit lonely. He finds friends in Ron and Hermione (p. 103/195) but also enemies like Draco Malfoy who is a bad and terrible boy. His father was a supporter of Voldemort, the darkest wizard in the world (p. 119). Also the Potions Master Snape doesn’t like Harry because he went to school with his father who saved Snape’s life once, although they didn’t like each other.

Harry isn’t a very good student. He spends hours studying and is very happy to have Hermione as a friend because she is the best in his class and helps him and Ron (p. 196).

Harry is a natural in Quidditch, the most famous game in the wizarding world. The first time Harry sits on a broomstick he can handle with it like an expert and because of that he is allowed to play in the Gryffindor Quidditch team although first years usually aren’t allowed. He plays as a seeker, the most important role in the game. He is very successful and wins two matches.
 

Harry’s role as a hero

When we read through the book we realized that there is a huge gap between the Harry in the muggle world and the Harry in Hogwarts. In the normal non wizarding world he has no friends, is not good in sports ... simple isn’t popular at all. In short, he is a loser. In the wizarding world he is a celebrity. Now we came to ask, how does he handle that difference in his life and how does he deal with it. So we took a deeper look into that subject.
 

Harry in the muggle world

Harry is an orphan. He was brought to his nearest relatives, the Dursleys. They don’t like him at all (quote: „They often spoke about Harry ... as thought he was something very nasty“ Pg. 30).  They treat him like something less human. Comparisons to the stories „Cinderella“ and „Oliver Twist“ are in our opinion not far fetched. There are also very commonly known loser stereotypes that Harry fits in. He has no friends at all, everybody either bullies him or doesn’t want to talk to him because of Dudley. At home he is bossed around and the Dursleys always ignore he wishes. So far you can say he had one miserable life . If we think about it it is even too  miserable to be real. J.K. Rowling really uses every one cliche of a letting the reader feel the most possible sympathy for Harry. (e.g.: „you’ll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas“ pg. 31; now living in a cupboard is not realistic at all but you feel sorry for poor Harry)
 

Conclusion

In the last two paragraph we tried to gather facts that are in the book to give the reader information. Now though we want to go a little deeper into the subject and try to find similarities to other books, certain stereotypes J.K.Rowling uses and how that works with the picture we have of Harry.

The first thing that was pretty obvious is that the character of Harry himself is made up of so many stereotypes. For one thing there is his life with the Dursleys. We think this part of the story is a lot of similarities to Cinderella and even Oliver Twist and J.K.Rowling used those common or well known flaws for Harry. She is trying to get pity and feelings for Harry from the reader. So she makes Harry live in a mean family that doesn’t like him and bullies him arround. He is not liked in school and doesn’t have any friends, nor does he do anything extraordinary. But here she carefully avoids making him look like a loser and gives all the fault to the Dursleys. Harry Potter is shown as an intelligent witty kid. All this has a reason. The reader already likes him from the very start because of all the bad things happen to him in his short life even though he is such a good kid and has the heart at the right place.

But all that changes when he is taken to Hogwarts and all of a sudden he is the most famous boy in the world. All of a sudden everything the people formerly were disliking about him turns out to be popular in the new world. Here to we find similarities with Oliver Twist. If you compare the reaction and the characters of Harry and Twist you will see that they match. However, Harry is taking his new popularity almost too well. No real kid would face that in such a compelling way. Because he doesn’t do everything right and he doesn’t always feel good about everything so his character never really gets boring.
We think the switch from being a loser to being a hero is a little bit too extreme to be realistic. In this Rowling uses a lot of easy to see stereotypes. But on the other hand we have to say that although we know all that the effect is complete success. Mainly of this total change and role as an hero we love to read that book. It is overloaded with effects to get the emotions of the reader and it works. We are sucked into the story by this odd superhero Harry Potter.

the class
 

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