DAnneC's Full Review: J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azk...
Note: This review reveals key elements of the book's plot.
Chocolate as a curative for the effects of the Dark Arts? No connoisseur of this worthy confection could possibly doubt it.
Quidditch? Learning to love the sport of wizards--a polo-like game played on broomsticks.
People who can transform at will into animals? What to do when your father could turn into a stag and his best friend into a huge dog. . . .
Traveling back in time? Yes--but something to be risked only for the best of causes.
These are but a few of the plot lines that pervade Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, third in the series of J. K. Rowling's "children's" books on the world of Harry Potter, boy wizard. The real theme of the book, however, has to do with the nature of love--which, of course, includes friendship.
In The Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling explores friendship over two generations--through Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, as well as through the lingering influences of Harry's father James and his three closest childhood friends.
In this book, Harry (whose parents were murdered by the evil wizard Voldemort) finally learns about and meets his godfather, the infamous Sirius Black, recent escapee from the wizard's prison at Azkaban. The circumstances surrounding this meeting provide the background for a new series of magical adventures and for connecting Harry more firmly to his past.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are goodhearted 13-year-olds. They are sometimes inclined toward mischief and always positioned squarely on the path to adventure. The three friends support--and sometimes irritate--one another. They fight, and they make up. In their adherence to the established rules of the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, Harry and company frequently bend or break the letter of the law, but they adhere scrupulously to its spirit.
During their own schooldays, James Potter and his friends Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin had provided Hogwarts with many of the same challenges presented by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. To cope with the special (and very secret) handicap of one of their number--Remus Lupin had been bitten by a werewolf as a very small child--James, Peter, and Sirius became self-taught animagi and were able to transform into animals. As such, they kept their friend Remus company each month when the full month appeared.
By the time Harry is ready for his third year at Hogwarts, his father has been dead for 12 years. Peter Pettigrew, also believed dead, has been in hiding as a rat--literally. Remus Lupin, who is managing his monthly transformations through the use of a special potion, has been accepted as a teacher at Hogwarts. And Sirius Black, a convicted murderer, has just escaped from Azkaban.
With the stage thus set, Harry and his friends are in position to learn some important lessons. Far and away the most important of these is that love and friendship are not timebound. Despite the deaths of his parents, Harry's life is still touched by their love and sacrifice. In times of great need, that love reaches out and provides him with unexpected reserves--whether through the fortune they left him in the Gringotts Bank, through his inherited talent as a champion quidditch player, through the special consideration he often receives from the adults surrounding him, or through sudden insights during moments of crisis.
As Professor Dumbledore explained to Harry:
You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think we don't recall them more clearly than ever in times of great trouble? Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him.
Given the rumblings of disapproval in some quarters over the unhealthy influence that Harry Potter and his world of magic might exert over the minds of the young, it is well to remember that Harry's world is really just an exaggeration of our own. Magic--whether for good or evil--surrounds and infuses our everyday existence. In Harry Potter's world, even the most evil of wizards was brought down by the power of love.
Without wands or spells or potions, our everyday muggle world is filled with enough magic to identify with Harry. To deny that magic, to exile it from our world, would deprive us of the powers we all need to defeat the ordinary, mundane, everyday evils we encounter. Magic in our world, as in Harry's, is most effective when wielded with love.
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