It's All Happening At the Zoo

In some ways chapter 2 of Sorcerer's Stone, The Vanishing Glass, almost feels like the real beginning of the series. Yes, I love chapter 1 and it's crucial to our understanding of Harry's back story and the two worlds Rowling is setting up side by side. But chapter 1 feels almost like a prologue. When we move to chapter 2, we move to Harry's point of view (not first person, but still very much his POV) and there we stay for much of the rest of the series thus far. It's always a notable exception when we venture outside of the realm of what Harry is seeing, thinking and doing. The beginning of Goblet of Fire is one example -- though even there we end up realizing we're experiencing the scene through Harry's dream/vision/scar connection. The beginning of Half-Blood Prince when we get to hang out in the Muggle Prime Minister's office is yet another instance. But for the most part, we travel through these books by dogging Harry's footsteps. We're privileged -- and limited -- to see what he sees and experience what he experiences.

The fairy-tale feel of the book increases with this chapter. We haven't gotten to the enchanted castle yet...that comes later! But we've already met a giant -- or at least someone giant-sized. In this chapter we get to see poor Harry at the hands of his wicked stepmother....er....wicked aunt and uncle. There really is a Cinderella-type feel to his environment -- he has to sleep in a cupboard under the stairs, his clothes are all hand-me-downs that don't fit, he's tormented by his cousin which puts him somewhere in the vicnity of the role of "younger brother," which is always an intriguing role in fairy tales.

If the cupboard feels a bit over the top, recall that we're being given a glimpse of two worlds or worldviews. The Dursleys live in a materialistic, naturalistic, non-imaginative world, and they'd like to keep Harry shut up in that world. It seems fitting that when he lives with them he lives in a tiny, cramped, dark environment with no windows. What amazes me is that it hasn't cramped Harry's spirit and heart more than it has. I put that down to the fact that, although he doesn't yet know it this early on, he's been shaped at a deep heart level by his mother's sacrifice.

There are so many wonderful moments in chapter 2 that I can't possibly recount them all. Here are just a few of my favorites. Many of them are foreshadowing moments, or moments where Harry is tapping deep into memories of a world he doesn't consciously remember:

--Harry dreams of the flying motorcycle (p. 19)
--Harry tells the Dursleys "I won't blow up the house" when they're worried about leaving him there alone all day when Mrs. Figg can't babysit for him (p. 23)
--"Dont' ask questions" (p. 20) the key to Harry's survival at the Dursleys', and a deeply-engrained habit that I think comes back to haunt Harry later
--Harry's first vague memories of the night of his parents' death, and the green light that we know came from the AK curse (p.29). It's interesting to note that Harry strained his memory to come up with even this little bit of the scene.
--Mrs. Figg!
--parseltongue! (and don't you just love the humour in the scene with the boa constrictor!)

The scene at the zoo is such a classic example of Rowling working on many levels at once. It's a ripping good scene -- enjoyable and funny. It's a scene that gives us major clues to some of Harry's magical qualities, qualities Harry himself isn't fully aware of. And it's a scene that works on a symbolic level too, with Harry as a melter of walls, a bringer down of partitions, a sympathetic person who roots for the underdog (or undersnake, in this case) and already has a bit of a "saving people thing" going on.

I'm really rambling tonight. But I have to mention one more thing I found interesting as I re-read this chapter: it begins and ends with photographs. Photos are clearly very important to Rowling, who views them as deeply connected with a person's identity/sense of belonging and family/and view of himself. At the beginning of chapter 2, Rowling shows us the passage of time since the end of chapter one. We're given a look around the Dursleys' living room where we see the awful photos of the now 10 year old Dudley, but not one single photo of Harry. It's as though he doesn't live there at all. The Dursleys don't want to acknowledge his existence, or his part in their family, with a single picture.

At the end of chapter 2, we're told that Harry doesn't remember his parents at all -- not only is he not allowed to ask questions or to talk about them, but there are no photographs of them in the house either. That absence of photos will be touched on again beautifully toward the end of the book when Hagrid makes a gift of a photograph album to Harry. But more than that, we see that photos, images, reflections are intimately connected to a person's knowledge about himself and his own story. The discovery of his own story and its significance is what most of the Harry Potter epic is about.