I had one more thought on the very first chapter of Sorcerer's Stone. I LOVE how Rowling gives us the million dollar question, the key question, the question everybody desperately wants answered, right off the bat on p. 12.
"It's -- it's true?" faltered Professor McGonagall. "After all he's done...all the people he's killed...he couldn't kill a little boy? It's just astounding...of all the things to stop him...but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?"
This is brilliant. First of all (if I can risk sounding like a broken record) it just shows such tremendous artistry. Rowling is putting this very important question right up front at the beginning of book one. It gives me great confidence to know that she's always known where she was going with this saga, and how she wanted to shape it. This question has always been one of the key questions at the heart of Harry Potter. And she's a savvy writer -- she puts it right out there from the get-go and makes us all intensely curious. We don't know the answer when we first hear it asked. Even Dumbledore doesn't know the answer (though he clearly has guesses).
Six books and hundreds if not thousands of pages later, we do know more than we did at the start. We know Harry survived because of his mother's love, his mother's choice to sacrifice herself to save her son. But we still don't know all the details about that night, and frankly we're just getting more and more curious as the story goes along. Harry's finally getting curious too, because he's finally planning a trip to Godric's Hollow at the beginning of Deathly Hallows.
I love the feeling of being strung along by a good story-teller who knows what she's doing!
I've got a long post coming on chapters 2 and 3, which are some of my favorites. Hopefully this weekend!
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3 comments:
I love how it's McGonagall too; she's such a well-composed woman, yet she's completely ruffled by this mystery!
Yes! I love how you point out these great things about character.
And I just love McGonagall period. If I had to choose my top ten quotes from the series -- and that would be hard because there are some great ones -- I must confess almost nothing beats "it turns the other way" (as McGonagall mutters to Peeves in OotP) for sheer humour.
I loved your last long post but am holding off commenting until I can post some of my own thoughts on those chapters. I've been a bit slow...just been a busy week!
Hee! I love it when she betrays just a hint of a mischievous streak. She reminds me so much of a teacher I had for four years, and she too would sometimes say or do something that would catch us completely off-guard - like admitting her unabated passion for the song "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll"! :-P
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