Rowling
writes the Harry Potter series in a mystery genre in some aspects. All books
have clues and they are trying to discover where someone, or something is. In the
first book, our expectations held that Professor Severus Snape was trying to
hurt Harry Potter, and we expected that he wished to find the Sorceror’s Stone.
Though there were very strong clues to suggest that Snape was behind all the
mischief, our expectations failed when we learned that Professor Quirrell was
the evil one. This also shown in the Chamber of Secrets while trying to find
the heir of Slytherin; though Harry, Ron and Hermione thought that Draco Malfoy
was behind it all, they were proven false when they used the Polyjuice Potion
and informed that Malfoy was indeed not the heir.
It is
important for an author to raise our expectations and then fail to fulfill it
because it keeps us, the readers, on our toes. It is what keeps us reading. If
the readers could guess everything that was going to happen and have a certain
expectation about some characters then there would be no point in reading
something that we could guess the ending to. Rowling does a marvelous job in
Harry Potter by keeping the readers on their toes, as the books go on, we have
discovered things that we would have never guessed by ourselves. For example, I
know the first time I read Harry Potter, I did not expect Tom Riddle to be in
the chamber, nor did I expect Ginny Weasley to have the diary and the one
behind all of the attacks. Those are
simply two of the reasons that I was initially drawn in to Harry Potter. With
my expectations never coming true, everything is always a mystery and that is
what readers enjoy because of the fact that they are always learning something
on expected, leaving them on their toes and not allowing them to put the book
down.
-Megan Sparks
No comments:
Post a Comment