Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
(Spoiler Alert- I have the liberty to talk about any of the HP books in this blog, if you have not read all 7 novels and get sort of mad when endings or major events are ruined, do not read this blog, if you don’t care, read on)
Random Question for my readers, have you ever watched The Simpson’s? Settle down, just listen to where my thought process is going with this. Let’s say you have watched the Simpson’s. Have you then noticed a theme with the show? For instance, when the show starts, there is something that happens, Homer gets stung by a bee, something of that nature, that first action always has a reaction. Because Homer got stung by a bee, he did a certain action that had another reaction and by the end of the episode, you can’t really remember why he’s in court on trial and if you do look back, it’s all because he got stung by a bee.
Here’s where I’m going with this. In Chamber of Secrets, Harry starts his second year of Hogwarts, but before he leaves the Dursley’s he is visited by a strange creature, a house elf named Dobby, this first action has a ton of reactions. Dobby had been intercepting Harry’s mail in order to stop him from going back to Hogwarts, because dangerous things are going to happen at Hogwarts this year. When the letters do not have the outcome that Dobby had hoped for, the entrance to Platform 9 ¾ is blocked and Harry and Ron can’t get through to catch the train to Hogwarts. This action has the reaction of Ron and Harry stealing the Weasley’s enchanted car, this reaction gets them in trouble and instead of expelling them, Dumbledore gives them detention where Harry first hears the bodiless voice and Ron polishes the trophy with the initials T.M. Riddle. So, therefore when Harry ends up with a diary with those initials, they know that T.M. Riddle was at school at the time that the Chamber was opened the first time fifty years ago. Do you see what I’m saying about the chain reactions? It’s hard for us to remember that all of this started with a house elf ruining Aunt Petunia’s pudding for her guests.
With this being the second book of seven, the audience is still new to this magical world and therefore there are several very important introductions in this book that Harry and the audience did not know about or had not met in the first book. The first important introduction is to Dobby. If you have only watched the movies and not read the books you will have no idea how large of a character Dobby is. He loves Harry Potter very much and would do anything for him. That’s all I’m going to say about the subject because this is only book two and we’ll see more adventures with Dobby as I continue the series. The second introduction is to Polyjuice Potion.
The idea of Polyjuice Potion is a novel concept. How often as a young adult did I want to be someone else? Just to walk in someone else’s shoes to see how they fit, maybe only for a day. The Polyjuice Potion was a very complex Potion that took quite a bit of time to make, therefore it was not an off the cuff sort of plan. As a rule of thumb, second years should not be able to make this potion, although Hermione is not a regular second year witch, she is constantly known as the smartest witch of her age throughout the books and that is why it is not surprising that she is able to make such a complex potion for extracurricular activities. To use this particular potion, one would need to put a lot of plan and thought into it in order for it to work. By using this potion, Harry and Ron sneak into Slytherin house and find out a bit of information that gets them closer to know who has opened the Chamber of Secrets.
The last introduction is to Ginny. We shortly meet Ginny in The Sorcerer’s Stone, but Ginny is a Hogwart’s student in Chamber of Secrets and we get to see her interacting, even though strangely, with other characters and it’s very cute how she interacts or doesn’t interact with Harry.
It cracks me up that in these books, these school age children are able to do things and figure things out that adults with more training and magical powers cannot get done. The Chamber of Secrets was lost for thousands of years and all of a sudden, 3 school age children crack where it is, how to open it and what dangerous creature has lived in it all of this time. Just shows what a sense of adventure and love for each other will do.
Well I could go on for pages, but I won’t. What did you think about Chamber of Secrets? How many times have you read it? Do you think this story is important to the whole series? Leave a comment!
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