Character development highly
influences the experience we have, whenever we read a story or watch a film.
With the Harry Potter series, we see many characters shed light onto a few
themes (coming of age, for example) due to their developments throughout the
story. One character’s development seems more tragic and realistic: the main
subject of the series, Harry Potter.
When we first see Harry, he is a small and
quiet boy who lives with his unloving (to him, at least) aunt and uncle. He has
a realization that his parents are dead, but for the wrong reason. Upon hearing
about their true fates from Hagrid, prior to his first year in Hogwarts, Harry
tries to cope with this realization by obsessively standing at the Mirror of
Erised. He finds comfort in seeing his parents again, even though Dumbledore
explains to Harry that the mirror only shows what the viewer longs for.
As the series goes along, Harry starts to
show signs of his emotional distress, especially during the Order of the
Phoenix. The death of his parents, the death of Cedric, and the return of Lord
Voldemort (not to mention the emotional roller coaster that is adolescence)
take a big toll on Harry. He appears to be rather hotheaded more in this book
than he was in the previous four, mostly because he doesn’t want any other
person to die for him.
These moments of character development for
Harry have made me rethink about the theme of traumatic experience. Like Harry,
I have been through a traumatic experience that has pushed me to my limits in
the years later on. Whenever a character is going through a specific theme that
we’ve been through ourselves, we connect with that character.
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