Moral and Philosophical Reading of Harry Potter

As a Children’s literature Harry Potter is full of moral lessons. One of very important moral lesson is to distinguish between good and evil. At every step of life, it will ask person to make choice and based on those choices our future depends. So morally good choices helps people. As in the friendship Hermione and Ron made choice to be defeated in the chess and let Harry win, because he has to complete the task. Harry also saves Malfoy from the fire and that was his moral choice. Harry can’t ignore it. It his personality to help others.

If we talk about philosophy, then the most important lesson was to fight with our self. It is said that when we are constantly looking in to the dark then darkness is also peeping inside us. Same has happened with Harry. He is constantly in the connection with Voldemort, if not physically then mentally. But while fighting with evil, evil has made impact on goodness of Harry. We can see sometimes evil is over powering the goodness of Harry. So the evil breeds evil. Very unknowingly also but Voldemort has left his part of soul in to Harry also and that part is over powering goodness of Harry sometimes. Here where Harry needs to fight. This fight is not with others, it is with his own self. This can be applicable to all. No one is thoroughly good or thoroughly bad, people are both. They should keep balance between both. When one is over powering the other one needs to fight with one’s own self.

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Theme of Choice and Chance in Harry Potter series

“It is our choice, that show what we truly are, for more than our abilities” says Dumbledore. By and large Harry Potter series has been worked on idea of choice or better to say it has emphasised on choice. We can see that from the very beginning, from sorting hat to the Harry going in to the forest. The choice is the one which matters. There are phases where chance work more than choice, but choice is the one who dominate the narrative.

Voldemort has believed that his downfall is because of chance every time. He believed that it was chance that Harry happens to caught him or defeat him. But in the case of Harry it mostly a choice of Harry which had lead him to do, what he has able to do in the all series. May be Rowling wants to make magical world, which is not dominated by the fate. Things happens because people choose to act on them. If we talk about prophecies, then even it is not fate driven. Prophecies becomes true because characters choose to act according the prophecies. Harry’s mother choose to sacrifice her self for her son and that is why Harry is alive. Same way at the end Harry choose to sacrifice himself to protect the Hogwarts. Harry choose to let Voldemort apply killing charm on him. Because of that killing charm one horcrux which Voldemort has unknowingly left in inside Harry and that got destructed by Voldemort himself that was a chance. At some level chance is taking over choice. As in fourth part, “Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire” here name of Harry comes as pure chance and then he don’t even have choice to withdraw it. So here it is like one has to do something compulsory. But then in last two part Harry, Hermione and Ron choose to find every horcrux and destroy it, so here choice is more powerful then chance. This is how Harry Potter has theme of choice and chance.

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Harry Potter as Children Literature

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling has made an immense effect on the culture. People were talking that people are not reading but when Harry Potter published, people were in long cues for purchasing the books. It has world of fantasy and so people considered it has children’s literature. It has many elements through which we can say that Harry Potter is children’s literature.

Rowling has used very simple language in these books so readability increases. Children can easily read and comprehend the books. Readability is important part of children literature which these books are able to give. So the language is not barrier for children. Second is that children don’t like the books which have perspective of adults. In these books we have children as main characters and narrative follow the children. The hero of the books grows with the people who are reading it. So it keeps the connection with readers. Characters of the books are portrayed same as real people. They don’t represents only good or only bad. They are not extreme in any way. They are with virtue and also with flaw. It also gives moral lessons to the children so they can get something more than only entertainment.

Apart from all these things fantasy world makes children to give attention to these books. Magic, invisibility cloak, people with full of mysterious abilities, flying things as well as people, all those magical spells and many more makes it fantastic children literature. With all these things, Rowling has not forgot to give height of real literature. With all these fantasies she has woven social and political satire, power struggle and make her stand strongly and firmly. So with fantasies of magical world Harry Potter books also has harsh reality of present society.

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Rivers and Tides - Andy Goldsworthy

Have you ever seen wind and water making art by themselves? Have you ever seen an artist who without any particular tool makes beautiful piece of art? Have you ever thought Time can make art more beautiful? Have you ever meet a person who don’t believe in immortality of art? Well here it is. Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific sculptures and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He don’t use any particular tool to create his piece of art. He goes to the nature, finds something which is given by nature, and after making it give it back to the nature. He is working with time. He knows when the sea will touch his work. He knows after how many days the art will show up. With that understanding of time he creates something beautiful. He believes in flow, flow of everything. He also says that everything has fluidity. Here we are talking about his documentary, “River and Tides – Working with Time”

What Andy Goldsworthy is making, the process of making that piece is very hard. He goes to the sea or anywhere, he finds the material he wants, for instance at sea he made the art from stones, but then he has found those thousands of stones from that sea only. The work is very hard but then he knows it will not stay forever or may be not a one day also. This fact doesn’t make Goldsworthy think to stop doing this work at any way. He says, that if for some days he didn’t work then he feel rootless. Sometimes when he is making his piece of work, the work collapse, but then he don’t feel discouraged, because he knows this from the very beginning but then even he choose to make it.

He created a hole from woods at sea shore, when tide comes and start dismantling it, he says, it feels like water is taking it to some another planet, in other world. It does not feel like destruction at all. He also says that this is gift from me to the nature, then what nature does with it, is upon nature. Well while saying this he may be knows very well that permanency is not in the nature. Perseverance is act of culture, but in nature, something which has taken birth, it will meet its death also. He has made snake like curvy figure from ice, for that he has to wake up early as sun will melt the ice. Once he completed it, he was there observing it. The rays of sun has lighten the ice, but then its heat also melt the ice, and he was there seeing his art melting down.

He has worked with water a lot. He has sewed the leaves and then put it in the water. It goes with flow and it self it makes an new art. He also has worked with pure red colour, which he has found under the water. First it looks like blood. He has found all the red stones from water then grind it in fine powder. Then he throws it in to the wind and see how wind creates the art. He also has made ball of it and throw it in to the water. The red colour is alien to the water, he says. How beautifully that red colour splashed in to the water, melt it self and starts flowing with the water. That is the art of water.

He has worked on landscape also. While talking about sheep he create a perfect line on the wall from cotton. If we look it from distance it looks like snow perfectly has fallen on the stone and has made that line. At the end we can also see from the helicopter the wall. The shape wall is curvy lile a big snake.

At last he makes art on wall with the help of some other members. The beauty of this art is, it will show up when it will dry, then it will vanish also. He also does this with some particular woods. He made circle of it and then let it dry. Here time it self is an art. The documentary has been recorded very well. Some picture of his family in between distracts the viewers. But it was very well narrated and recorded.

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Thinking Activity on "The Sense of an Ending" by Julian Barnes

This blog is part of my academic activity. To know more about the task click here.

1) How do you understand memory and history with reference to your reading of this novel.

After reading this novel the understanding related to history and memory both have changed. I used to think about memory that it will at some extent forgotten but never distorted. After reading this novel I really feel that we also have those distorted memory, which we want to store as something which has actually not taken place. By doing that we are cheating our selves and others also. So memory and history both are connected. History is written from memory. Now we have seen in this novel how distorted memory can be stored by individual. If historians takes their statements in to consideration, we can not trust history either. In novel Tony says history is not lies of victors or self delusion of defeated, history is the memory of survivors. It is told by them who has not gone for fight from either side and they have survived. They don’t even have first hand experiences of the things. So these people will remember history in different way. We can not trust them without any evidence. So we should not trust anything without evidence, not the person and not even the history.

2) How do you understand the concept of suicide with reference to your reading of literature ranging from Renaissance play Hamlet, 20th century Existentialist philosophy and this 21st century novel The Sense of an Ending?

 The journey from Renaissance play to the 21st century novel was very interesting. Suicide is very ambiguous topic. Mostly people think suicide has something bad. Our law also consider as crime. When Hamlet thinks, “To be or, not to be” he concludes that it is untraveled land from where no ones return, and they don’t know also what suffering they have to go through. So living current life is better then suicide. Existentialism says, life is meaningless but ending life is not the solution. So keep on living and try to find meaning in your life. Now here in this novel “The Sense of an Ending” Adrian says that life is a gift which no one has asked for and now if person thinks to return it they have right to do that. Adrian has lived his life at fullest capacity. He knows what he was doing in his life. He knows how he wants to live and he also knows how he wants to die. So in this novel suicide has not been seen as something bad or crime. It is kind of wish or right which every person has. After living your life as one wants and after getting satisfaction in life one can go for suicide. This is what my concept of suicide is now.

Whatever might be the reason people have committed suicide innumerable times. But the problem is society has always seen this as something negative. Why society thinks that one should keep on living, even if they had lived enough or they no more feel life worthy of living. May be because society is made up of coward people. People who shows their slightest wound to the hundreds of people and will consider cowards to those who have guts and strength to kill them selves. Of one think logically, will definitely find problem in understanding the rules of society. May be because the rules are created for Mass and not for Individuals.

Thank you.

Were I to Choose by Gabrial Okara

When Adam broke the stone
And red streams raged down to
Gather in the womb,
And angel calmed the storm,

And I, the breath mewed
In Cain, unblinking gaze
At the world without
From the brink of an age.

That draws from the groping lips
A breast – muted cry.
To thread the years.
(O were I to choose)

And now the close of one
And thirsty turns, the world
Of bones is Babel, and
The different tongues within
Are flames the head
Continually burning.

And O of this dark halo
Were the tired head free.
And when the harmattan
Of days has parched the throat
And skin, and sucked the fever
Of the head away,

Then the massive dark
Descends and flesh and bone
Are razed, and (O were I to choose) I’d
Cheat the worms
And silence seek in stone.

- Gabrial Okara

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

"The Bluest Eye", published in 1970, is the first novel written by author Toni Morrison. Morrison is an acclaimed African American novelist, Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize winner whose works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the US. This novel is also based on the topic of racism.

“The Bluest Eye” tells the story of an African – American girl named Pecola. Pecola is a young girl of may be 9 or 10 years old. She suffers mentally and physically. Her father is a drunkard and her mother works at the house of white wealthy family. Both of them don’t have time for Pecola. Both of them used to fight verbally and physically. Pecola suffers the racism at school, in her neighbourhood and mostly every where. Claudia and Frida, are sisters. They both are friends of Pecola.

Once Pecola’s father raped her, and it happened again also. After raping second time Cholly runs away, by leaving pregnant Pecola behind. Then Pecola comes to know about their parents suffering by having black skin. Everybody except Claudia and Frida wants that Pecola’s baby should die. Her baby born pre mature and that is why baby dies. Pecola now had lost her mental stability. Now she wish for blue eyes, which in hypocritically racist society believes as standard of beauty. At the end she also believes that she has got blue eyes, and that is why everybody has changed their behaviour with Pecola.

So, this is how the racism affects the life of every African American person. Of this is what they suffer then there is something wrong in other peoples’ culture and thinking. That something wrong should be identify and removed, so others Pecola can live with their own eye color.

Thank you.

The Hairy Ape by Eugene O'Neill

 The Hairy Ape is a 1922 expressionist play by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. It is about a beastly, unthinking laborer known as Yank, the protagonist of the play, as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first, Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an ocean liner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines and his men.

However, when the rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast", Yank undergoes a crisis of identity and so starts his mental and physical deterioration. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. In a fight for social belonging, Yank's mental state disintegrates into animalistic, and in the end he is defeated by an ape in which Yank's character has been reflected.

Yank has died in search of his identity. He was in his comfort zone and the white lady has broke it. He was eager to know his belongingness. He is in search of his existence. When he find out that he does not belongs to any human community, he goes to the zoo for finding his belongingness. He thinks that he belongs to the ape in the zoo. He opens the cage to live inside it. He hugs the ape and ape killed him. So at the end also he died without identity.

This play shows us that one can not live without belongingness. One need the identity. Here we can see existentialism. Yank has failed to understand meaning of his existence and at the end he dies.

Thank you.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Nilanjana Sudeshna "Jhumpa" Lahiri is an American author known for her short stories, novels and essays in English, and, more recently, in Italian.

“The Namesake” is the first novel by American author Jhumpa Lahiri. It was originally a novel published in The New Yorker and was later expanded to a full-length novel. It is moving between events in Calcutta, Boston, and New York City, the novel examines the nuances involved with being caught between two conflicting cultures with highly distinct religious, social, and ideological differences.

This novel describes the life of Ganguli family and mostly the life of Gogol. It is about differences between culture and generation. There is a reason why Ashok and Ashima, father and mother od Gogol and Sonia has named their son Gogol. Ashok was travelling in the train and that train met an accident at that time, Ashok has the pages of author Nikolai Gogol’s book and that is the reason he has been saved. But Gogol fails to understand this. As he grows he started disliking his name and also started remaining away from the house. When he got in to the university he changed his name as Nikhil. Behind this act he has his own reasons. The name Gogol is making him different from others, he has been tolerated so many teasing because of this and that is why he choose to change the name.

As novel proceeds, there were so many deaths, but the death of Ashok has most effected Ashima and Gogol. Ashima is changed now as now she don’t wish to go back to India. Now she don’t has so many desires. Gogol at the end when his father is not there, he learns about the story behind his name Gogol. He appreciates his father but Ashok was not there now.

In between many things happens, but mostly the novel deals with subject of diaspora. It shows the problems of immigrants. Immigrants here don’t understand where they actually belong. When they are in other country they refer as Others and when they are in home country they again refer as someone who are different from them. It also deals with conflict between two different generations.

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The Trunk of Ganesha by Jayanta Mahapatra

Jayanta Mahapatra is a major Indian English poet. He is the first Indian poet to win Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He is the author of such popular poems as Indian Summer and Hunger, which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature. Jayanta Mahapatra was awarded Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour in India in 2009.

“The Trunk of Ganesha” is a story written by Jayanta Mahapatra. The story is of one skilled idol maker named Govinda. He makes idol of all gods and goddesses. He is a married man and his wife’s name is Sulochana. He has three sons but only the youngest one Ranju was interested in making idols and he was learning this art.

Once Govinda has one idol of Ganesha to make but he was not able to complete it. The trunk of the Ganesha idol was breaking everyday. In day he complete the trunk and next day he found it broken. He has measured the weight of the clay and everything but then even trunk is breaking. Then he started thinking that may be god is not happy with him. Ge thinks about several reasons from which god can be unhappy with him. He thinks that may be he charges more for this idol that’s why, or he started making goddesses slim that’s why, this is happening to him.

One night he decided to see what happens in night with Ganesha’s trunk. After completing the idol he goes for dinner. Then he and Ranju hide themselves in corner where no one can find them. Ranju was asleep. Then Govinda has seen some creature in window and its jump on Ganesha’s trunk. That was a cat which used to slide on the trunk. At that time Govinda feels relief.

The end of the story is very interesting and witty. We can not even think after all these tension through out the story that, this simple thing can also be reason.

Thank you.

The Eagle by Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson was a British poet. He was the Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of his first pieces, "Timbuktu".

This is a very short poem of six lines which describes a bird, an Eagle. The poem has 2 stanzas 3 lines each. These are rhyming triplets with iambic meter. The poem starts with the description where Eagle is holding on a rock with his hands. He is on a height from where it seems sun is near to him. The hill on which an Eagle is sitting is on such a height that he is the only one there. Those mountains are lonely lands. Eagle is also surrounded by the azure view of a world.

In second stanza again there is mention of the height where Eagle is standing. From that height sea is looking wrinkled and crawling. Sea is not wild with high waves. From the mountain Eagle is looking at something. May be it is his prey. Here poet has used “his mountain walls”, to indicate that Eagle owns that height and mountain. At last he falls like a thunderbolt. We can assume that he is falling on his prey to catch it. The poem ends when Eagle is falling like a thunderbolt, presumably on his prey.

Here poet talks about the high ambition and aim of an eagle. Here poet wants to convey the message to the humans, also to have the high ambition like an eagle and aim which can never miss. Reach at the level where no one else can and maintain that position.

Thank you.

Quality by John Galsworthy

The “Quality” is a short story written by John Galsworthy. The story is narrated from the first person point of view. The story tells the life of a shoe maker Gessler Brothers. It also shows the effect of industrialism on small business.

Gessler brothers are German shoe maker and they are living in London. They own small shop and they are making best quality shoes on orders. Our narrator is regular customer of Gessler shop.  The quality of shoes are so good that after one order one has not to visit it again for long time. Narrator goes to the shop and every time he orders shoes. Once narrator says to Mr. Gessler that the shoe has a crack at that time Mr. Gessler askes to bring it back he will fix it and if he can not than he will return the money. Once when narrator visits the shop the elder brother has died and younger Mr. Gessler was at the shop. After that narrator has ordered many pairs of shoes. After receiving the order he does not need to visit the shop for some period of time. Next time when he goes he again order many pairs of shoes. After receiving the order once he was passing by that road and decided to visit Mr. Gessler and to tell him that shoes were very nice. But when he reaches there he see some other English man, who informs narrator that Mr. Gessler has died because of starvation. All money he earned was gone in buying row materials for shoes and in paying rent.

Till the end Mr. Gessler has tried to focus on quality only. Once there was talk between narrator and Mr. Gessler that how those big industries of shoe making harm their business. Mr. Gessler was complaining that those big company don’t has quality they just have quantity and different design through which they attracts the costumers. Those company was harming the business of Mr. Gessler.

Here we can see the other side of the coin. We always praise quality but here we come to know that how quality has harmed Mr. Gessler. It was the quality which he wants to keep till the end and because of that he has no money left for his food. Here the quality of shoes has harmed Mr. Gessler.

Thank you.

Ode on Solitude by Alexander Pope

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

“Ode on Solitude” is a poem written by Alexandre Pope. Here he has described the happiness of living in solitude. In this poem he says that the man who has inherited some land and can live in his native land, whose herds and fields can provide milk and bread, Trees can give him shade in summer and fire in winter, whose life can passed without concerned and who has healthy body and mind with peace, who can sleep soundly and study with ease. At last he says that now after having all these things he wants to live unseen, unknown and he wants to die the same that no one can find where he has buried. So here poet has talked about the happiness of living life and enjoy it at fullest.

So here poet has talked about solitude but he has also talked about the things which are needed to live in solitude. The person should have to be wealthy enough to live life in solitude. So first people should have to achieve enough materials or wealth to pass rest of their life in the solitude.

Thank you.