As I said in the
introduction, the exposition is held well back for only the first two chapters
instead of Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone which took until the middle of Chapter Nine before getting
to the rising action. Chapter One serves
as an almost previously on recap for Harry as it explains very briefly the
backstory of book one and letting readers know that now Harry is back with the
Dursleys for the summer where he has been keeping his family scared of the idea
of magic and he hasn’t been receiving any letters from his friends. It does feel a little forced, but most of
the problems can actually be looked past as it does allow new readers to realize
just exactly what the world is and where we are in the story. Chapter Two is really what sets up the
mystery of the story. While the Dursleys
are having a dinner party, Harry is visited by Dobby the House Elf who warns
him not to go back to Hogwarts as someone is plotting to make terrible things
happen. This becomes the mystery for the
entire story as the plot follows who is plotting terrible things for the second
time in as many years. Dobby’s visit
also open’s Harry’s eyes along with the eyes of the audience to the classes of
the wizarding world. House elves are
slaves. As Dobby is determined to stop
Harry getting back to Hogwarts he drops a pudding on one of the Dursley’s
guests which gets bars put on Harry’s windows, a locked door and a letter from
the Ministry of Magic saying if anything happens again he will be thrown out of
Hogwarts and his wand broken.
This leads into Chapter
Three and Four which serve two purposes.
First is to introduce the major theme of the novel, that all wizards are
equal no matter if their parents are magical or not. Second they serve to give characterization to
the Weasley family members. Early on in
Chapter Three we get characterization of Arthur Weasley who is introduced in
this novel through Ron, Fred and George coming to rescue Harry in a Ford Angela
that Mr. Weasley enchanted to have the ability to fly. It shows that he has a fascination with
Muggle objects as wizards typically say away from them as they have magic and
don’t need them. He’s essentially a
fanboy and we get this great little moment in Chapter Four where he meets
Hermione’s parents and freaks out at how amazing they are. We get to see just how poor the Weasley
family is as their house is a hodge-podge of stories put into one building, yet
how easily they get on with their lives without any use for magic. There is also a bit of jealousy between Harry
and Ron for their respective living conditions.
Harry as the Burrow is obviously a place full of loving people while
number 4 Privet Drive is a large house which Ron would want as his poor house
doesn’t give his family high social status.
We get to see just how great Mrs. Weasley is to Harry in comparison to
everyone else. She treats him like a
person first and a celebrity second.
While many fans point out Harry’s father figures in this series, Mrs.
Weasley is one of the only mother figures for him. It speaks volumes for her to care for Harry
so much that if they didn’t hear from him within a week she and Arthur would
come and rescue him from the Dursley’s themselves. The story continues when Harry ends up down
Knockturn Alley where Lucius Malfoy is trying to get rid of some dark magical
artifacts which confirms that the entire Malfoy family is evil. The plot of course goes to Flourish and Blott’s
where we are introduced to Gilderoy Lockheart, the new Defense Against the Dark
Arts professor and we see a real animosity between Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy.
Chapters
Five, Six, Seven and Eight get us immediately to Hogwarts after a crash into
the Whomping Willow, where we spend the next three chapters establishing the
plot mcguffin of the Mandrakes and fleshing out Gilderoy Lockheart to see what
a pompous ass he actually is. It is
Chapter Seven and Eight really gets us to the central conflict as the audience
and Harry’s eyes are opened to just how people with Muggle parents are viewed
by a large portion of the wizarding world as almost sub-wizard. This happens after the Gryffindor Quidditch
team is kicked out of their practice by the Slytherin team as they have to
allow Draco Malfoy as Seeker because his father bought his way on the team with
Nimbus 2001 broomsticks. Hermione who is
there to support Harry at practice, calls them out on this and gets called a Mudblood
which is a dirty term used to describe people like Hermione. It’s a brilliant conflict as illustrated by
Ron and Hagrid who both take it awfully.
After
having a comedy scene at Nearly Headless Nick’s 500th Deathday Party
which feels really out of place except for the fact that it introduces Moaning
Myrtle, we get to the real meat of the story in Chapter Nine, Ten, Eleven,
Twelve, and Thirteen and unlike the last book which had a rather quick buildup,
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
makes it feel a lot slower which comes across as extremely tense considering
this is a much darker storyline than the first novel. Mrs. Norris, Filch’s cat is petrified and
hanged on a wall with a message stating the titular chamber has been opened so
enemies of the heir of Slytherin, beware.
It is important to note that the enemies are as the heir would say,
mudbloods. Now Mrs. Norris was attacked
because Filch is actually a Squib and cannot perform magic even though his
parents were wizards. This sets off a
case of Muggle born students being petrified in periodic intervals starting
with First Year Gryffindor and Harry fanboy, Colin Creevey, which is followed
with Justin Finch-Fletchley a Hufflepuff.
Justin’s case is interesting as in Chapter Eleven at a Dueling Club,
Malfoy conjures a snake that Harry talks to in Parseltongue, which is an
ability Slytherin was known for. The
school is of course led to believe it is Harry performing the attacks which
allows us to see a lot of Harry questioning why he was put in Gryffindor
house. This comes to a head when he is
sent to Dumbledore’s office where the Sorting Hat still says that he would have
done well in Slytherin. Chapter Thirteen
really escalates everything as after confirming the Heir of Slytherin couldn’t
be Malfoy by disguising themselves with Polyjuice Potion, we learn about Tom
Riddle, a student who stopped Hagrid from killing anyone else with the monster
in the Chamber of Secrets through a magical flashback in his diary.
This
is where things really come to the climax as two more people are victim to the
monster, Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw prefect, and Hermione. This does get the school off Harry’s back,
but we are into the end of the novel.
Chapters Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen and Seventeen deal with Harry and Ron
having to figure out what the monster is especially since Hagrid is taken to
Azkaban. Harry and Ron find out he is
innocent as the monster Hagrid was expelled for keeping was a giant spider that
came from an egg Hagrid won in Hogsmede called Aragog. We figure out that the monster is a giant
snake, Lockheart is a fraud and it is Ginny Weasley, Ron’s younger sister who
has opened the chamber on the diary’s orders.
This leads the two boys down into the chamber to rescue her and defeat
Tom Riddle who would grow up to become Lord Voldemort. Before finishing I have to mention just how Dumbledore is characterized. He is almost all knowing here as he says off hand that if anyone needs help they just need to ask and he will only leave Hogwarts when nobody is loyal to him. This is while Harry and Ron are under the Invisibility Cloak, so how does he know they are actually there, magic of course. Now Harry
Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is slightly longer than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
with not seventeen, but eighteen chapters with the final chapter being
dedicated to the resolution of the story which is just as happy as the first
novel. Even Dobby gets to go free from
the Malfoys which is really what the novel has been building up to.
To
summarize, Harry Potter and the Chamber
of Secrets takes away a lot of the problems of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and uses the new length to
tell a much more in depth story. It has
a few problems with characters being weak and the first chapter being devoted
to a recap which really isn’t necessary.
90/100
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