Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by: J.K. Rowling

Sequels have a stigma that they can never be better than the original and while this is often the case, there are a few notable exceptions to this rule.  A Clash of Kings manages to outstrip A Game of Thrones, The Restraunt at the End of the Universe escalates the comedy established in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and of course Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets improves on almost all the flaws of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  J.K. Rowling’s second novel already has a leg up as I outlined that the main problems of the first novel was that the exposition took way too long leaving little time for the rest of the novel.  As Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets doesn’t have to establish the world we can get to the action of the novel much quicker and even have time devoted to the minor characters from the first novel, all the while introducing more characters for the series to continue.  Much like the first novel, I will be breaking the second novel up chapter by chapter and seeing just how Rowling does at making the story work a second time.

 

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 500^th 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