preview

Stereotypes In The Dumpster

Decent Essays

he Ordeal itself stands separate from the other trials Harry faces, and you can tell right away that it's more serious than his other tests. Earlier in the film, Harry and his friends have the teachers to bail them out. And while no one wants to see Malfoy make that smug little grin, at least they're not in any real danger of being killed. That all changes once they get past Fluffy. There's no Dumbledore here to pick them up when they fall. Even worse, they're headed straight to Voldemort—or at least the incarnation of Voldemort living behind Professor Quirrell's head like a malevolent boil—which means that failure is, in Dumbledore's words, "a most unpleasant death." That freaky wizard's chess game, the strangling vines, and that room full of flying keys are all happy to grant one if Harry …show more content…

Quirrell quite literally blows away in a stiff breeze and Harry, though knocked unconscious, gets to wake up in a much safer world. Harry—and by extension the audience—gets to skip all this (unconsciousness will do that to you). We can assume it's a fairly uneventful trip from where he, Ron and Hermione are found and taken to the school's nursing station, where he rests comfortably until Dumbledore shows up for one last magical bit of plot exposition. Harry wakes up in a hospital bed to a pile of candy and a very bemused headmaster. Recovering from an injury is a great short-hand way of making the symbolic resurrection of the hero a little more believable, as well as letting the author cut to the chase and fill us in on what happened post-jaw-dropping climax (which, let's face it, is usually a lot less interesting than the climax itself). In any case, Harry returns from the dead (or at least the severely wounded) and brings the fruits of his sacrifice with him. High-fives and chocolate frogs all

Get Access