This is my first H.P. essay ever.  I hope I am not going out on too much of a limb.

( Deathly Hallows Spoilers )

I actually wrote this *gasp* research paper for my literary theory class -- basically it examines the importance of race and class distinctions that are present in Harry Potter. It even has secondary sources! And I got an A.

( Follow the fake lj-cut)

Word count :2909

Void of All Characters: A Lockean View of Lord Voldemort, His Genesis, and His Motivations
“All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas:- How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man ( Read more... )

The idea for this essay cropped up suddenly in my Literary Criticism class where my "incessant scribbling" irritated my professor. Supposedly, I was ignoring her lecture in favor of "mere personal writing whims." Yup, she used alliteration on me. But, back to the subject at hand. Herein I am attempting to deconstruct the three Black sisters by ( Read more... )

So, I just wrote this paper on Harry Potter for my Young Adult Lit Class and now I have joined this community for the sole purpose of sharing it with you. I am excited about reading everyone else's essays, though! Please comment and let me know what you think. If I get comments before tomorrow, I might be able to fix mistakes before I turn it in ( Read more... )

I was reading Oedipus Rex in language arts and had one of those "Aha!" moments. Why, you ask? I found Voldemort's mother's name. Merope, in Oedipus Rex, is the name of Oedipus's adoptive mother. I thought to myself: why, that is odd. Why would JKR use the name of Oedipus's adoptive mother, if she was trying to compare Voldie to Oedipus? She could ( Read more... )

We all knew it was coming.  Sooner or later, Dumbledore had to die.  Although many thought that it would come in the seventh book instead of the sixth, mainly because it seemed impossible to think of Hogwarts without Dumbledore, I think that most people knew that Dumbledore couldn’t live to the end of the series.  But how did we know?  I think ( Read more... )

I have enjoyed reading everyone's essays for quite awhile. This will be my first post for this community ( Read more... )

This essay was born in my last semester of college for my 'literature criticism and theory' class. So be prepared for 1) longness and 2) academic dryness. It'd be interesting to update this for HBP, but that means dragging out Jung again and I'm not particularly fond of reading him so that project can wait. I ended up getting an excellent grade for ( Read more... )

Harry Potter is a Hobbit: Rowling, Tolkien, and The Question of ReadershipJ.K Rowling draws censure from cultural critics and laypersons alike: her works rank among the most challenged books of the last decade due to their supposedly mature content, and yet highly visible reviewers consistently poke fun at their allegedly juvenile nature. Libraries ( Read more... )