Sorcerer's Stone II: The Story You Know, Only Better
Today we're covering the first three chapters of Chamber of Secrets: "The Worst Birthday," "Dobby's Warning," and "The Burrow" are their names, victimizing Harry and then gloriously rescuing him is their game. Sound familiar? Well it should. It's the plot of the opening of Sorcerer's Stone.
Chamber of Secrets, I’ll have you know, is the sequel to Sorcerer’s Stone. No, I’m quite serious - this is earth shattering. Books Three, Four, Five, and Six are all installments in a series, but they are not really sequels in the truest sense. They make headway, open up new avenues of story development, expand the mythos, broaden the world, and question everything that’s come before - while of course they are dependent on previous installments, these books are pretty fearless in being distinctive and new pieces of the story. (Well, a case could be made that Book 6 is actually less a series installment and more of a prequel…but that’s a can of worms that I’ll wait for Deathly Hallows to unleash.) But anyway, I really think that Chamber of Secrets is the only Potter book to be a true and actual sequel, exhibiting lots of the formula tendencies of any sequel - it resets the playing board so that a lot of the events from Book One can actually happen all over again, it is very similar if nigh on identical in structure to its predecessor, and like any red-blooded sequel, it has a great ambition to do everything bigger, louder, better, with more monsters, blood, scares, thrills, laughs, etc. Now this last point is important, because when I call Chamber a sequel, I don’t mean it as an insult. This book sets out to do Sorcerer’s Stone II: The Story You Know, Only Better and it absolutely succeeds.
Let’s look at similarities in structure for a sec -- it really is uncanny. Harry and his friends investigate a mystery which in the third act becomes Very, Very Serious and Personal, so the kids have no choice but to journey down to a hidden underground lair beneath Hogwarts, where there’s a big reveal of the mastermind of said mystery…and the culprit turns out to be none other than Voldemort. The real surprise of Chamber of Secrets is that Rowling actually manages to do just that - surprise the reader, and by playing the exact same card no less! There’s even another Dumbledore-planted deus ex machina! Fawkes = the Mirror of Erised. Same story function, with the same early-on explication by Dumbledore to sell us on said story function’s role in the climax.
As for the tendency peculiar to sequels of hitting the old reset button on any story developments left over from Part One, the most glaring example can be found at Privet Drive. Harry had one up on the Dursleys in Sorcerer’s Stone; he found out he was a wizard, went off for an empowering experience at wizard’s school, and then he headed back to Privet Drive with head held high, ready to abuse the Dursleys’ ignorance of that whole No Magic Outside Hogwarts rule. Harry ends the first book with weapons; he’s secure in the knowledge that there’s a whole world out there where he’s accepted and indeed nearly worshiped. But Book Two dawns, and Harry is immediately stripped of any power he might have wielded against the Dursleys; Dobby the house-elf smashes Aunt Petunia’s violet pudding and Harry’s leverage gets destroyed along with it. He’s back to being the downtrodden, lonely, friendless orphan from "The Vanishing Glass;" his only upgrade being that he’s now locked in a proper bedroom instead of the cupboard under the stairs. The Dursleys are as cartoonishly vile as ever, feeding Harry cold canned soup (that he splits with Hedwig, what a saint!) slipped through a cat flap. I guess their over-reaction to Harry’s crime makes sense in context; he has just spent a year at Hogwarts, he’s soaked up magical information that makes him more dangerous to the Dursleys than ever before, but he’s not yet so dangerous that he can’t still be bullied and locked up. This is really the Dursleys’ last chance to treat Harry in this fashion - one book later and he will be too old, too angry, and too magically advanced to put up with it - and so this also happens to be the only time in the books that the Dursleys’ treatment of their nephew really borders a bit grimly on actual abuse. Who on earth did Uncle Vernon pay to fit bars on Harry’s window, and why did this mysterious workman not run immediately to the British equivalent of child services? It’s also disturbing because there’s no payback in this installment; Harry escapes into the night, but his relatives don’t have corkscrew tails. No vindictive comeuppances for the Muggles this time around, perhaps because this is the book about Anti-Muggle prejudice and torturing the Dursleys would appear in bad taste. But really, is torturing the Dursleys ever in good taste???
In our continuing look at Harry’s dreams - remember the anvil-dropper from Book One, where Harry wears Quirrell’s turban and it tells him he belongs in Slytherin? Good dream to remember now that we’ve rolled on to the book about Harry being a Horcrux Harry perhaps actually belonging in Slytherin! But anyway, the end of "Dobby's Warning" features a very entertaining dream about Harry being a zoo exhibit, wasting away in his tiny cage while people goggle at him through the bars. It reflects Harry’s misery at being reduced to Little, Helpless Orphan Lad again, his claustrophobia at being locked in, and perhaps subconsciously also reflects a psychological response to his fame. Good dream. And the detail that Dobby assures him that staying in the cage will keep him safe - this is an excuse that Dumbledore too will use to explain Harry’s continued tenure at Privet Drive…and looking at this whole Campbell’s-through-the-cat-flap fiasco, that excuse of Dumbledore’s is looking pretty darn inexcusable.
But it’s all right, because help is on the way. And spot the Sorcerer’s Sequel parallels! Instead of being rescued from these dire straits by Hagrid, it’s the Weasleys in the flying Ford Anglia who do the honors. And instead of being whisked away to Diagon Alley for an awesome shopping spree, Harry and company drive off to the Burrow, where Mrs. Weasley can feed him a dozen bacon sandwiches and “worry over the state of his socks.” (Didn’t you just love the days when socks were Mrs. Weasley’s biggest worry?) Oh let’s quickly have a Weasleys love-in! Who doesn’t want to live in the Burrow with this crazy family and their Wellingtons and fat chickens and magic cookbooks and helpful clocks? I love how utterly organic this environment is; we know Ron very well already, and this home fits him so perfectly. Mr. Weasley is a new addition too, and like the Burrow, there’s something very logical, something that just makes sense about the way he fits into the Weasley family dynamic. I instantly buy him, his enthusiasm, his Muggle obsession - I accept him as the head of the Weasley clan after only two lines of dialogue. He just belongs. You love this family nearly instantly, especially because Rowling has so very recently gone all Law and Order: SVU with the Dursleys. Oh how I do adore that moment when Ron shows Harry his room and gets so nervous, because here’s this famous kid in his misshapen, orange beyond orange bedroom, and of course it’s the most amazing place Harry has ever seen, and he can sincerely say this and Ron can be sincerely thrilled. Much later we’ll find out that Ron, even as early as now, is suffering a mite from fame-envy. But what’s really interesting is that Harry really has a serious case of Burrow-envy; these two are that classic miserable pair who each covet each other’s lives, and can’t appreciate their own.
And a PS, because I couldn’t fit it in earlier - I’m not the biggest fan of Dobby, but he brings two positive things to Chapter Two. For one, he brings forth the first stirrings of actual plot, and what a jump start on Sorcerer’s Stone, which took 150 pages to get any sort of intrigue going. And it’s good intrigue with the elf, lots of good questions: what terrible events are about to happen at Hogwarts? How does Dobby know about them? Who is Dobby working for? And how dodgy is that hint he gives Harry? “Not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir.” That is cheap and un-guessable, Dobby. I’m never playing Pictionary with you. The second benefit of having Dobby around is Harry’s hilariously polite reaction to him. Harry is just so awkwardly kind, how he asks, “who are you?” instead of his first response, “what are you?” offering Dobby a seat and even comforting him when Harry knows Uncle Vernon is about to come upstairs and thump him. Harry was so much fun when he was unfailingly polite, before he gave up and just started SHOUTING AT PEOPLE INSTEAD.
79 days remain in our countdown! Next up, Weasley on Malfoy violence, Lockhart impresses us all with his dazzling teeth, Harry and Ron steal a car for no reason that makes actual sense, and Snape gets to have a very good day for at least a little while...
Chamber of Secrets, I’ll have you know, is the sequel to Sorcerer’s Stone. No, I’m quite serious - this is earth shattering. Books Three, Four, Five, and Six are all installments in a series, but they are not really sequels in the truest sense. They make headway, open up new avenues of story development, expand the mythos, broaden the world, and question everything that’s come before - while of course they are dependent on previous installments, these books are pretty fearless in being distinctive and new pieces of the story. (Well, a case could be made that Book 6 is actually less a series installment and more of a prequel…but that’s a can of worms that I’ll wait for Deathly Hallows to unleash.) But anyway, I really think that Chamber of Secrets is the only Potter book to be a true and actual sequel, exhibiting lots of the formula tendencies of any sequel - it resets the playing board so that a lot of the events from Book One can actually happen all over again, it is very similar if nigh on identical in structure to its predecessor, and like any red-blooded sequel, it has a great ambition to do everything bigger, louder, better, with more monsters, blood, scares, thrills, laughs, etc. Now this last point is important, because when I call Chamber a sequel, I don’t mean it as an insult. This book sets out to do Sorcerer’s Stone II: The Story You Know, Only Better and it absolutely succeeds.
Let’s look at similarities in structure for a sec -- it really is uncanny. Harry and his friends investigate a mystery which in the third act becomes Very, Very Serious and Personal, so the kids have no choice but to journey down to a hidden underground lair beneath Hogwarts, where there’s a big reveal of the mastermind of said mystery…and the culprit turns out to be none other than Voldemort. The real surprise of Chamber of Secrets is that Rowling actually manages to do just that - surprise the reader, and by playing the exact same card no less! There’s even another Dumbledore-planted deus ex machina! Fawkes = the Mirror of Erised. Same story function, with the same early-on explication by Dumbledore to sell us on said story function’s role in the climax.
As for the tendency peculiar to sequels of hitting the old reset button on any story developments left over from Part One, the most glaring example can be found at Privet Drive. Harry had one up on the Dursleys in Sorcerer’s Stone; he found out he was a wizard, went off for an empowering experience at wizard’s school, and then he headed back to Privet Drive with head held high, ready to abuse the Dursleys’ ignorance of that whole No Magic Outside Hogwarts rule. Harry ends the first book with weapons; he’s secure in the knowledge that there’s a whole world out there where he’s accepted and indeed nearly worshiped. But Book Two dawns, and Harry is immediately stripped of any power he might have wielded against the Dursleys; Dobby the house-elf smashes Aunt Petunia’s violet pudding and Harry’s leverage gets destroyed along with it. He’s back to being the downtrodden, lonely, friendless orphan from "The Vanishing Glass;" his only upgrade being that he’s now locked in a proper bedroom instead of the cupboard under the stairs. The Dursleys are as cartoonishly vile as ever, feeding Harry cold canned soup (that he splits with Hedwig, what a saint!) slipped through a cat flap. I guess their over-reaction to Harry’s crime makes sense in context; he has just spent a year at Hogwarts, he’s soaked up magical information that makes him more dangerous to the Dursleys than ever before, but he’s not yet so dangerous that he can’t still be bullied and locked up. This is really the Dursleys’ last chance to treat Harry in this fashion - one book later and he will be too old, too angry, and too magically advanced to put up with it - and so this also happens to be the only time in the books that the Dursleys’ treatment of their nephew really borders a bit grimly on actual abuse. Who on earth did Uncle Vernon pay to fit bars on Harry’s window, and why did this mysterious workman not run immediately to the British equivalent of child services? It’s also disturbing because there’s no payback in this installment; Harry escapes into the night, but his relatives don’t have corkscrew tails. No vindictive comeuppances for the Muggles this time around, perhaps because this is the book about Anti-Muggle prejudice and torturing the Dursleys would appear in bad taste. But really, is torturing the Dursleys ever in good taste???
In our continuing look at Harry’s dreams - remember the anvil-dropper from Book One, where Harry wears Quirrell’s turban and it tells him he belongs in Slytherin? Good dream to remember now that we’ve rolled on to the book about Harry being a Horcrux Harry perhaps actually belonging in Slytherin! But anyway, the end of "Dobby's Warning" features a very entertaining dream about Harry being a zoo exhibit, wasting away in his tiny cage while people goggle at him through the bars. It reflects Harry’s misery at being reduced to Little, Helpless Orphan Lad again, his claustrophobia at being locked in, and perhaps subconsciously also reflects a psychological response to his fame. Good dream. And the detail that Dobby assures him that staying in the cage will keep him safe - this is an excuse that Dumbledore too will use to explain Harry’s continued tenure at Privet Drive…and looking at this whole Campbell’s-through-the-cat-flap fiasco, that excuse of Dumbledore’s is looking pretty darn inexcusable.
But it’s all right, because help is on the way. And spot the Sorcerer’s Sequel parallels! Instead of being rescued from these dire straits by Hagrid, it’s the Weasleys in the flying Ford Anglia who do the honors. And instead of being whisked away to Diagon Alley for an awesome shopping spree, Harry and company drive off to the Burrow, where Mrs. Weasley can feed him a dozen bacon sandwiches and “worry over the state of his socks.” (Didn’t you just love the days when socks were Mrs. Weasley’s biggest worry?) Oh let’s quickly have a Weasleys love-in! Who doesn’t want to live in the Burrow with this crazy family and their Wellingtons and fat chickens and magic cookbooks and helpful clocks? I love how utterly organic this environment is; we know Ron very well already, and this home fits him so perfectly. Mr. Weasley is a new addition too, and like the Burrow, there’s something very logical, something that just makes sense about the way he fits into the Weasley family dynamic. I instantly buy him, his enthusiasm, his Muggle obsession - I accept him as the head of the Weasley clan after only two lines of dialogue. He just belongs. You love this family nearly instantly, especially because Rowling has so very recently gone all Law and Order: SVU with the Dursleys. Oh how I do adore that moment when Ron shows Harry his room and gets so nervous, because here’s this famous kid in his misshapen, orange beyond orange bedroom, and of course it’s the most amazing place Harry has ever seen, and he can sincerely say this and Ron can be sincerely thrilled. Much later we’ll find out that Ron, even as early as now, is suffering a mite from fame-envy. But what’s really interesting is that Harry really has a serious case of Burrow-envy; these two are that classic miserable pair who each covet each other’s lives, and can’t appreciate their own.
And a PS, because I couldn’t fit it in earlier - I’m not the biggest fan of Dobby, but he brings two positive things to Chapter Two. For one, he brings forth the first stirrings of actual plot, and what a jump start on Sorcerer’s Stone, which took 150 pages to get any sort of intrigue going. And it’s good intrigue with the elf, lots of good questions: what terrible events are about to happen at Hogwarts? How does Dobby know about them? Who is Dobby working for? And how dodgy is that hint he gives Harry? “Not He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, sir.” That is cheap and un-guessable, Dobby. I’m never playing Pictionary with you. The second benefit of having Dobby around is Harry’s hilariously polite reaction to him. Harry is just so awkwardly kind, how he asks, “who are you?” instead of his first response, “what are you?” offering Dobby a seat and even comforting him when Harry knows Uncle Vernon is about to come upstairs and thump him. Harry was so much fun when he was unfailingly polite, before he gave up and just started SHOUTING AT PEOPLE INSTEAD.
79 days remain in our countdown! Next up, Weasley on Malfoy violence, Lockhart impresses us all with his dazzling teeth, Harry and Ron steal a car for no reason that makes actual sense, and Snape gets to have a very good day for at least a little while...