Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Essay Example

Do you enjoy reading? What kind of books? Why choose this novel?

I’ve always enjoyed reading but it seems like I don’t usually have enough time to fit reading long novels into my schedule.  When Ido have time to read I like to read books that show a large degree of imagination. I like books about imaginary places, rather than books that are based in the real world. I also enjoy reading books that feature some kind of fantasy element. It’s not important to me whether or not a book is very popular with other people. It does matter to me to some extent how long ago a book, especially a novel, was written. I have a difficult time sometimes reading books that were written a long time ago because I don’t always understand the language or the way that historical manners work.

I also tend to like books that have a lot of dialogue and action instead of books that show a lot of description or background material. When I read a book that has too much description or too much background information I wonder if people skim over these part. I do skim over them sometimes and that makes me think that the writer was wasting their time by putting in too much detail.           Another thing that appeals tome in novels is if the novel has a strong central character. If a book has a character that I care about and can relate to I’m much more likely to stay interested in it. Of course, the villain in a story is also important so it’s best when the hero and villain are both strong. I have to admit that I’m sometimes put-off by novels that are really long or series of books that keep continuing.

This isn’t something that’s too much of a problem but as I mentioned I’m not always able to find the time to read long novels or an extended series of novels. Even though that’s true, the book I chose for this paper is a long novel and it is also a part of a long series. The book that I chose is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. This book was published in the year 2000. It is a very popular book adn series that was also made into a series of movies. I chose to read this book and write about it because I liked the mani character and also the fantasy parts of the story.

Who are the main characters?

The protagonist of the book is Harry Potter. He is a young boy who is also learning to be a wizard. Another important character is  Ron Weasley, who is Harry Potter’s best friend and who is also a student of wizardry. Hermione Granger is another key character and she is a very good friend to both Harry and Ron. These three characters are the focus point of the story. So they are three major characters. Another important character is Lord Voldemort who is an enemy to Harry Potter. Voldemort  is the person who killed Harry’s parents. He is one of the story’s main villains. Other important characters in the novel are Viktor Krum, another wizard who may be involved with dark magic, Albus Dumbldore  who is the headmaster of the wizard’s school, Cedric Diggory is an accomplished student at the Hogwarts school of wizardry.  There are many other characters in the novel and in the series, but these characters are among the most important and they are the characters that are involved the most with the story of the novel.

Summarize the Book

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth novel in the Harry Potter series.  Basically, the book is about Harry’s fourth year of studying at the wizards school. It is also about the way that Harry becomes involved in the Triwizard Tournament. Harry is very surprised that he is chosen to compete in the tournament because he did not put in his name for competition. The Triwizard competition is a contest that is between members of the three schools and systems of magic in Europe.

The three great schools are  Hogwarts, Durmstrang and Beauxbaton. Each school chooses a champion to compete and the champions are judged over how they able to meet three challenges. The challenges involve certain tasks that the champions must perform. During the first task Harry must fly past on a broomstick past a dragon  to capture a golden egg.  In the second challenge, the golden egg sings to Harry that he must swim into a lake to find something valuable. Harry is able to magically grow gills and swim into a merpeople village where he finds his friends Hermione, Ron, Gabrielle, and Cho being held hostage.  Even though Harry is the last champion to save their hostages in this challenge he still gets good marks from the judges because he acted in a courageous and loyal way,

The third challenge involves the champions having to make their way through a maze. In this contest, Harry ends up in a tie with Cedric. The tie is due to an agreement that Harry adn Cedric make with one another. After the two touch the trophy at the same time, they are transported magically to a graveyard where they are attacked by a deatheater named Moody. Harry finds out that it is Moody who mysteriously entered his name into the wizard contest. His idea was to use Harry to bring Voldemort back to life. In the end, Harry gives the gold he won for being best in the contest to the Weasley twins so that they can start a company that makes practical jokes.

Can you relate the story to your life? New ideas about other people,the world, or self?

It’s hard to relate the story of Harry Potter directly to my real life because the kind of world and people that are shown in the novel are fantasies. While it is true that all people even the people in the real world face challenges that are surprising and dangerous, the story of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is something that really has very little to do with the ordinary world. For example, in the ordinary world there is no such thing as magic and there are no dragons or merpeople or singing eggs. On the other hand, the story does relate to the real world and to ordinary life in the way it makes you wish you could be in a world like the one that is described in the book. For this reason, the book did give me many new ideas about life. One of the ways that I started thinking differently about the world was in the way I saw other people. In the book many people are not who they first appear to be and there is always a hidden desire that they have, so i wondered how many people around me might also have hidden desires. The more I thought about it, the ore I realized how likely it was that most people probably had some kind of hidden secrets. Another way I thought about people differently was to realize how important it is to have good friends because they can support you and help you to overcome obstacles.

The novel didn’t influence the way I thought about work very much. It did suggest that work is not always what it appears to be, but the book didn’t change my ideas about work in any meaningful way. When it came to the way I viewed myself, the book had a pretty big impact. The first way that it effected me was by showing me that the influence of other people’s actions can bring your life into trouble. This is what happened with Harry when he was signed up for the wizard’s tournament even though he did not want to be p[art of it. The fact that he had to go through with all of the three challenges made him a better person in the end. So, for me, the big lesson in the story was that you should be able to meet whatever challenges come to you whether you asked for them or not. I always considered myself a brave person but the book reminded me that brave is really only something that relates to situations that are frightening or dangerous and that are part of things that you can’t control.

Were parts of the novel confusing? Why?

The parts of the novel that I found confusing were the parts of the plot that were based on keeping all of the relationships between the numerous characters straight. There were a lot of characters and almost all of them had stories that were in the past before the novel happened. It was difficult sometimes to remember how one character had to do with another. For example, the plot that involved  Moody and Voldemort at the end of the novel was it confusing. I’m fairly sure that I understand that plot now but while reading the book for the first time it seemed pretty complicated. In wondered why the writer, J.K. Rowling, chose to create such a complicated story. This was pretty much the only part that really confused me other than keeping all the characters separate and knowing how each one of them felt about all the others. I think that the main reason that the plot and characters were a bit confusing is because the story of the Harry potter series altogther is supposed to be one that follows Harry and his friends all through their education as wizards. In order to tell that story, J.K. Rowling had to create an entire imaginary universe and fill it with characters.

Did the writer keep my interest? What was most interesting? What was boring? Why?

I think that the thing that J.K. Rowling did best to keep my interest was to create a lot of interesting imaginary places and things. I liked all of the parts in the book that had to do with magic. These parts, such as the egg-hunt and dragon, or the maze at the end of the tournament were really exciting. I also think that it was very interesting that the reason for Harry’s entrance into the wizard’s tournament was kept a secret until the end of the book. The suspense that was created by this idea was powerful and it was one reason to keep on reading the book even if certain parts were boring.

The boring parts op the book were the sections that moved away from the suspense of the main plot. The flashbacks and descriptions of history were the parts that I thought were the most boring. The writing and idea in these sections were fine but I just felt like I wanted to stay with the main story. Even though there were some boring parts to the novel it was exciting for the majority of the read.

It’s not that I didn’t care about the back-story of the main plot or about some of the minor characters and the descriptions of certain places it was just that these things seemed to distract from the big story. I wondered if the book could have been shorter and still had as much of an impact as far as being entertaining and full of suspense. One example of this is in ChapterTwo when Harry wakes up from a dream and tries to remember what it was about. This section goes into a lot of detail about Voldmort and Wormtail that might have been better as a scene between them all instead of a scene of Harry just thinking to himself.

Ten sentences that contained new words.

1. Wormtail, who had been sputtering incoherently, fell silent at once. (Rowling, 8).
2. Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles. (Rowling, 15).
3. He had emptied his hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food, double-checked every nook and cranny of his bedroom for forgotten spellbooks or quills, and taken down the chart on the wall counting down the days to September the first, on which he liked to cross off the days remaining until his return to Hogwarts.
4. “And then there was this big row,” Ginny said, “because Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and they told her all they want to do is open a joke shop.” (Rowling, 36).
5. They clambered upward with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filtered away through doors into the stands to their left and right. (Rowling, 49).
6. They had walked into a patch of tents that were all covered with a thick growth of shamrocks, so that it looked as though small, oddly shaped hillocks had sprouted out of the earth. (Rowling, 53).
7. They passed a group of goblins who were cackling over a sack of gold that they had undoubtedly won betting on the match, and who seemed quite unperturbed by the trouble at the campsite. (Rowling, 85).
8. Everyone else seemed too transfixed by Moody’s bizarre appearance to do more than stare at him. (Rowling, 112).
9. Indeed, they looked less like plants than thick, black, giant slugs, protruding vertically out of the soil. (Rowling, 125).
10. Several grimy portraits had been scrubbed, much to the displeasure of their subjects, who sat huddled in their frames muttering darkly and wincing as they felt their raw pink faces. (Rowling, 154).

Why did the writer write this story? Are there questions left unanswered? Do you agree with the author’s view on the main topic?

I think that J.K  Rowling wrote this story to show people how powerful the imagination can be. I also think that she wrote the story to make people feel like there was a a bit of magic and fun in life and that they should forget about their boring problems for a while and enjoy a really good story. I also think that she wanted people and probably young people especially to have a hero to look up to and root for. The idea that magic and imagination are powerful forces in the world is a very important idea. Another reason that she might have written the novel is just to create a form of entertainment that made people want to read a book rather than play a video game or watch TV.  I agreed with the author’s idea that people should support their friends and remain brave and loyal. I also agreed with her idea that things are not always as simple as they may seem at first.

Did you enjoy reading this book? How would you end it?

I very much enjoyed reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I thought the book was very well-written adn very entertaining. I cared about the characters and I was interested in learning the outcome of the story. While it is true that some parts of the book were drawn out and long-winded, this didn’t effect my feeling about the book as a whole. I also thought the ending of the book was very good. I don’t think that the book should have had another kind of ending. The reason that I liked the ending of the book is because it did answer all of the questions that the beginning created, especially the question of why Harry had to compete in the tournament. There was probably no other to end the book other than the way J.K. Rowling chose. I wouldn’t think that leaving the audience in suspense about what might happen to Harry next would be a good way to end.I also liked that Harry ended up a champion but gave away his gold. That showed that what he really got out of the tournament was the ability to be a better [person after meeting challenges and facing enemies.

What did you think of this assignment? Was it easy or difficult? What problems did you encounter?

I found the assignment to be easy in some ways, but very challenging in other ways. Reading the book was easy, gut writing about it seemed very hard. I found that summarizing the book was very difficult because the book was very long and complicated. I also thought that trying to decide certain things about why the author made certain choices was difficult. The difficult parts of the assignment bothered me when I first had to do them but they made me feel like I’d really accomplished something after I finished. Overall, I’d say the assignment was pretty difficult because it involved a lot of writing and thinking. I found that the hardest parts of teh assignment were putting my thoughts into the right words. I would think a very good thought about the book, but by the time I wrote it down it seemed weaker and changed from my original inspiration.

The biggest difficulty I encountered was trying to answer all of the questions fully. There were a lot of questions. Usually the only thing that anyone ever asks about a book you have read is “Did you like it?” I wasn’t used to having to put so much thought into the way I responded to a book. In the long run reading the book was very easy adn writing down my thoughts about it was very challenging.

Work Cited

Rowling. J. K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Scholastic, 2002.