Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Melodrama in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

My quote from the text concerns the conversation that Harry has with Dumbledore where Dumbledore explains the reason why Harry was able to defeat professor Quirrell simply by touching him:

"But why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark."

The passage above has melodramatic tendencies due to its explicit differentiation of good versus evil  seemingly characterized by Harry's "love" from his mother that was able to beat Quirrell and Voldemort because those two villains could not function when in contact with something as "good" or "virtuous" as love. While researching the Harry Potter Universe about this "love" I found that it is in actuality a sacrificial counter curse where someone has to die protecting someone that they love in order to effectively cast it. Keeping this information in mind my rewrite of the passage above attempts to get rid of lens that casts the fight between Harry and the team of Voldemort and Quirrell as a fight of good versus evil and give a more accurate and less melodramatic depiction:

"But why couldn't Quirrell touch me?"

"Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort did not expect, it was your mother's sacrificial counter curse. He didn't realize that the sacrificial counter curse as powerful as your mother's for you was able to fell Voldemort simply by having you touch the body that he and Quirrell both shared."



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