“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Classroom activity

In this blog I have shared my classroom activity on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” from The New Literature paper.

To view full activity – click here

 

         “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows” is written by J. K. Rowling. It is a part of fantasy series and a journey of a boy named Harry Potter with his friends in Hogwards.

1)   Feminist reading of Harmione’s character in Harry Potter:

         Harmione, Harry and Ron are best friends, but the portrayal of them character is different. We can observe in all parts of Harry Potter that Harmione is an intelligent girl. She raises her hand in every question asked by teachers. She is more studious than Harry and Ron and most of the times her magic and knowledge of spells helps and saves lives of Harry and Ron. She is powerful character but she is not given enough space in the novel. We do not see any major work done by in the novel. She is always a supporting character of Harry. Harmione is the only girl who is close to Harry and Ron, and in Part – 7 “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows” Ron and Harry also becomes rivals of each other. (Dave) Harmione’s use of spell and her intelligence was a thing of use for Harry and Ron to rid out of difficult situations. 

         We don’t see any major word done by her. She helps but never done anything notable. She does not destroy any Horcruxe but helps in breaking all Horcruxes. She is powerful but marginalized. We observe that she always tries to prove that she is a good witch and can use any spell perfectly. She has abused many times by Malfoy but she stands strongly. J. K. Rowling has portrayed her character as a Muggle girl who wants to be a powerful witch. She is portrayed as a Muggle and as a girl rather than powerful and strong girl. 

 

2)   The discourse of Power and Politics in Harry Potter:

        The main power in Harry Potter series is Ministry of Magic Functioning. Every time there is some orders from the ministry to Hogwards and Hogwards have to follow that. It has a power to operate all the systems in school of Hogwards. Dumbledore tries to keep school distanced from Ministry but it rarely happens. Ministry’s power also works in Muggle’s world and makes changes in their world without their permission and they don’t even know about the magical world. All Muggles are considered as ‘Others’ and Wizards and Witches including Dumbledore have to follow orders by power. (Wikipedia)

      In Hogwards also we can find this power politics in one or the other way. Dumbledore has a power and with those powers he favors Harry in his each task. Mr. Filch is the one of the character who likes when power works on students.

3)   Moral and Philosophical reading of Harry Potter:

 

        In “Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows” we observe that Voldemort is defeated by Harry on each level of fight. As it is said ‘Evil breeds evil’, Voldemort has parted his soul and hide it in different things call Horcroxus but he also got result of his this act and one by one all Hurcroxus were destroyed by Harry and his friends. In the novel evil leads to death by good characters, we can say that novel has poetic justice. 

      As it is said that every evil deed will have its end in disastrous way, in novel also the same happens. Harry Potter is also one of the Horcruxes and he is also having such effects of that evil energy on him. But he chooses to be a good person and gets rid out of that and ultimately leads towards goodness. He killed Voldemort and didn’t loose his moral values. (Barad)

Bibliography

Barad, Dilip. Dilip Barad's Blog. <http://dilipbarad.blogspot.in/2016/03/webquest-harry-potter-think-and-write.html>.

Dave, Nimesh. Nimesh Dave. <http://nimeshdave22.blogspot.in/2016/03/harry-potter-by-jk-rowling.html>.

Wikipedia. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Harry_Potter#Racism.2C_mistreatment_of_minorities_and_totalitarianism>.

WebQuest Rubric  - Self evaluation

Overall Visual Appeal – 2

Navigation & Flow –2

Mechanical Aspects – 2

Motivational Effectiveness of Introduction – 1

Cognitive Effectiveness of the Introduction – 1
Connection of Task to Standards – 2
Cognitive Level of the Task – 3
Clarity of Process – 2
Scaffolding of Process – 3
Richness of Process – 1
Relevance & Quantity of Resources- 2
Quality of Resources – 2
Clarity of Evaluation Criteria- 3
Total – 26/50

Literature review

What is literature?

How it shaped me? 

       From the very first day of my graduation I have come to know that,

“Literature is the mirror of society”

       I didn’t know it’s meaning. It was an answer for me to the all questions about literature. Three years of my life I have passed with this single definition. I was studying and finding how it mirrors the society!! and especially which society? But I was not able to find it. I have learned language but without proper understanding of literature.

      When I have started studying in Department of English, I have given a written test about ‘what is literature?’ as a part admission process. Again I have written the same definition. After two years of Masters and studying literature almost 5 to 6 hours in a day, when I have read the same test paper, I understood that whatever I have written in the paper was my shallow understanding of literature.

       Now, it has changed or I can say developed a bit. Now, as per my understanding, Literature is of two kinds, first is the books and papers you buy from the shop and second is when you live the lives hidden in that book. When we feel pain and happiness of different lives in the book and when we learn to live through characters from books, at that time we really come to know about “what is that particular literature...”

       For me literature is a “Change” in us after we understand it.  All can read but only few can understand. When we feel the conflict of Hamlet towards his life and we understand the philosophical point of view of grave digging scene, we really understood it. That understanding changes our way of thinking. That change is not permanent but it leaves its effects in our mind. Literature contains various ways of thinking in one piece of book! It has the villain like Iago and the passionate hero like Othello. It contains a housewife like Mrs. Ramsay and a girl with free thinking like Lily Briscoe. It contains absurdity and nothingness like meaninglessness of Vladimir and Estragon’s life and their condition. It contains Frankenstein’s innocent monster and Edger Allan Poe’s nocent, evilest and harmful humans. It gives us numerous ways of living life. It gives us all character’s way of thinking and understanding of why they are behaving in a particular manner.

        All these experiences can change us. We live thousand times in one life through literature. It attacks harshly and also brutally kills our beautiful dreams (illusions) of life. Literature hurts our pride and ego, and also heals our heart. It criticises us and also praises us but ultimately it changes us. 

      No one can bind literature in any one particular definition because it is made from language and as Derrida said,

“Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique”

      Literature is not easy to define in language but we can feel it, understand it and express it through emotions. Catharsis is the way of getting literature. We feel the pain with the death of Yank and when Santiago catches the fish, we feel like we have won the battle, when he thinks about fish and act of killing as a sin, we also start thinking about the right and wrong. It brings the change in us. We grow with each reading. We live with experiences of Briscoe, who accepted all criticism on her and got her vision, of Santiago, who never gave up, of Hester Prynne, who fought alone with the world for her identity, and we live life. 

It affects! It hurts! It changes!