Free Response Essay
The journey Harry Potter embarks upon throughout the seven Harry Potter books is not one of any commoner boy. In addition to being inundated with magic wands, spells, and potions, it is also a journey that feeds off everything that makes Harry Harry. From his cultural and familial background to the prophecies proclaimed about him, Harry’s entire being is essential to his journey. And in the end, it is not fate, destiny, or any supernatural agency that influences Harry’s outcome—it is his surroundings and culture.
The journey Harry Potter embarks upon throughout the seven Harry Potter books is not one of any commoner boy. In addition to being inundated with magic wands, spells, and potions, it is also a journey that feeds off everything that makes Harry Harry. From his cultural and familial background to the prophecies proclaimed about him, Harry’s entire being is essential to his journey. And in the end, it is not fate, destiny, or any supernatural agency that influences Harry’s outcome—it is his surroundings and culture.
From the very beginning stages of
Harry’s life, he has had destiny laid out in front of him. Voldemort, having
heard the prophecy that a boy born on July 31st – Harry’s birthday –
would one day be his downfall, sought Harry out to change the course of this
prophecy. After killing his mother and father, despite their valiant sacrifices
to save their baby Harry’s life, Voldemort confronts Harry and finds he is
unable to touch him. Why? Because of those valiant sacrifices. The love Harry’s
mother felt for Harry remained protecting him even when her physical body had
lost the ability. Voldemort could not kill Harry and vanished into hiding.
These events shaped the rest of
Harry’s life. Though the prophecy states, “Neither can live while the other
survives,” it has little to do with Harry and Voldemort’s ultimate destiny.
After the unfortunate death of his parents, Harry is sent off to live with his
aunt and uncle who want absolutely nothing to do with him, but provide him
shelter nonetheless—in the form of a cupboard. Harry eats, sleeps, and does
everything in between in the cupboard. He receives no love and no support from
his relatives. When he finally receives a letter inviting him to attend
Hogwarts, a boarding school for magic folk, Harry is thrilled and begins to
cling to friends who exhibit the love Harry knew from his parents long ago, but
hasn’t seen much of since. With the newfound love from his friends, Harry
begins to thrive. Harry’s culture—the cupboard and his oppressive
relatives—teaches him the value of love. He realizes how vital a thing it is in
one’s life, having been deprived of it for 11 years, and it ultimately saves
his life once again.
Fast forward 17 years and Harry has
just died at the wand of Voldemort. Voldemort knew of Harry’s desperate need
for love and plays on it to get what he wants. As the entire Wizarding World
engages in a battle against Voldemort and his followers, Voldemort makes an
announcement to all of the wizards and witches fighting. He twists the battle
around to manipulate Harry into feeling like the entire war is being fought for
him – that the people dying are dying for him, saying, “Harry Potter will meet
me in one hour if he doesn’t want any more of his friends to die for him.” The
value Harry gives to love and his friends becomes his fatal flaw. He walks into
the clutches of Voldemort and watches idly as he kills him, believing that if
Harry sacrifices himself for the world—just like his parents did for him—they
will survive. The love that once saved him as a baby has now doubled back to
take his life as he tries to save his friends. It doesn’t work. Harry dies and
the battle continues on.
But it’s not the end. And up until
this very moment, the story has followed the prophecy in a near perfect line.
One has killed the other. Harry passes on—but not the whole way. He arrives in
purgatory (or what can only be assumed is purgatory, as it is never expressly
stated, merely described as a waiting place) and he meets his old and deceased
mentor, Dumbledore. Now that Harry is “dead” and he has no life left in his
body, Dumbledore gives Harry a choice. Harry can leave the mortal world behind,
forget about Voldemort, the battle, and all his friends, or he can go back and
continue to fight. Harry asks, “Where will I go?” to which Dumbledore replies,
simply, “On.” Harry contemplates his choices, but without hardly any thought,
he decides to return back to the battle. The prophecy is finished and his
destiny has been fulfilled. He has died and the other survives. But because of
his culture, because of the surroundings that impacted the way he grew up, he
changes the course of fate. Harry recalls the love his parents felt when they
sacrificed their lives to save him, the love he so desperately needed at his
aunt and uncle’s finally given to him from his friends at Hogwarts, and the
love he feels in return for them. This surrounding love, what first saved him
and then turned into his fatal flaw, turns back around to become his secret
weapon.
Harry goes back to the battle and
confronts Voldemort once again, except this time, Harry is at the advantage. At
the beginning of their final battle, Voldemort asks Harry, “Why do you think
you can defeat me?” and Harry responds, calmly and confidently, “Because I have
something you haven’t got. Love.” Voldemort laughs at the thought. They fight
until Voldemort, someone who scoffs at love and receives none and feels none of
it, falls, completely and indefinitely, to Harry.
Harry wins the battle because of
the surroundings he grew up in. Voldemort’s entire life was void of love, void
of support, and void of any emotional attachment to anything. Harry’s life was
filled with it. Although both characters grew up without parents, living with
people who didn’t want them and then, at age 11, were finally invited to
Hogwarts, their cultures were different. Harry knew love from the very
beginning of his life with his parents and Voldemort never had that. Because of
Harry’s first meeting with love, he was able to find it again at Hogwarts,
which Voldemort could never do.
Free Response Essay Reflection
I need to read more. Although Harry
Potter is the greatest book of all time, it’s not considered classic
literature. And I certainly could comment on The Great Gatsby or Of Mice
and Men, those are pretty basic and I’m sure the AP readers are sick of
hearing about them. So I need to familiarize myself with more classic novels,
poems, and plays. Not only would this help fatten up the content of my essays,
it would also further educate me on culture, writing techniques, and etymology.
If I enhanced my knowledge in all three of these subjects, my writing – and
just my intelligence in general—would only benefit.
My
writing could also benefit from some organization. Organizing my thoughts and
putting them down on paper has always been something I’ve struggled with. My
essays continuously form to be slightly short of cohesive, making them more
parts than a whole. If I could cultivate this skill, I would be able to present
my argument or analysis much more coherently – contributing to my
sophistication. Even if my content remains devoid of classic literature or my
thesis doesn’t incorporate quite enough complexity, I’ll be able to snag a
score in the upper levels of the AP rubric if my writing is sophisticated enough.
And if I do master thesis complexity and develop a deeper knowledge of classic
texts, my essay will be eligible for a 9, as 9 recipients must have
sophisticated language.
The
most important concept I need to address is thesis complexity. I simply need to
practice. After norming the essays, I realized how many facets there are to
every story—all which can lead to complexity. The culture within the text, the
culture the text was written in, the culture the character comes from, and the
impacts of the culture on the characters or four different ways just to address
the one topic of culture. From there, I could analyze the relationships between
different characters, the journeys they all embark upon and how those journeys
affect them and their character arcs. Within each of those topics (and the
thousands of other topics I didn’t mention), irony should be found to create
the complexity of the analysis.
But no
matter how well the complexity within my analysis is, my score could plummet
based just upon my thesis statement. My thesis must mirror the complexity
within the essay, the sophisticated language used throughout, and the organized
structure incorporated into the essay. The thesis is a direct representation of
the rest of the essay. If my thesis fails to hit the 9, so will the rest of my
essay.
Over
everything else, I need to slow down. I cannot grasp the complexity, form an organized
structure, recall the best classic to best answer the prompt, or think up my
most sophisticated language if I’m zipping through the essay, too anxious to
finish it then to actually create quality work. If I don’t slow down, all my
efforts will be futile and fruitless.
Right
now, I would award my essay a 5. There was content, reference to specific
quotes, and a basic analysis of the text. I must, however, address the issues
presented in the above paragraphs before I’ll be able to score a higher number.
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