Blog Post #6 Surroundings

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.

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 31^st – 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.