Thursday, December 18, 2014

Book 4 Reflection: Harry is an Epic Hero

An epic hero is a hero that participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey, gathers allies along his journey, and returns home significantly by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society from which the epic originates. They usually embody cultural and religious beliefs of the people. Epic heroes have no superpowers but they're smart, brave, and have fears but overcome them to protect their friends, families, and countries. An epic hero can also be a warrior of some sort who performs extraordinary tasks that most find difficult. This hero is loyal, smart, and brave.  

            Harry is an epic hero because he goes through many challenges on his journey to find and destroy the horcrux’s made by Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Voldemort or the Dark Lord. At the end of his journey he finally found his ‘home’ of peace and tranquility as the last sentence of the book was, “The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All is well” (Rowling 759). He gets ostracized as being “the boy who lived” and has to deal with people wanting to try and destroy him. He may not fear much as he fears dementors which is fear itself. He is a powerful wizard and will use his abilities to protect anyone in need. He is loyal, brave, and intelligent in many occasions.

            Though he does have a sort of ‘superpower’, it being the ability to produce magic out of a wand, he is an epic hero for what he accomplishes; the rid of the Dark Lord. After having Death Eaters, evil werewolves, and all powerful (besides Dumbledore and Harry of course) wizards that want him dead, he survives the challenges faced with his two companions, Ron Weasly and Hermione Granger. They help him fight the battles and take the load of saving the world partially off his shoulders, seeing as he is the only one who can defeat him, without the help from his best friends. Although Ron did leave them after a fit of rage, he pulled through and contributed to the end of the evil wizard, Voldemort.

            Harry demonstrates being an epic hero (the whole book series) when he is told by Dumbledore in the previous book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to go out and find the remaining horcrux’s that need to be destroyed in order to defeat Voldemort. A Horcrux is a powerful object in which a Dark wizard or witch had hidden a fragment of his or her soul for the purpose of attaining immortality. To create a horcrux you would need to kill a person. Voldemort had made seven of these horcurx’s, a diary, a ring, a locket, a cup, a diadem, and a snake. Also he accidentally made Harry his seventh when Harry was a baby because his curse on Harry rebounded and struck him weakening him and splitting his soul as he had killed Lily, Harry’s mom. Harry was protected by his mother’s love as she threw her body between him and Voldemort. Harry uses his knowledge of horcrux’s and finds and destroyed them, besides the ring because Dumbledore had already taken care of that one and the diary since Harry had already destroyed that one in the chamber of secrets in the second book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.


            His quest had its bumps in the road as they were caught by snatcher, followers of Voldemort. In the beginning of the book they needed to transport Harry somewhere save as to keep him safe and to do that they needed to leave false trails and seven different Harry’s thanks to the polyjuice potion. Even with all of the precautions, he still found Harry, but his attempt was in vain as Harry had escaped and the journey began.

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