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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
After a particularly horrible summer at home with the Dursleys,
Harry can’t wait to return to Hogwarts for his second year.
Banished to his bedroom, Harry receives a visit from an elf
named Dobby, who warns him that he must not return to the
school, for great danger awaits him there. Finally, he is rescued
from his bedroom prison by Ron and his brothers in their flying A Plugged In
car. Despite Dobby’s warnings, Harry returns to Hogwarts and Conversation: Tom
McGrath
stumbles right into the mystery of the Chamber of Secrets.
On Halloween night, Harry, Ron and Hermione find a message
painted on a wall that reads, “The Chamber of Secrets has been
opened. Enemies of the Heir, beware.” They soon discover that
the Chamber of Secrets contains a deadly monster, that it hasn’t
been opened for 50 years, and that the last time it was opened,
someone died. “The heir” in the message refers to a descendant The Pink Panther 2
of one of the school’s four founders, Salazar Slytherin, who had
an affinity for the dark side of magic.
Apparently, only Slytherin’s heir would be able to open this
Chamber of Secrets and use the monster within to cleanse the
school from all “Muggle-borns” and “halfbloods” whom he felt
were unworthy to study magic. Suddenly, students who don’t
come from “pureblood” wizarding families begin turning up
petrified. Harry and his friends must solve the mystery before the
monster goes beyond petrifaction and kills again. Madagascar: Escape
Africa
BOOK REVIEW BY
Lindy Beam At the end of this story Harry again meets and defeats
Voldemort, who has found another body to inhabit, and another
life to feed off. Again, Harry defeats the evil one, but questions
linger in the air, and the reader must assume that Harry still
hasn’t seen the last of his enemy.
Positive Elements: 1) Denunciation of pride. New professor
Gilderoy Lockhart is unbearably vain and perpetually concerned Taylor Swift
with image and publicity. Because it is Harry and Ron—not
Lockhart—who defeat the monster in the Chamber, he is
uncovered for a pompous fool. The message is clear that actions
speak louder than words and that self-aggrandizement is a
hollow joy.
2) Justice. One mystery left unsolved in Book I is finally
unraveled—why was Hagrid expelled from Hogwarts? Justice is
finally served when Harry, Ron and Hermione prove that Hagrid
was framed by the student who would later become Lord Life on Mars
Voldemort.
3) Respect. Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore are
portrayed as adults very worthy of respect—Harry always wants
to please them, and he is repeatedly rewarded for the good
choices he makes under their advisement.
4) Loyalty. Harry and Ron defend Hagrid and see his name
returned to its deserved good repute, because he is their friend
NHL 09
and they believe in him. Also, Harry’s loyalty to good professor
Dumbledore is what summons help to him in his battle in the
Chamber.
5) Courage. Harry’s selfless bravery is what allows him to save
Ginny’s life and defeat the monster, even at a risk to his own life.
6) The power of truth and love. When he meets Voldemort and
the monster in the Chamber, Harry repeatedly speaks what he
knows to be true, even though he doesn’t understand how it will
help. The truth helps to disarm Voldemort. Also, Harry again
appeals to the sacrificial love of his mother, who died to save
him. This love is something the enemy can neither understand
nor overcome.
Disobedience and Lying: Harry repeatedly lies to avoid
answering difficult or annoying questions or to avoid explaining
his actions. And, as in Book I, it is through breaking rules that the
heroes solve the mystery and defeat the enemy: “‘There might
be a way [to find out who is the Heir of Slytherin],’ said Hermione
slowly, dropping her voice still further with a quick glance across
the room at Percy, ‘Of course, it would be difficult. And
dangerous, very dangerous. We’d be breaking about fifty school
rules, I expect.’”
But, in contrast with the punishment and apparent repentance in
Book I, Harry and his friends are ultimately rewarded, not
punished, for their rule breaking in Book II: “‘I seem to remember
telling you both that I would have to expel you if you broke any
more school rules,’ said Dumbledore [the Headmaster]. ...
‘Which just goes to show that the best of us must sometimes eat
our words.’”
Harry’s Family: Harry’s awful adoptive family (“It’s not possible
to live with the Dursleys and not hate them”) is again compared
with the love of the surrogate family he’s found through his
Hogwarts friends (“What Harry found most unusual about life at
Ron’s, however, wasn’t the talking mirror or the clanging ghoul: It
was the fact that everyone there seemed to like him.”)
Ron shows selfless devotion to his own family when his sister
Ginny’s life is in danger: “‘I’m going down there [into the
Chamber of Secrets],’ he said. He couldn’t not go, now that they
had found the entrance to the Chamber, not even if there was
the faintest, slimmest, wildest chance that Ginny might be alive.”
Bathroom Humor: For some reason, author J.K. Rowling
chooses to make the scene of the mystery’s unraveling a
bathroom. So you have a ghost that hides in a toilet and
repeated (though, admittedly, not vulgar) references to bathroom
things: “I don’t want to talk to Moaning Myrtle. ... She haunts one
of the toilets in the girls’ bathroom on the first floor. ... It’s been
out of order all year because she keeps having tantrums and
flooding the place. I never went in there anyway if I could avoid
it; it’s awful trying to have a pee with her wailing at you.”
Violent Content: The monster in the Chamber of Secrets
speaks to Harry through the castle’s walls, saying, “Come ...
come to me. ... Let me rip you. ... Let me tear you. ... Let me kill
you.”
The resident dormitory ghost Nearly Headless Nick complains
about the way he was killed (since the murderer didn’t succeed
in completely decapitating him, he has been disqualified from
participating in the Headless Hunt): “‘... you would think, wouldn’t
you,’ he erupted suddenly ... ‘that getting hit forty-five times in
the neck with a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless
Hunt?’”
Moaning Myrtle, though already dead, tries to kill herself again.
When Harry defeats the monster in the Chamber, the scene is
bloody: “A sudden shower of dark blood spattered the floor. The
snake’s tail thrashed, narrowly missing Harry, and before Harry
could shut his eyes, it turned—Harry looked straight into its face
and saw that its eyes, both its great, bulbous yellow eyes, had
been punctured … blood was streaming to the floor, and the
snake was spitting in agony.”
Spiritual Elements: As in Book I, magic is employed extensively
as a tool, an art, a diversion and a weapon. “Bless them,
[Muggles, or nonmagical people] will go to any lengths to ignore
magic, even if it’s staring them in the face.”
“Harry stared around. He had emerged into a dingy alleyway that
seemed to be made up entirely of shops devoted to the Dark
Arts. ... Opposite was a nasty window display of shrunken heads
and, two doors down, a large cage was alive with gigantic black
spiders.” The Dark Arts are again portrayed as frightening, dark
and an evil that Harry and his friends must fight against.
Harry also finds out that he’s a parselmouth, or someone who
can talk to snakes. At first he is frightened because the ability to
speak in this tongue has generally been granted only to Dark
wizards, but eventually it becomes clear that Harry will be able to
use his parseltongue for good—to defeat the monster in the
Chamber of Secrets.
Conclusion: For many children, curiosity about things such as
"parselmouths," "shrunken heads" and "Moaning Myrtles" cannot
be met in a healthy manner. And they can become enamored
with what Star Wars calls "The Dark Side" and Rowling calls
"The Dark Arts." A Christian parent’s responsibility, then, is to
direct children away from witchcraft and worldly wisdom, and
toward the proper source of truth—the Bible.
Magic & Morality
A collection of Harry Potter reviews.
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
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