Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince contemplation

30.04.2020 Happy Reunification day of Vietnam ~

10 pm. Harry Potter – Half-Blood Prince some of my internalizing thoughts.

Friendship through mind-logue and character’s identity

“We’re with you whatever happens”- Ron Weasley.

This quote appears on the last page of the book. Harry holds himself hard to give a break-up request to Ginny, as well as telling his best friends- Ron and Hermione to walk their path. He fears that he might lose all people he loves if he keeps up the relationships. So the best choice is to remain distant from them, to minimize the risk. He is in deep self-insult and regret due to the pointless adventure to the river to find the fake-Horcrux which cost the life of the greatest wizard he ‘s ever known. He grows his intention to revenge after the thrilling trip, witnessing Dumble Dore drinking a load of potions in the evil cave…

The depth of the friendship is implied by the war of thoughts of Harry and words from his two friends give him. When Ron was in the relationship with Lavender, Harry hates the silence between Hermione and Ron and has to be the peace-maker between the two. And when it comes to his own feelings for Ginny, he is afraid of Ron who has high ownership for his sister, against any guy approaching her. How poor Harry is in having a monologue whether he should express his inner voice by the time the girl he loves is taken. Harry always prioritizes friends than his sake, yet his heart later wins his moral thought.

What’s more, I admire how they all pay attention to every detail of each other’s life. This Book does not bring Ron and Hermione into the fighting battle with Voldermort together with Harry like other episodes. Instead, their inner life is clearer portraited in different dimensions. Every single character has their own personality traits.

Harry’s mind seems to be centered throughout. I could never see his thoughts through the characters’ expression in Movies. He has been through stormy thoughts regarding the concern of friendship between Hermione & Ron, relationship with Ginny, his passion for Quiddich, the determination to find out the truth behind Malfoy’s suspect actions, the curiosity towards’ Dumble Dore’s blackened hands, the hatred towards Snape, his self-blame on people’s death.. I love all of the moments when Harry is lost in his own thoughts, staring at the ceiling. The mind conveys how much love he has for others, how serious he takes to do revenge against those who kill his beloved people. His mind stimulates my mind to process on my own life, my relationship, my mission.

Ron is talented but his mood instability can easily betray him anytime. It is in Quidditch, in catching the scene of Ginny snogging Dean, in thinking of Hermione with Drum. But once he gains a sense of confidence and peace of mind, he could conquer any obstacle. Throwing back to the amazing chess race in the episode “The Chamber of Secret”, Ron bravely took the challenge to rescue his friend regardless of his safety. I cried when Ron says “We’ll go with you wherever you go…We’re with you whatever happens”. For him, friendship is always something of his unspeakable meaning of life.

Hermione in the book has such a complex soul like a typical girl, setting aside her being ingenious. I didn’t know she was that hurt seeing Ron with Lavender. If Harry could put up with the frequent presence of Lavender, Hermione hardly can do that. She tries to be strong but she couldn’t. Even after the entire winter break, she thought she could overcome the obsession of the couple being around. She could not run away from being left behind in love. Luckily, Harry is always there. For some moments, the way Harry and Hermione together drive the audience to mistake their feelings. In fact, Ron and Hermione are born together. Lots of little sweet moments have never been illustrated on screen.

The book reminds me of how lucky I am to have my friendship. I wish no matter what happens, we will always be there for each other.

Art of depiction & Beauty of language

I got to use dictionary all the time. I got to learn how to make it less of a distraction to follow the book. The author injects a myriad of vocabulary that is hardly seen in my daily routine. As the meaning of the language plays a crucial explanation to the stories, I can’t ignore a bunch of words like I used to do with books of Khalid Hosseini. I should re-read those books next time in a more serious mind to learn new words. I learn the eagerness to understand the story flow keeps me patient to look up new words. I have been trying to apply some writing techniques from the book On writing well. The hell is that it is so hard to do the “application” even though the guidance is right in the book.

Every single page out of 652 pages is all brilliantly pictured by words. I would like to pick one of my favorite parts to quote here. I am impressed at the outlook of the Room of Requirement. The context in which the room first appears in front of Harry is stressful. I wanted to skip the long paragraph because Harry was under pressure to summon the Potion book to Snape to explain his use of the Dark curse “Sectumsempra” over Malfoy. The attraction of the room is too powerful for Harry to give a glance to the interior sight. He thinks of this place to hide the treasure book within a minute. JK made me breathless along with Harry’s running from floors to floors up to the seventh one. The intensity increases as he faces the stretches of the blank walls. Then the invisible door of the room suddenly opens after many times of his sneaky investigation.

“He gasped. Despite his haste, his panic, his fear of what awaited him back in the bathroom, he could not help but be overawed by what he was looking at. He was standing in a room the size of a large cathedral, whose high windows were sending shafts of light down upon what looked like a city with towering walls, built of what Harry knew must be objects hidden by generations of Hogwarts inhabitants. There were alleyways and roads bordered by teetering piles of broken and damaged furniture, stowed away, perhaps, to hide the evidence of mishandled magic, or else hidden by castle-proud house elves.There were thousands and thousands of books, no doubt banned or graffitied or stolen. There were winged catapults and Fanged Frisbees, some still with enough life in them to hover halfheartedly over the mountains of other forbidden items…”

Book and movies should be complementary

For the fact that I already watched this movie, there is a number of things no longer to be a surprise. But when I re-watch the movie after reading the book, it turns out I didn’t fully understand the sequence of the plot previously. The curtain was like uncovered under JK Rowling’s masterpiece of writing. There are such aspects that can’t be acted on screen and vice versa for books. The visual element seems to be strong in books but it opens to divergent imagination of how it actually looks like. The scenes are made by times of making and re-making with joint hands of the film crew and technological magic. It is a complementary relationship that I wish to have for every movie and book! Sorry for this greed.

As such, each way of making the story is art itself. I like the idea of humanism, meaning there is no single truth on Earth. Anything is just relative and truth is defined subjectively. Therefore, it is a matter of our mood to gasp movie or book, there is no enforcement for that, at least from my side. However, honestly, I love bookworms. At times, it is also about laziness that lures ourselves to dive in something less demanding of imagination, like movies. We should do that to feel good, just to feel good. Just make a choice to be happy.

#bookworm

#friendship

#magicalwords