‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ by J.K. Rowling is a fantastic first installment in a series that is truly a tour-de-force.
Upon first meeting Harry, readers are thrust into his world, one in which he is very ordinary, or even less-than, if the Dursleys have anything to say about it. Vernon and Petunia Dursley, along with their spoiled son Dudley, are Harry’s uncle, aunt, and cousin whom he has been basically forced to live with since his parents died. Not knowing any better, since he doesn’t yet know at the beginning of the novel how his parents actually died, he suffers through ten years with the Dursleys, basically serving as their outlet for bullying and work around the house whenever they see fit. They afford him no luxuries, and they belittle him and his parents’ memory any chance they get.
When Hagrid, the groundskeeper of a famous wizarding school, comes to visit Harry and whisk him off to his new life, Harry is understandably shocked by the revelation that he is a wizard, and, to top it all off, he is already famous in that world. Having basically defeated the greatest dark wizard of all, Voldemort (or You-Know-Who to those too scared to say his name), Harry is known as the Boy Who Lived, while his parents were murdered at Voldemort’s hands (or really, his wand) when Harry was just a mere one-year-old baby.
Harry’s entrance into the wizarding world is chock full of intriguing secrets, inspirational and aggravating teachers, realistically drawn and substantially fulfilling friendships, and dark wizardry that lurks around every corner (or at least every corner that Harry conspicuously follows). His friendships with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger are especially fruitful, showing that Harry only needed to learn what he was missing in life due to his life with the Dursleys in order to grow and mature into the young man his parents would have been proud to have raised had they lived. The role that Draco Malfoy, Harry’s main nemesis, along with Severus Snape, Harry’s potions professor and seeming aggressor throughout the story, play in the novel sheds light on the fact that despite Harry escaping the bullying past of his home life, he can never truly be away from it. There will always be someone or something wanting to tear him down and make him feel less than worthy.
The cast of characters is well constructed and, despite having read all of these books before, I anxiously await getting to the rest of them all over again. Rowling is a master of her craft, and she deserves all the accolades possible for creating a story that introduces characters, plot, and everything in between with such careful and exact precision.
You can find ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’ here.