Coming of Age: Growing Up with Harry Potter
It has been twenty years since the first Harry Potter book was published, and though I only got into it three years later, the extraordinary Harry Potter books and films have been a significant…
Category: Literary & Media Analysis
They Are All Equal Now: A Movie Review of “Barry Lyndon”
Year: 1975 Filming: Color Length: 184 minutes Genre: Adventure/History/Drama/War Maturity: PG (for intense thematic elements and some sexual innuendos) Cast: Ryan O’Neal (Barry Lyndon), Marisa Berenson (Lady Honoria Lyndon), Gay Hamilton (Nora Brady), Marie Kean…
Leaving a Mark: The Christianity of Harry Potter
“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing that Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves a mark.”—Harry Potter and…
Frodo and Sam’s Relationship in the Light of Aristotle’s Philia
Author's Note: In the text I use the following abbreviations: FOTR - The Fellowship of the Ring TT - The Two Towers ROTK - The Return of the King SIL - The Silmarillion NE -…
Magic, Children, and Harry Potter: A Discourse on the Pros and Cons of Fantasy Magic
Harry Potter was, is and will continue to be controversial as reading material for children. The greatest reason is because the young protagonists are witches and wizards, though there are other concerns such as…
"Tintern Abbey" and Raskolvnikov: Memory's Contrasting Consequences
William Wordsworth’s poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,” and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel, Crime and Punishment, exhibit the two extreme effects that memory can have on the mind and the heart.…
Three Types of Historical Fiction: Accurate, Inaccurate, and in the Middle
Historical fiction is a well-loved genre, but it comes with varying degrees of accuracy. Historical novels can never be one hundred percent accurate. The existence of major events and their key players are usually well-documented…
Love Beyond Death: A Movie Review of “The Crow”
Year: 1994 Filming: Color Length: 101 minutes Genre: Comic book/Action Maturity: R Director: Alex Proyas Personal Rating: 3.5 stars One of the biggest goals of a film is to be entertaining. But beyond entertainment, movies…
Pride and Prejudice Movies: Colin Firth’s (1995) vs Keira Knightly’s (2005)
When I was in high school, I picked up the book Pride and Prejudice for the first time and loved it. Now I've always preferred books over movies, hands down, but when I heard the…
The Pottermore Problem: Why J.K. Rowling Should Leave Well Enough Alone
It’s been good couple of years for Harry Potter fans—or so the media tells me. What with the film release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the semi-canon stage production of Harry Potter…