Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets: Book Review

My book report is on Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I chose this book because I love Harry Potter and I decided to read the books. It was first published on July 02, 1998. Before it, there was Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone and after the Chamber of Secrets, it was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

This book is about an ordinary 11-year-old boy living with his aunt and uncle. He learns that he is actually a wizard, and has been invited to attend the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.Harry lives with his aunt and uncle in Surrey, England. He goes to school at Hogwarts, which is in Scotland. JK Rowling has said that Harry is born on July 31, 1980. The main story starts when he’s 11, meaning that, it takes place throughout the nineties. Harry finishes his last year a Hogwarts in 1998.Harry’s horrible uncle, aunt, and cousin are keeping him trapped in the house with no one to keep him company but his snow-white owl, Hedwig. He is afraid that the magical life he once had at Hogwarts was all just a dream. His summer is sucking—until a house elf from the magical world appears in his room. Dobby, the house elf, warns Harry that danger awaits him back at Hogwarts. Hogwarts was his first real home where he finally had real friends. Dobby causes destruction downstairs purposely to discourage Harry from going back.

Harry’s horrid Uncle Vernon is outraged and locks Harry in his room. In the middle of the night, Harry hears a noise outside. His friend Ron and his twin brothers came to save him. Harry escapes from Privet Drive and they fly to the Burrow, the Wesley’s home. Mrs.Weasley is happy to see Harry in the morning, even though she is upset with her sons for sneaking out in the night. The Weasleys and Harry go to Diagon Alley to buy their Hogwarts stuff. In Diagon Alley, they see Harry’s other best friend, Hermione. They also bump into Draco and his father, Lucius. Harry also meets Gilderoy Lockhart, his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Harry and the Wesley’s set off to the Hogwarts Express station. Harry and Ron can’t enter the station so they ride Ron’s flying car, following the Hogwarts Express. Harry and Ron arrived at Hogwarts safely, after being beat up by the whomping willow, earning them detention.

A few days later, Quidditch practices start. Draco is the new seeker on the Slytherin team. Draco calls Hermione a“Mudblood” which insults her Muggle family. After the practice, Harry hears a creepy voice in the castle and soon after sees Filch’s cat petrified and hung up next to the wall where someone wrote with blood, “The Chamber has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware.” Harry, Ron, and Hermione are shocked. They investigate and find out that fifty years ago a chamber at Hogwarts was opened and a student was murdered. During the Quidditch game, Harry gets smacked by a magical ball that knocks him off his broom. He is brought to the hospital wing and sees a first year that has been petrified. When Harry is better, he finds out he can talk Parseltongue to snakes. Everyone is afraid of him because only the heir of Slytherin had the ability to talk to snakes. Later, more students and even a ghost were petrified. Harry is confused. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are fixed on solving the mystery. They brew up a potion called the Polyjuice potion, which turns someone into a different person.

Harry and Ron transform into Malfoy’s friends to try to get the truth out of Draco. Malfoy isn’t the heir of Slytherin. For a while afterwards, there wasn’t any more attacks until, Harry finds a diary. He writes in it and someone writes back. Harry is shown Tom Riddle, a teenage boy who accused Hagrid of opening the Chamber of Secrets. He and Ron go down to Hagrid’s hut to ask him some questions. When they arrive at the hut, Lucius Malfoy and Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, make Dumbledore and Hagrid leave Hogwarts. Before Hagrid leaves, he tells Harry and Ron to follow the spiders that were crawling around Hogwarts. Harry and Ron go into the forest where they meet Aragog, Hagrid’s huge spider friend.

They learn that Hagrid did not open the Chamber of Secrets and the monster that killed the girl was not a spider. They escape from the hungry spiders just to find Hermione has turned to stone. Harry and Ron find a piece of paper stuck in Hermione’s hand. It is a page from a library book that talks about a snake-like monster called a basilisk that turns people to stone. Before they get a chance to tell anyone about what they have learned, the professors say that Ginny Weasley has been taken into the Chamber. Harry, Ron, and Lockhart go into the girl’s bathroom and enter the Chamber through a secret passageway. Lockhart injures himself so, Ron stays behind with him. Harry keeps going. He enters the Chamber by whispering something in Parseltongue. He sees Ginny Weasley’s body on the floor of the Chamber. Harry sees Tom Riddle next to her. Tom is actually the preserved younger version of Voldemort. Beside Tom, is the basilisk.

Dumbledore’s phoenix and Gryffindor’s sword comes to Harry’s rescue. He kills the basilisk with the sword and stabs the diary, where Tom Riddle was being preserved, with the basilisk tooth. Ginny wakes up at that moment. It turns out that Ginny was being possessed by Voldemort through the diary. She was the one who wrote the bloody message on the wall. Harry emerges from the chamber with Ginny, safely. He explains his experience to Dumbledore. He killed Tom Riddle. Hermione is cured, and so are all the rest of the petrified people. Harry goes home for the summer, hoping to see his best friends soon, waiting for the next year at Hogwarts.

One of the themes presented in this story is friendship. Throughout the summer, Dobby stops communication between Harry, Ron, and Hermione.Ron still comes to save Harry from his aunt and uncle. Even through rough times, their friendship still prevailed. I mean, they did just go through some insane stuff last year.

I loved this book so much. It’s my favorite book because it’s the book that talks about Slytherin, my house, the most. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. Unless, you be disrespecting Harry Potter. But then again, I wouldn’t even be talking to you in the first place.

Works Cited

1. Granger, J. (2004). Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. Zossima Press.
2. Kirk, C. (2011). The Magic of Harry Potter: Essays Concerning Magic, Literary Devices, and Moral Imagination. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
3. Lewis, C. S. (2000). Harry Potter: Good or Evil? In The Seeing Eye and Other Selected Essays from Christian Reflections (pp. 94-95). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
4. McCoy, J. (2018). J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter Novels: A Reader's Guide. Continuum.
5. Rowling, J.K. (1998). Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Bloomsbury Publishing.
6. Scott, R. A., & Lockhart, M. (2002). Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: The Illustrated Edition. Scholastic Inc.
7. Smith, H. (2003). Conversations with J.K. Rowling. Scholastic.
8. Whited, L. R. (2002). The Harry Potter Series and its Transmedia Strategies. Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 27(2), 79-86.
9. Whited, L. R. (2003). Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays. Praeger.
10. Whited, L. R. (2004). The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. University of Missouri Press.