Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter has been living an ordinary life,

constantly abused by his surly and cold aunt and uncle,
Vernon and Petunia Dursley and bullied by their spoiled son
Dudley since the death of his parents ten years prior. His life
changes on the day of his eleventh birthday when he receives
a letter of acceptance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry, delivered by a half-giant named Rubeus
Hagrid after previous letters had been destroyed by Vernon
and Petunia. Hagrid details Harry's past as the son of James
and Lily Potter, who were a wizard and witch respectively,
and how they were murdered by the most evil and powerful
dark wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort, which resulted in the
one-year-old Harry being sent to live with his aunt and uncle.
Voldemort was not only unable to kill Harry, but his powers
were also destroyed in the attempt, forcing him into exile
and sparking Harry's immense fame among the magical
community.

Hagrid introduces Harry to the wizarding world by bringing him to Diagon Alley, a hidden
street in London, where Harry uncovers a fortune left to him by his parents at Gringotts Wizarding
Bank. He also receives a pet owl, Hedwig, various school supplies, and a wand (which he learns
shares a core from the same source as Voldemort's wand). There, he is surprised to discover how
famous he truly is among witches and wizards as "The Boy Who Lived". A month later, Harry
leaves the Dursleys' home to catch the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross railway station's secret
Hogwarts platform, Platform 9 3⁄4. On the train, he quickly befriends fellow first-year Ronald
Weasley and the two boys meet Hermione Granger, whose snobbiness and affinity for spells
initially causes the two boys to dislike her. There, Harry also makes an enemy of yet another first-
year, Draco Malfoy, who shows prejudice against Ron for his family's financial difficulties.

Arriving at Hogwarts, the first-years are assigned by the magical Sorting Hat to Houses
that best suit their personalities, the four Houses being Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and
Ravenclaw. Harry hears from Ron about Slytherin's dark reputation which is known to house
potential dark witches and wizards, and thus objects to being sorted into Slytherin despite the Hat
claiming that Harry has potential to develop under that House. He winds up in Gryffindor with
Ron and Hermione, while Draco is sorted into Slytherin like his family before him.
 As classes begin at Hogwarts, Harry discovers his innate talent for flying on broomsticks
despite no prior experience, and is recruited into his House's team for Quidditch (a competitive
wizards' sport sharing similarities to football, but played on flying broomsticks) as a Seeker. He
also comes to dislike the school's Potions master, Severus Snape, who is also the Head of Slytherin
House who acts with bias in favour of members of his House while perpetually looking for
opportunities to fail Harry and his friends. Malfoy tricks Harry and Ron into a duel in the trophy
room to get them out of their rooms at night and secretly tells Filch, the school's caretaker, where
they will be. Hermione unintentionally is forced to come along after her failed attempts to stop
them, and they find Gryffindor student Neville Longbottom asleep outside the common area
because he had forgotten the password to get in. After realizing the duel was a set-up to get them
in trouble, they run away. They then discover a huge three-headed dog standing guard over a
trapdoor in a forbidden corridor. The school's Halloween celebrations are interrupted by the
entrance of a troll into the school, which enters the girls' bathroom where Hermione was.
However, she is saved by Harry and Ron and, as a result, Hermione is grateful and the three
become best friends. Coupled with Snape's recent leg injury as well as behaviour, the recent
events prompt Harry, Hermione and Ron to suspect him to be looking for a way to enter the
trapdoor.

Hermione forbids the boys from investigating for fear of expulsion, and instead makes
Harry direct his attention to his first ever Quidditch game, where his broomstick begins to lose
control and threatens to throw him off. This leads Hermione to suspect that Snape had jinxed
Harry's broom, due to his strange behaviour during the match. After the excitement of winning
the match has died down, Christmas arrives and Harry receives an invisibility cloak from an
anonymous source claiming that the cloak belonged to Harry's father. Using the cloak to explore
the school at night to investigate what is under the trapdoor, he discovers the Mirror of Erised, in
which the viewer sees his or her deepest desires come true. Within the Mirror, Harry sees himself
standing with both of his parents.

A visit to Hagrid's hut at the foot of the school leads the trio to find a newspaper report
stating there had been an attempted robbery of a Gringotts vault—the same vault that Hagrid
and Harry had visited when the latter was getting his school supplies. A further indiscretion from
Hagrid allows them to work out that the object kept under that trapdoor is a Philosopher's Stone,
which grants its user immortality as well as the ability to turn any metal into pure gold. Harry is
also informed by a centaur named Firenze in the forest that a plot to steal the Stone is being
orchestrated by none other than Voldemort himself, who schemes to use it to be restored back to
his body and return to power. When the school's headmaster Albus Dumbledore is lured from
Hogwarts under false pretences, Harry, Hermione and Ron fear that the theft is imminent and
descend through the trapdoor themselves.
 They encounter a series of obstacles, each of which requires unique skills possessed by one
of the three, one of which requires Ron to sacrifice himself in a life-sized game of wizard's chess.
In the final room, Harry, now alone, finds Quirinus Quirrell, the Defence Against the Dark Arts
teacher, who reveals he had been the one working behind the scenes to kill Harry by first jinxing
his broom and then letting a troll into the school, while Snape had been trying to protect Harry
instead. Quirrell is helping Voldemort, whose face has sprouted on the back of Quirrell's head but
is constantly concealed by his oversized turban, to attain the Philosopher's Stone so as to restore
his body. Quirrell uses Harry to get past the final obstacle, the Mirror of Erised, by forcing him to
stand before the Mirror. It recognises Harry's lack of greed for the Stone and surreptitiously
deposits it into his pocket. As Quirrell attempts to seize the stone and kill Harry, his flesh burns on
contact with the boy's skin and breaks into blisters. Harry's scar suddenly burns with pain and he
passes out.
Three days later, he awakens in the school's infirmary, where Dumbledore explains his
survival against Voldemort is due to his mother's sacrificing her life in order for him to live. This
left a powerful protective charm on Harry that lives in his blood, which caused Quirrell's hands to
burn on contact with Harry due to him being possessed by hatred and greed. He also reveals
himself as the one who sent Harry his father's invisibility cloak, while Quirrell has been left to die
by Voldemort, who still lives, and the Stone has now been destroyed. The eventful school year
ends at the final feast, during which Gryffindor wins the House Cup. Harry returns to Privet Drive
for the summer, neglecting to tell the Dursleys that the use of spells is forbidden by under-aged
wizards and witches and thus anticipating some fun and peace over the holidays.
***END***
Life of Pi
By Yann Martel
 The book begins with a note from the author, which is
an integral part of the novel. Unusually, the note describes
entirely fictional events. It serves to establish and enforce one
of the book's main themes: the relativity of truth.
Part One
The narrator describes how he acquired his full name,
Piscine Molitor Patel, as a tribute to the swimming pool in
France. After hearing schoolmates tease him by transforming
the first name into "Pissing", he establishes the short form of
his name as "Pi" when he starts secondary school. The name,
he says, pays tribute to the transcendental number which is the
ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.
In recounting his experiences, Pi describes several other
unusual situations involving proper names: two visitors to the zoo, one a devout Muslim, and the
other a committed atheist, bear identical names; and a 450-pound tiger at the zoo bears the name
Richard Parker as the result of a clerical error, in which the human and animal names were
reversed and the name stuck.
Pi is raised as a Hindu who practices vegetarianism. At the age of fourteen, he investigates
Christianity and Islam, and decides to become an adherent of all three religions, much to his
parents' dismay, saying he "just wants to love God". He tries to understand God through the lens
of each religion, and comes to recognize benefits in each one.
A few years later in February 1976, during the period when Indian Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi declares "The Emergency", Pi's father decides to sell the zoo and emigrate with his wife
and sons to Canada.

Part Two
The second part of the novel begins with Pi's family aboard the Tsimtsum, a Japanese
freighter that is transporting animals from their zoo to North America. A few days out of port
from Manila, the ship encounters a storm and sinks. Pi manages to escape in a small lifeboat, only
to learn that the boat also holds a spotted hyena, an injured Grant's zebra, and an orangutan
named Orange Juice. Much to the boy's distress, the hyena kills the zebra and then Orange Juice.
A tiger has been hiding under the boat's tarpaulin: it is Richard Parker, who had boarded the
lifeboat with ambivalent assistance from Pi himself some time before the hyena attack. Suddenly
emerging from his hideaway, Richard Parker kills and eats the hyena.
 Frightened, Pi constructs a small raft out of rescue flotation devices, tethers it to the bow
of the boat and makes it his place of retirement. He begins conditioning Richard Parker to take a
submissive role by using food as a positive reinforcer, and seasickness as a punishment
mechanism, while using a whistle for signals. Soon, Pi asserts himself as the alpha animal, and is
eventually able to share the boat with his feline companion, admitting in the end that Richard
Parker is the one who helped him survive his ordeal.
Pi recounts various events while adrift in the Pacific Ocean. At his lowest point, exposure
renders him blind and unable to catch fish. In a state of delirium, he talks with a marine "echo",
which he initially identifies as Richard Parker having gained the ability to speak, but it turns out
to be another blind castaway, a Frenchman, who boards the lifeboat with the intention of killing
and eating Pi, but is immediately killed by Richard Parker.
Some time later, Pi's boat comes ashore on a floating island network of algae inhabited
by hundreds of thousands of meerkats. Soon, Pi and Richard Parker regain strength, but the boy's
discovery of the carnivorous nature of the island's plant life forces him to return to the ocean.
Two hundred and twenty-seven days after the ship's sinking, the lifeboat washes onto a
beach in Mexico, after which Richard Parker disappears into the nearby jungle without looking
back, leaving Pi heartbroken at the abrupt farewell.
Part Three
The third part of the novel describes a conversation between Pi and two officials from the
Japanese Ministry of Transport, who are conducting an inquiry into the shipwreck. They meet him
at the hospital in Mexico where he is recovering. Pi tells them his tale, but the officials reject it as
unbelievable. Pi then offers them a second story in which he is adrift on a lifeboat not with zoo
animals, but with the ship's cook, a Taiwanese sailor with a broken leg, and his own mother. The
cook amputates the sailor's leg for use as fishing bait, then kills the sailor himself as well as Pi's
mother for food, and soon he is killed by Pi, who dines on him.
The investigators note parallels between the two stories. They soon conclude that the
hyena symbolizes the cook, the zebra the sailor, the orangutan Pi's mother, and the tiger
represents Pi. Pi points out that neither story can be proven and neither explains the cause of the
shipwreck, so he asks the officials which story they prefer: the one without animals or the one
with animals. They eventually choose the story with the animals. Pi thanks them and says: "And
so it goes with God." The investigators then leave and file a report.

Let’s do this!

CHARACTER COMPLETION FORM. Choose a character each from the literary piece above
and complete the character cards for each of the characters you have chosen. Use short-sized
bondpapers for this activity. A template is provided below:
 CHARACTER STUDY OF (name of character)

Character Name:---------------------------------------
Insert sketch/doodle/stick
Appearance: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
drawing based on how you
perceive the character
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appears to be
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What does the character do (what was his/her role in the story: -----------------------------------------
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Top 5 Character Traits: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Interesting Facts about him/her:_ --------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Would you like to meet him/her? Why/not?_ -------------------------------------------------------------

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What question would you like to ask him given the chance? ---------------------------------------------
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If you were to rename this character, what name would you give him/her? Why? ---------------------
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Which part of the plot can you instantly recall him/her for?

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you were to nominate an award/give a title to this character, what award or title would you give
him? Why?---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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