Chapter 21: Marked for Greatness - Reflection

Chapter 21: Marked for Greatness - Reflection

This chapter is really pretty cool with regards to the way that the chapter is structured. It starts off fairly surface level, talking about Oedipus and how “Oedipus” literally means “wounded feet”

so we know that the main character will have damaged feet and that will come into play at some point in the story or there would really be no point in the reader knowing that he has wounded feet. Then it goes a little deeper, talking about how the mother had three options as to what to do with her son when he was born, to avoid the prophecy from coming true, and of course in the prophecy, was her son having wounded feet. Then he gets even deeper, saying that an author might even give many characters some wound or something that makes them stand out from everybody else in the crowd. And then at its deepest, he says that an author might actually use these unique characteristics of these characters to make a statement about humanity or society as a whole. But then, he makes a 180 and goes completely surface level and says that, sometimes a limp is just a limp, or a hunchback is just a hunchback. And at the very end, he asks the reader to figure out Harry Potter’s scar. So let's do that… From the time that Harry was an infant, he was dubbed as “the boy who lived” and has a scar to make him as such. When Harry is older, Voldemort is able to see into Harry’s mind and uses that to his advantage. But in the end, Harry was able to reverse that and see into Voldemort's mind which ultimately led to the destruction of Voldemort. So what was the author trying to tell us about humanity through Harry’s scar? I think that the scar represents humanity always prevailing over evil, and showing that humanity is strong, and that we can endure through all of our hardships.