This is your final exam. Please answer each question to the best of your ability. If you use any quotations from the books, please include a page number. If you use sources other than the books, please include citations for them on a
Works Cited page at the end of your exam.
DUE DATE: 11:59pm Wednesday, 5/4/11
Questions about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
- Throughout most of the story, we share Harry’s point of view. We see what he sees and experience what he experiences. In the first chapter, however, we are shown Mr. Dursley’s point of view as he drives to work, sees a cat reading a map, and encounters oddly dressed people on the streets. Rowling could have given us a more straightforward third-person story without any particular point of view. Why does she choose to show us Mr. Dursley’s thoughts and reactions in this first chapter?
- What larger theme does Rowling express in her discussion of the Mirror of Erised and Harry's fascination with it?
- Many conservative critics claim that the Harry Potter series promotes witchcraft and is therefore unsuitable for children. Do you agree or disagree with this claim?
- Was Professor Dumbledore correct to leave the infant Harry with the Dursley family instead of keeping him in the wizarding world?
- Professor Quirrell tells Harry that “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.” Do you agree with this? Is this the reality of the world? Or if good and evil do exist, what makes them so? Which is more important in the world, power, or good and evil?
- Is there a clear sense of good and evil in the book?
