Harry Potter Books and Movies Compare and Contrast Essay
Updated: Jul 21st, 2020
One of things that make life fascinating is the diversity and variance that different people and things exhibit. These differences may be obvious or deeply disguised requiring one to take a critical look at the item in order to notice them.
In this paper, I shall set out to compare two items; J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” the Book and its movie adaptation. By so doing, I shall demonstrate that there do exist significant differences as well as similarities between the two items despite them appearing to be wholly similar.
A Comparative Analysis
Both the book and its film adaptation share the character set. The lead character is the hero Harry Potter, a famous wizard whose adventures are the central focus of the book and the movie. In the wizard world, Harry Potter is engaged in a prolonged fight to defeat the immensely powerful and evil wizard Lord Voldemort. Harry potter is assisted in his noble quest by his two best friends Ron and Hermione. These two characters play significant roles in the plot development of both the movie and the book.
The magical school that Harry and his friends attend so as to learn about wizardry is represented in an identical manner in both the book and the movie. The school building is a gigantic and daunting castle which is inaccessible to non-magical people. According to the book, the castle has a lake, extensive grounds and a forest.
The Movie properly depicts this as a lake can be seen as the students arrive at the school by use of a train. The imposing nature of the castle is evident and in many scenes from the movie, Harry Potter and his friends venture out into the fields and forests that are part of the school grounds.
However, the representation of one of the lead characters Hermione in the movie is not a true depiction of what she is in the book. In the book, Hermione is described as a brightest girl in the school. Her know-it-all attitude alienates her from the rest of the students.
Nothing to the book indicates that Hermione is an attractive girl and she is in fact describe as having large protruding teach and bushy brown hair. However, the movie presents Hermione as a physically attractive and likable character. This is inconsistent with the image that one builds form reading the novel.
In the book, the prisoner of Azkaban, the character Sirius Black who is Harry’s godfather, plays a minor role despite him being central to the plot of the book. His appearances in the book are relatively few considering that he is the focal point of the book.
The book instead focuses on developing the story around Sirius and therefore, despite his not being mentioned every now and then, one can sense his involvement throughout the book. In the movie, Sirius plays a more predominant role and he is afforded relatively more screen time than one would expect from the book.
The movie adaptation contains numerous omissions of events that are recorded in the book. This is to be expected considering the relatively small length of the movie compared to the size of the book. Harry Potter’s exchanges with his uncle’s family are left out and one can therefore not correctly gauge the nature of the relationship from watching the film. From the book, it is clear that Harry Potter hates staying with his relatives who despise him.
Conclusion
In this paper, I set out to compare two items so as to highlight their similarities and differences. From my comparison of the book “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and its movie adaptation, it is clear that there are a lot of similarities and differences between the two. Nevertheless, both the movie and the book prove to be equally entertaining despite their differences.
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