Overview Story Analysis Author's Intention Film Adaptation Reference

The Interpretation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Website design by Doris Yu-tzu Hsiao

Source: Aussie Book, 1997

Source: Warner Bros., 2000

Abstract The ambition of this website is to discover the changes and effects which result from the transformation of a text from one media to another. Let's take a close look at Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, a popular children's literature written by J. K. Rowling, as an example. The novel has been adapted into a film of the same title. What are the differences between the interpretation of the movie and the novel? Which media has a better presentation?

"Every text, every organization of signifiers, is potentially a number of different texts, each with its own set of possible meanings" (Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney 149). In other words, what readers understand is not equivalent to the authors' explanations of the texts. According to Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney, narratives "are the stories about themselves and their world." They work as the most common codes of the mass media and usually have a strong impact on people's values, believes, actions, and attitudes since people can immerse themselves in stories easily (161-163). Thus, the ability to read a text analytically becomes an imperative issue. See a brief summary of Grossberg, Wartella, and Whitney's book Mass Media in a Popular Culture here Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is the first volume in an ongoing series of seven books written by J. K. Rowling; five of which have been published. Rowling has combined several genres: fantasies, boarding school stories, mysteries, orphan stories, and ghost tales into one big congregating plot line (Janice M. Del Negro). Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is considered as a narrative since the story contains a narrator, Harry Potter. The readers of the novel have the benefits of seeing the story unfold through the eyes of young Harry; nevertheless, the viewers of the film were usually outside watching from a neutral position. Can both the movie and the book deliver the same messages? People would naturally consider J. K. Rowling as the author of the novel but who are the authors of the movie? It seems that the battle between the two medias: text and film has been going on for a century yet amazingly text takes one lead in this example. Rowling's gift for keeping the emotions, fears and triumphs of her characters on a human scale won her an enormous amount of fans and fame. However, the sense of subtlety in characterisation and sub-plot is missing in the film. Audiences obtain some of the insight into characters in the book but not in the film. To see a movie trailer of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", click here

Click on Story Analysis to learn about the story from the first book of the Harry Potter series.
Click on Author's Intention to see what magic ingredients Rowling wants to input into the story.
Click on Film Adaptation to view the different interpretation between the movie and the book.

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