Hero’s Figure and Ways of Delivering His Adventure in a Literature-to-Film Adaptation

Hero’s Figure and Ways of Delivering His Adventure

in a Literature-to-Film Adaptation

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a fantasy novel written by British author J.K. Rowling. It is the first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling’s debut novel. Originally published at June 26, 1997 by Bloomsburry. The main characters are Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and Lord Voldemort. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the fifth-best-selling single-volume book of all time (120 million approximate sales).

J.K. Rowling brought adventure genre into Harry Potter series. There exists imaginary world, supernatural powers, and alien beings. The freshness of her ideas is able to bring Harry Potter books became best sellers and made its way adapted into film. The first being adapted was from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone book. The adapted film rated good and made many fans out of it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is an adaptation of the first of J.K. Rowling’s popular children’s novel about Harry Potter, a boy who learns on his eleventh birthday that he is the orphaned son of two powerful wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own. He is summoned from his life as an unwanted child to become a student at Hogwarts, an English boarding school for wizards. There, he meets several friends who become his closest allies and help him discover the truth about his parents’ mysterious deaths. This film released at December 19, 2001.

            The theme in both Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone’s book and film is figure of hero. I will introduce the hero that later we will be talking about. The hero is Harry Potter himself. He is known by people from wizarding world as the chosen one who can defeat Voldemort, the fantasy villain in the story. He is believed by others as a strong wizard ever since he was a baby. Harry, at first, is just a boy who got alienated by Dudley’s family. Then he is being told that he is a wizard and enter wizarding world. After that he becomes a curious, friendly, and tough boy. His curiosity brings him to know sorcerer’s stone which he should protect from Voldemort. He successfully do it in the end.

            The topic I chose for this paper is ways of delivering Harry Potter’s adventure. I chose this topic because it is represented in both book and film. Harry Potter series is an adventure-based genre. Story in both book and film are mostly telling the adventure of this hero figure. The way the film retelling the story from book may be different in some events, but the overall story still would be the adventure of Harry Potter.

            Through this paper, I would explain the similarities and differences of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone literature-to-film adaptation one by one detailed. The similarities I found are plot, major cause, symbol, and message. While for the differences are the title, point of view, dialogue, action, and details.

Although many changes made, it does not make the film look less interesting. Some important principles stay to make the film not losing the main plot from the book. The plot in both book and film remain the same. It is the hero’s figure is expected to defeat the bad villain. The idea may sound ordinary, but J.K. Rowling successfully added wizard ability and imaginary world to be a good combination resulting an outstanding story.

            The plot did not change from the book to film, so does the change in title matter? As we can see, the title is slightly changed from “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” into “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”. Some fans of Harry Potter might not aware of the title’s change, but readers of the book do. They did not make a big deal of it because fortunately it did not affect anything in the story at the film.

            The book mostly used first person as the point of view, while the film used third person. First person point of view in book helps readers to understand the story better, but it does not work that way for the film. The adapted film undoubtedly better used the third person as point of view because a wider scale of setting’s presentation is important as it is one of the elements of film.

            The third-person limited point of view or objective camera angle presents the action of an ideal observer. This angle camera does not represent the views of anyone in the film, except the view of the audience or neutral position. It is the style of narrative most common in film. As on page 12 in the book, “…Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door. He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry’s blankets…” There use Dumbledore’s point of view in book. The viewers in the film barely can imagine the setting around this scene. Therefore, in the movie, the director chose to use the third-person limited point of view or objective camera angle. The setting here is important in the film because it shapes the mood of this story, because the time and places in surroundings affect the viewers’ perceptions and actions and because setting is the basic elements of a film that give viewers a vivid picture of the world these characters move in.

       Action motive is essential and shall remain unchanged in the adapted film. All events happen because Voldemort killed Harry Potter’s parents. Voldemort wants to take revenge to Harry because he failed killing Harry, and he lost his power because of Harry. Meanwhile, Harry wants to get ravange on Voldemort because Voldemort killed his parents. And that Harry is the chosen one to beat Voldemort. Voldemort tries to resurrect and gets a proper body using sorcerer’s stone. Harry is being a hero by protecting the treasure and win the battle.

            We can easily felt that stone, Harry’s scar, and mirror are the symbols for both book and film. Each has meanings behind them. They cannot be omitted in the adapted film since they play big parts of the story. Stone and mirror’s role will be explained at the end of this paper. Harry is also popular for the scar on his forehead that he got from Voldemort. It becomes his identity in wizarding world.

            It is common that some scenes in the book got cut or even changed so differently in the adapted film. Not only the scenes but also the dialogues and the details. The dialogues in Harry Potter film is enhanced in order to explain the scenes that got cut or changed from the book so the story can run smoothly without confusion. For example, there is a little change in the forbidden forest from the book because it is called the dark forest in the film. So, the film maker made the characters talk about the dark forest. Every actions happened in the book connecting into another actions which make them inter-connected. Meanwhile in the film, due to two-hours-length duration, some actions in the book are being shortened and getting cut. Also the details mentioned in the book got either not happened or changed. Some changes made for good reason, and some made to make sure the story still coherent.

            In the end, a message shall be delivered to both readers of the book and viewers of the film. You will get the same message whether you read the book only, or watch the film only, or you do both. That the dangers of desire or we can call it as greed may later appear in a much more evil form. The mirror of erised symbolized Harry’s greed of his parents’ existence while in reality, they are already dead. The other symbol, the sorcerer’s stone or the philosopher’s stone, shows how desperate Voldemort wanted to rebirth and have a real body of his own. In short, too much of anything is good for nothing.

            My conclusion is despite the change here and there from the book into the adapted film, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie is as good as the novel. The novel is more detailed than the film, but the story of the film is still easy to follow. The setting explained in the novel may be hard to imagine, so the movie brought it beautifully to the front of our eyes. The quality for both book and film are unquestionably good. Give it a try and we will find ourselves love it eventually.

Author:

Arum Ratnaning Ratri

2211416050

English Literature 2016

Universitas Negeri Semarang

For subject:

Popular Literature and Film (503)