Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews December 14, 2023 December 7, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
The world of the Muggles, or ordinary, nonmagical human beings, is an obvious contrast to the realm of the wizards in a variety of ways. Wizards appear grand and colorful, but Muggles are bland and conventional. The story’s main representatives of the Muggle world are the Dursleys, who are cruel, closed-minded, selfish, and self-deluded. When we first encounter wizards in the story, we do so through the strongly disapproving eyes of Mr. Dursley, who is contemptuous of the wizards’ emerald-green capes and purple robes. Our reaction is most likely to object to Mr. Dursley’s lack of imagination, as the wizard world seems a refreshing contrast to the constraining boredom of Muggle life.
But in going off to Hogwarts, Harry does not leave behind his Muggle existence forever. The same qualities that make the Muggles objectionable are present among wizards as well. Mrs. Dursley’s snobbery is fully apparent in Malfoy’s snooty name-dropping, as Harry is soon disappointed to observe. Dudley’s self-centered and uncaring greed is present in a more grandiose and powerful way in the evil Voldemort’s greed. And Hogwarts itself is composed of students from wizard and Muggle backgrounds alike. The point of the story is not that Muggles are bad and wizards are good, or even that Muggles are boring while wizards are exciting. It is rather that the world is made up of different types of people with different aptitudes and different desires who should be able to coexist. Muggles must be free to develop into wizards if they have the gift and the calling. If they do, they can liberate themselves and find their true selves.
One of the central aspects of life at Hogwarts is the ongoing competition for the house championship, which is determined by the greatest accumulation of points. Students accumulate points for their houses by performing particularly good actions and by winning at Quidditch, and they lose points for performing particularly bad actions. The points system thus symbolizes the need for a careful accounting of one’s actions, as a careless penalty could result in a defeat for one’s peers. It also shows an interesting twist on morality, as points can be earned not only for good or righteous behavior, but also for athletic excellence. Moral and spiritual achievement is rewarded but so is physical achievement. This fact brings the world of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone out of a Christian ethical system (in which pure intentions of the spirit matter most) and brings it closer to an ancient notion of human excellence. The word “virtue” derives from the Latin word virtus, which referred in ancient times to manly successes in martial and physical exploits. This quality saw the body and the soul as one entity and recognized excellence as a mixture of different kinds of achievement. Harry, with his mental and physical prowess, embodies this ancient quality.
Both admirable and bogus versions of authority pop up throughout the story. Bogus authority first appears in the figures of Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, who order Harry around with no sense of appropriateness. Their authority is based solely on power: they are the adults, with financial and physical superiority over children, and in their minds they feel entitled to treat Harry like a slave. But we see the emptiness and limits of Mr. Dursley’s authority as soon as the wizard world makes its appearance. Mr. Dursley is suddenly unable to control even the mail that arrives at his house. His power vanishes completely and with it so does his authority. By the time he flees to the shack on the island with his family, he has become a ridiculous figure, desperately clinging on to an idea of control that he lacks utterly. Even the uncouth and oafish Hagrid, who appears on the island, has more authority than Mr. Dursley. By the end of the story, Dumbledore emerges as the true authority figure. Dumbledore has immense power but does not use it. When he wants Harry to stop visiting the Mirror of Erised, he recommends that Harry stop going instead of ordering him to stop. Based on wisdom and kindness rather than raw power, Dumbledore’s model of authority becomes Harry’s own.
Read about the related theme of leadership in Richard Adams’s Watership Down.
Please wait while we process your payment