Harry Potter Prisoner Of Azkaban Essay

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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third book in the Harry potter series and tells the story of Sirius Black’s escape from the magical world’s prison, Azkaban, and his return to Hogwarts in search of Peter Pettigrew. This story seems to allude to the New Testament, specifically the accounts of the betrayal and trial of Jesus. As the story aligns with the gospel, main characters of the Harry Potter series also seem to exemplify people affiliated with the Betrayal and Passion of Christ. In this essay I hope to expand on the allusion to the New Testament and how it functions in the story. To do this I will relate events and characters between the initial death of the Potters and present time in the Prisoner of Azkaban, analyze …show more content…

These levels include providing helpful context, emphasizing the main point, giving deeper meaning, and offering foreshadowing. By alluding to the story of the Bible, Rowling is delivering her story in a package that we are familiar with and can therefore understand more easily even if we don’t consciously realize doing so. This function allows us to grasp the story and the reason why characters perform certain acts, ultimately enforcing the main point and theme of the story. The Prisoner of Azkaban marks the beginning of a trend in the series where the story becomes darker and more serious, appealing to a more varied audience. By using these allusions, Rowling made the story more marketable to a wider range of readers since older readers are provided with deeper meaning. However, the story is still entertaining to a child who may not think as deeply about the story. This also helps in the function of enriching the story by providing foreshadowing to those who catch the allusion. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tells a great story that benefits a lot from the allusion to the New Testament. The allusions discussed above show how the characters relate to biblical characters and how their actions represent events from the Betrayal and Passion of Christ. In this essay I described how allusion to the Bible was used and functioned in the Prisoner of Azkaban. From this assessment I think it is clear to see that Biblical allusion is definitely present in the story and that it is a major factor in making the Prisoner of Azkaban an enticing and deeper read for more developed