Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J.K. Rowling 752 pp.

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in the Harry Potter series. In brief, Harry attends the Quidditch World Cup, expanding both his and the readers’ perceptions of the wizarding community around the world. Afterwards, Harry returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year of instruction, where he competes in the Triwizard tournament against champions from two other wizard schools and one from Hogwarts. The tournament shunts much of the normal school drama to the sidelines, as Harry and the other champions test their mettle against a series of increasingly daunting challenges. During the final challenge of this tournament, Voldemort is brought back to life and once more Harry does battle with his mortal foe.

Of the seven books in the Harry Potter series, I feel that Goblet of Fire is by a wide gulf the most important. Not only is Voldemort raised from the dead in the climax of the book, but in this book Rowling takes the reader out of the Hogwarts-centric narrative she has employed in the series so far. Rowling moves her story into the wider wizarding world through which Harry’s actions will resonate. First, we see the Quidditch World Cup. Rowling’s choice here to open her book with a gathering of witches and wizards from around the world was quite effective in delineating the divide between the beginning and end of the series. Second, the driving event in Goblet of Fire’s plot is the Triwizard Tournament, in which Harry is competing under the auspices of the national Ministry of Magic against students from magical schools across three countries. Finally, Harry spends the end of the book miles away from Hogwarts, in a graveyard fighting the newly risen Voldemort. Harry’s problems, and therefore his actions, have been elevated beyond the level of schoolyard drama, put onto a stage for the whole world to see.

Throughout the novel, Harry’s interior life is portrayed for the wider wizarding world to gossip over. Admittedly, the reporting in the text is cartoonishly awful, but titillating for the fictional readers. While I understand Rowling’s choice to make Rita Skeeter’s reporting purposefully bad, she missed an opportunity to play the reader against Harry. If reading Skeeter’s articles in the novel had caused us to question Harry’s actions, I feel that it would have heightened the satisfaction we get at the end of the book when Harry does battle with Voldemort.

In opening the series up to a larger perspective on the effects of the plot, Rowling succeeds with Goblet of Fire particularly well as a transition book to the remainder of the series. This novel marks the last time that Harry’s problems will be centered around Hogwarts, before his conflicts move out into the larger world. Additionally, in Goblet of Fire Rowling moves from the clearly youth-oriented focus of the first three books towards a wider, adult-inclusive audience. For the first time, she shows an explicit murder, as Peter Pettigrew kills Cedric Diggory with hardly a moment’s hesitation. Between this slaughter and the questionable methods of Voldemort being brought back to life, Rowling’s audience has clearly shifted towards the adult end of the Young Adult genre.

The climax of the book, Voldemort’s resurrection and duel with Harry are some of the most exciting aspects of the book. While Voldemort was placed directly in the series a little earlier than I would have liked, spending books two and three without a straight-forward conflict between Harry and his nemesis allowed space for the reader to breathe in the world of Rowling’s text, making the resurrection that much more satisfying. Moreso than any book in the series, in  Goblet of Fire Rowling throws her punches hard, and spends her time dwelling on them to a triumphant effect.

Would I recommend Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Yes.

Score: 3.7/5

Would I keep this on my bookshelf? Yes.

-Mr. Cheddar