Dead Beautiful Characters

The Characters in Dead Beautiful are very 3-dimensional and original with each their own mysterious past. Renee, the main character, starts out as a sunny California girl with two ordinary teacher parents, an ordinary boyfriend, and an ordinary best friend. Is that foreshadowing kids? Why yes it is. Oh look, an excerpt from the sypnosis on Goodreads;

"On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Renée Winters was still an ordinary girl. She spent her summers at the beach, had the perfect best friend, and had just started dating the cutest guy at school. No one she'd ever known had died. But all that changes when she finds her parents dead in the Redwood Forest, in what appears to be a strange double murder." (Goodreads) 

So basically, the gist is she's just a normal teenage girl. But wait, there's more. After the funeral, her grandfather sends her to a boarding school where the story really begins [because no, the death of her parents did not have much involvement other than being the reason she was sent there- and maybe a few other spoilers I am not willing to deal out as well]. 

The reason I love Renee however, is not because she is quote unquote 'normal' in the beginning. It's because of the depth to her character with her special talent of finding dead things [and the fact that she also found her dead parents, and that they're dead. Yeah that plays in as well], of her snarky and sarcastic sense of humor that we hear throughout her narration, and how she's actually a pretty good sleuth when it came to solving the mysterious deaths and reappearances around campus. Coming to the school ended up helping her discover some things about herself that she never knew before. When she was back in Cali, she was just another girl and now she's much much more. 

Another amazing character was her love interest, Dante. He was a very interesting character and hard to grasp at times because he was so mysterious and elusive, along with being handsome and smart and all of those wonderful things. One thing I noticed as the book went on was how vulnerable he really was, and that's why he was so gaurded [well, and the fact that he was...that his secret was...you know just read it]. 

Along with all of this, there's Eleanor and Nathaniel. I loved them since they were really wonderful friends, and how Eleanor was so sweet and caring, especially given her popularity. One would think she'd be your typical snobby rich girl but we find out she's much more than that with the pressures of following family footsteps and living kind of in her brothers shadow. The hard part was when she disappeared for ten days-and may or may not have come back undead. 

Nathaniel is an entirely different story, being kind of geeky and a little bit of a loner but so loyal and trusting/trustworthy himself. He's really there for his friends and manages to come through. 

Overall, this was a great book and I recommend it to girls. I mean if you're a guy and you want to read this, knock yourself out but girls are kind of the target readers so. 

Chamber of Secrets Character Names

The names of the characters reflect their personality. Lucius Malfoy for example. 'Mal' is the Latin root for 'bad', along with Lucius echoing Lucifer. Along with that, Professor Lockhart's name connects to his personality as well. Lockhart could suggest being secretive or guarded, which he is with his secret identity and figurative 'locked heart', ergo Lockhart. Even Dumbledore, whose name happens to be bumblebee in old English. He is an wise and old wizard who strives to protect his community and students and preserve the culture and peace of Hogwarts.

Chamber of Secrets Theme Analysis

The Book Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets is about Harry, frequently referred to as 'the boy who lived' in the first novel, and his troubling second year at the imfamous Hogwarts; school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It starts with the night they [Harry, Ron and Hermione] attend a death-day party for their friend Nearly-Headless Nick. On their way back from the dungeons where the party is being held, they discover the dead cat of the caretaker who's blood spells out 'The chamber of secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware." Under such inconvenient circumstances, the students are released from their dinner at the dining hall and the trio is discovered there.

They have to find out who exactly the heir is, and who wrote the message. But it doesn't end there, Tom Riddle's diary is uncovered and Harry can see him writing to him magically. On top of that, a mysterious force is turning students and staff to stone [not quite literally, but they are frozen in time] and this claims Hermione as well. This makes it more urgent to discover who is behind this.

Along with everything else, a new proffessor is at the school, a celebrity at that. He is very arrogant and full of himself, as many celebrities are. Harry and Ron suspect he is keeping something from the students, but aren't quite sure what. As he has had all of these adventures written in his books and can't seem to prove himself as having actually done those things outside of that.

A big theme in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is that its important to show tolerance of differences among a community. The way 'mudbloods' [wizards with non-magical ancestry] were treated worse than the pure-blooded, almost 'pedigree' like wizards. This is displayed with the slytherins who tend to stick their noses up at anyone who isn't a pure-blood. They hate mud-bloods, half-bloods and muggles alike simply because they are not as 'pure' as them. The Dursleys also demonstrate this, with their liking of being humans and 'normal' where as the wizarding world is completely ridiculous in their eyes and they are truly quite terrified of magical people.

Throughout the book, Draco Malfoy especially shows his clear disliking of the muggles and mud-bloods-due to his background as a slytherin student who tend to be described as rather snooty and arrogant, along with being strange looking and plainly mean. He even called Hermione a mud-blood when he snapped at her in one of their arguements. People were clearly taken aback by this and Hermione was embarrassed.

"'It's about the most insulting thing he could think of,' gasped Ron, coming back up. 'Mudblood's a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born--you know, non-magic parents'" (Rowling 115). This quote shows the reaction to him calling her a Mudblood.

Harry Potter and friends try to make the point of how preposterous it is to hate people for whether their family is all pure or not. Because Hermione is a muggleborn, and Harry is a half-blood this is especially important.

So, this shows that it doesn't matter where people come from or if they are the richest or the poorest, the most magical or the least, all that matters is the person they are on the inside.

The Chamber of Secrets Characters

The characters in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets each come back after undergoing their summer vacation and are surprised with the strange happenings about the school. Harry's summer was particularly dreadful, having had to spend it with his Uncle and Aunt and snobby cousin who appear to enjoy his misery.

Through the book, Harry and friends Hermione and Ron have been blamed for all of the strange occurrences due to the highly inconvenient and merely coincidental evidence against them [i.e.; Finding the cat, Colin Creevey being stunned after he frequently annoyed Harry]. This frustrates them and they decide to solve the mystery to clear their name, but no one seems to trust them.

Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets Summary and Predictions

I am about half-way through the book, and I predict that the new teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, has something to do with all of the children turning to stone [because you can never trust a teacher at Hogwarts] and also because he has all of these wild stories and 'experiences' but he hasn't, so far, been able to demonstrate any further knowledge of the things he teaches the 2nd years about.  I also predict that Draco also has a part in it because of the discussions he had with Crabbe and Goyle [his friends] and how said he knew how to open the chamber of secrets.