The Kilted Writer

I recently stretched the idea of mind, body, and spirit characters into mind, body, and spirit societies . Now I am going to take the idea of mind, body, and spirit symbolism one step further. I have already discussed mind, body, and spirit characters in the Harry Potter series. In this post, I am going to take a deeper look at Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - specifically, the three tasks in the Triwizard Tournament. The Body Task: The Dragons The purpose of this task was to test the champions' strength and agility. Harry completed the task in the least amount of time by relying solely on his athletic ability when it comes to flying. Cedric Diggory tried a bit of deception by turning a rock into a dog, but he ended up relying on his agility when his dragon's attention was drawn away from the dog and back to Cedric. Fleur Delacour and Victor Krum tried attacking their dragons directly, evidently trying to put them out of commission so they could easily s...

I recently saw "Hugo" and found it to be a wonderful movie. I have not read the book, so I do not know how close one is to the other - I will use what was depicted in the movie for this discussion. "Hugo" was expertly directed (Martin Scorsese) and the story was very well told. The foreshadowing was woven into the story beautifully and the acting was great. I would recommend it to just about anyone who loves movies and the art of movie making. In this story, like the Three Musketeers, the mind, body, and spirit characters work to transform a fourth character - George Melies (played by Ben Kingsley). The Spirit Character - Hugo Cabret ( Asa Butterfield) Hugo is an orphan with a passion for clockwork. His father was a clockmaker and once found an "automaton" hidden in an old museum. He promised to work with Hugo to fix the machine, but before it was complete, Hugo's father died. Later in the film, when the automaton is finally fixed,...

Because it was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone that set me down this path, I decided to start with Harry Potter. In many cases, the spirit character is the main character in a story, although this is not a rule. In The Hunger Games , for instance, the mind character is the main character, but I'll get to that in a future post. (Note: I will try to make the references clear, even if you haven't read the books. This goes for all my posts. There will, however, be some inescapable times when knowledge of the material with make things easier to follow.) The Spirit Character: Harry Potter Harry is introduced (after infancy) as a young boy living in a cupboard under the stairs in the home of his aunt and uncle. Aunt Petunia wakes Harry, and his first act in the book is to try to remember a dream. "He had the funny feeling he'd had the same dream before." Later that same morning, Harry "couldn't believe his luck" when he learn...

I came in one evening, several years ago and flipped on the TV right as a movie was starting. As I watched, it became clear that this was on0e of those Harry Potter stories I'd heard so much about (Later, I discovered it was the Sorcerer's Stone). Wasn't that supposed to be Satan worship or something? Because I had nothing better to do, I decided to watch for a while. I figured it would either be too childish or too demonic for my tastes, but I would never know for sure unless I checked it out for myself. Within a few minutes, I was captivated. By the end, I was hooked. Where did all this demonic sh...tuff come from, anyway? I went out the next day and bought the book. I read it. I bought the next book. I read it. And so a fan was created. Sometime between Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince (I think), I was in the library looking to see if there was a book on the symbolism and imagery J.K. Rowling used in the Harry Potter books. I ran across a book ...