For those who had read J.K. Rowling’s classic Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the film adaptation proved to be disappointing.  Much of the charm of the book derives from Harry’s life in Hogwarts, the school of wizardry, in which Rowling’s stories are set.  In a life centred around lessons with Professors Snape, Flitwick, and McGonagall, and Quidditch, the wizard sport in which Harry excels, the adventures that Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, find themselves confronted by—and which the film prioritizes - are clearly on the periphery of school life.  Fights with trolls or encounters with three-headed dogs such as Fluffy are interruptions of the normal school routine.  The sense of a life on the margins—a kind of imagistic or experiential marginalia inscribed on the borders of an otherwise normal school life—is reinforced by episodes in which Harry and his friends explicitly flout school rules, deviating from the normal and prescribed course.

       A significant example of this is the episode of the troll, which is let loose during Halloween.  The moment stuttering Professor Quirrell, teacher of Defense against the Dark Arts, bursts into the Great Hall where the feasting has begun to announce the troll and headmaster Dumbledore asks students to disperse quietly to their dormitories, Percy, Ron’s elder brother and Gryffindor house prefect, takes charge: “Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now.  Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I’m a prefect!” (Rowling 173).  The film, focusing on the Gryffindors, shows a long line of students, of which Harry and Ron form a part, following Percy.  We then see Harry stopping suddenly, remembering that Hermione, who was absent from the feast, is unaware that a troll has been let loose.  The film clearly shows the two children following a deviant course, as the line of Gryffindors following Percy and Ron and Harry go in two different directions.  Rowling herself describes it thus:

        Ducking down, they joined the Hufflepuffs going the 
       other way, slipped down a deserted side corridor, 
       and hurried off toward the girls’ bathroom (Rowling 173).

       Thereafter, both Rowling and the film follow Harry and Ron to the girls’ bathroom as attention shifts away from the Gryffindors and the other students to Harry, Ron, and the troll. 

       Thus, it is here in the margins that the real story, the one we are interested in, is contained.  What is Fluffy guarding?  or who released the troll?—questions incidental to school life become central issues for us, forming a continuous narrative which the film gives primacy to in its effort to encapsulate the essence of a three hundred and nine page novel in the requisite two or three hours permitted a film.  Even in the book, our attention like Harry’s is diverted, as the filmmakers realize, to the margins.  It is the story in the margins that makes us appreciate and get interested in the central issue in Harry’s life: school.  That Hogwarts forms but a backdrop to Harry’s adventures is a fact recognized not merely by the filmmakers, but is one acknowledged by Rowling’s title as well: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  Our focus is on Harry and the sorcerer’s stone or the chamber of secrets or the goblet of fire.

       There are two issues I want to discuss here.  The first is that all stories originate of necessity in the periphery or the margins of what would be regarded as a normal or usual course of existence.  The gaze is drawn toward the unusual, the solitary individual, or the outsider.  This true not merely of fairy stories such as “Cinderella” or “Snow White” in which reader attention and sympathy are drawn toward the marginalized character, but in novels such as Jane Eyre or Camus’s The Outsider or Joyce’s Portrait.  The second issue, not wholly unrelated to the first, is that the dynamics of a story necessitate an ongoing tension  and interconnection between the margin and the centre, where interest in each is determined by the existence of the other and the extension of one into the other.

       There are, in a manner of speaking, two stories in every Harry Potter series.  One narrates Harry’s encounter with trolls and other monsters which bring him to a confrontation with Voldemort, the dark wizard whom he first inexplicably defeated as a babe, thus becoming a legend; the other narrates Harry’s life as a boy famous for that feat, as a student in Hogwarts with all its trials: Snape’s meanness and his ongoing rivalry with Draco Malfoy.  Harry’s adventures, at least in Rowling’s book, are on the fringes of his school life.  The existence of the sorcerer’s stone, as we repeatedly hear, is supposed to be unknown to the students.  Hagrid, who collects the stone from Gringott’s Bank, insists that this is private business, forbidding Harry to ask any questions.  Eavesdropping on a conversation between Quirrell and Snape, Harry overhears much the same thing.  Explaining why he decided to meet Quirrell in the forest, Snape says, “Oh, I thought we’d keep this private.  Students aren’t supposed to know about the Sorcerer’s Stone, after all” (Rowling 226).  Even Professor McGonagall, after hearing that the stone is in danger of being stolen, tells Harry, Ron, and Hermione that the stone and its welfare are none of their business.

       The story that this adventure frames is that of Hogwarts school and the other wizards.  But this too, as Rowling makes clear, is on the periphery of another life: life as we know it in the non-magic world of Muggles, humans lacking the magical powers of the wizards.  Whereas the film, choosing to focus on Harry and the central story—what we think of as central, at any rate—begins from the perspective of the wizards, Rowling commences her story from the perspective of the Muggles.  A comparison of the two opening scenes will make this clearer.

       The film opens dramatically with the entrance of Dumbledore who, watched by a tawny cat, proceeds to put out the lights on the street.  Dumbledore then greets the cat, who turns out to be Professor McGonagall.  She springs forward, transforming herself into a woman.  It is while they are conversing that Hagrid enters on his scooter carrying the child.  As Dumbledore places the child on the doorstep of the house nearby, we see the lightning shaped scar on the child’s forehead, the letter addressed to the Dursleys, and realize as Dumbledore wishes him luck, that this is Harry Potter (The scar would of course have spoken to those familiar with the book before the film was released.) Dumbledore’s cloak, the way Hagrid enters, the hints that we have from McGonagall that Harry is an unusual child all signal the presence of the wizard world.  In a flagrant reversal of the norms, we proceed from accepting this as normal to the world of the Dursleys.

       But the scene the film opens with occurs in the latter half of Chapter One of Rowling’s book.  She commences her work by introducing the Dursleys:

         Mr. and  Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, 
       were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, 
       thank you very much.  They were the last people you’d 
       expect to be involved in anything strange or
       mysterious, because they just didn’t hold
       with such nonsense (Rowling 1).

       This is the first hint of a story that will revise conceptions of normalcy not merely to include games played on broomsticks, mail by owl, and wands, cloaks, and spell books as the regular equipment of school-going children, but to replace what we have thus far held to be normal: the world of the Dursleys.

       The Potters are obliquely introduced.  They are the skeleton, as it were, in the Dursley cupboard: “Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be” (Rowling 2).  In Rowling’s book, Harry is, right from the start, on the margins of Dursley life.  The Dursley living room holds “no sign at all that another boy live(s) in the house, too” (18).  Harry is confined to his room when guests appear and sent away to Mrs. Figg, when the Dursley’s take their son Dudley out.  Made to wear Dudley’s hand-me-downs, to cook breakfast, and denied birthday parties and presents, Harry exists not only on the periphery of Dursley consciousness, but leads a marginalized existence as well (Although one might argue that the Dursleys so fear that Harry will disrupt their cherished normalcy, that he occupies a central position in their consciousness.) With his ability to grow his hair back in a day, free boa constrictors from captivity, and to fly up to school rooftops to escape Dudley and his band, Harry poses as much of a threat to Muggle life as the trolls and monsters he confronts do to wizard life.  Harry’s abilities threaten to destroy the safe zone between the possible and the impossible as the trolls and monsters threaten to destroy the boundary between creative and destructive forces.

       But whereas Harry like Fluffy and the trolls must be forcibly confined and restricted to the margins, the wizard world and its inhabitants keep themselves exclusive, remaining by choice on the periphery of Muggle life.  In the latter half of Chapter One, when the focus shifts from the Dursleys to Dumbledore and McGonagall, the latter cannot help commenting acidly on the foolishness of wizards who have allowed themselves to be seen by Muggles as they celebrate Voldemort’s downfall: “You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no—even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on.  It was on their news …” (10). 

       Thus the wizard world which we and the filmmakers prioritize as central is on the periphery of Muggle life.  Although the wizards choose to remain out of sight, as Rowling’s second book makes clear, an element of compulsion tinges their choice.  A character in The Chamber of Secrets explains that the wizards keep to themselves in order to escape the persecution and witch-hunts of uncomprehending Muggles.  Yet, the fact that they do have a choice facilitates their shift in the story from the periphery to the centre.  We might almost say that the wizard world has two margins: the frontier between the wizards and the monsters and dark wizards and that between the wizards and the Muggles.  Confined to the first chapter or two of the story and to a paragraph or two of the last chapter, spatially the Dursleys, representative of the Muggles, do literally occupy the margins of the story, receding into the background as Harry and his adventures take over.

       Yet in another sense, in terns of its location in the city of London, the wizard world exists in the interstices of the ordinary world.  Human eyes slide from a bookshop to a record shop, passing over the Leaky Cauldron, the famous pub frequented by wizards, in their middle.  Stones in the wall behind the Leaky Cauldron re-arrange themselves to reveal Diagon Alley, where wizards buy their equipment.  Hogwarts Express leaves King’s Cross station from platform nine and three-quarters, which lies beyond the pillar between platforms nine and ten.  The fascination of this world resides in the fact that somewhere on the borders of our world lies the fantastic world of wizards. When Harry wonders whether wands and cauldrons are to be had in London, Hagrid replies: “If yeh know where to go” (67).

       Wizards do know where to go, and it is by defining themselves as an exclusive group, entry to which is select and difficult, that the wizards re-define the borders of wizard and Muggle life to form (to provide a visual image) a small centre surrounded by a large, thick border rather than a narrow border around a large centre.  If size alone were the major defining point, the Muggles would by their sheer number be at the centre.

       Rowling’s revisions of the categories of normal and weird also facilitate this shifting of borders.  Confronted by the concept of the Muggle phenomenon of static photographic images, Ron exclaims: “What, they don’t move at all?  Weird!” (103).  People sidling in and out of photographic frames or waving out of them define for Ron the usual and the normal.  For people like Harry and Dean, who are familiar with Muggle Sports, Quidditch resembles basketball or football.  But the majority of Hogwarts students are unfamiliar with these games.  Thus, for the reader, everything in the familiar world becomes characterized as an alien phenomenon, a strange part of the weird world of Muggles.

       In this shifting of categories and borders, Harry’s status shifts, changing from that of insignificant boy to a legend, the hero of a story in a world in which people with such awfully common names as Harry Potter can take centre stage while the more uncommonly named Draco Malfoys and Hermione Grangers recede to more marginal roles.  The success and appeal of Rowling’s fantasy lies in this triumph of the common and the insignificant in a world which, though priding itself on its normalcy, favours the unusual and the unique.

       But our interest in the margin and the marginalized is not always a need for the margin to triumph and occupy central position.  While our gaze is drawn to the cupboard under the stairs and the skinny Harry Potter constantly pushed out of the way is one of sympathy, the equally fascinated gaze we turn toward the troll is overlaid with fear.

       Once Hogwarts and the wizard world have been successfully established as occupying central position in our consciousness and in the story, the forest which lies on the edge of the school and contains werewolves and third floor corridors forbidden to students become regions of terror and danger which must be consistently and forcibly restricted to the borders of wizard life and of wizard consciousness.  The evil Voldemort, too, occupies the margins, having neither the strength nor the goodness to be given central position.  These evils constantly threaten to enter and invade the visible world of the wizards, disrupting normal life.

       Even the film, which rightly sees these adventures as forming the core of the story and leading the children to the sorcerer’s stone and to those threatening its safety, cannot avoid seeing them also as an interruption of school activity, though the activities they interrupt are so sketchily provided, our attention is naturally on Harry’s encounters with danger.  In the film, for example, the children’s encounter with the troll and Harry’s speculations regarding the dreaded Professor Snape take on a significance which is enhanced by the episode of the Quidditch match which closely follows the one with the troll.  In the match between the Gryffindors and the Slytherins, Harry, the Gryffindor seeker, finds himself losing control of his broom.  The camera following Hermione’s gaze through the binoculars focuses on Snape intently gazing up, his lips muttering something.  It is difficult not to come away from the film feeling that Harry’s life is crowded with incident.

       Rowling’s book, however, intersperses these incidents with lessons, feasts, encounters with the obnoxious Draco Malfoy of Slytherin house, and detentions.  Quirrell’s announcement of the troll is seen as an unwelcome interruption of the Halloween feast.  We are told that “Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall” (172) with the unwelcome news.

       Whereas in the film, Harry locks eyes with Snape, who furtively whisks his cloak forward to cover the tear in his robe, when he and his fellow professors, McGonagall and Quirrell, enter the girls’ bathroom to discover that the children have clobbered the troll, Rowling does not make much of Snape’s presence.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione are too busy trying to cook up an excuse for not being in their dormitory to worry about Snape or to connect him with the troll.

       Rowling does, however, bring Snape into almost every episode in which danger lurks or something unusual occurs.  The film only intensifies the connection between Snape and these unusual occurrences.  This begins in the film with the moment Harry joins the Gryffindors when the sorting hat places him in that house.  Cheered and applauded by everyone in the room, Harry is surprised to see Snape’s intent and patently hostile gaze upon him.  He then raises his hand to his scar which has started burning—a sign of approaching danger.  Subsequent scenes in which Snape tests Harry’s knowledge of potions and finding him deficient, sneers at him, intensify the sense that Snape is associated with evil, perhaps even with Voldemort.  This reminds us that our central interest in Harry’s adventures stems from their connection with the centre which Harry exists to defend: Hogwarts School.

       Thus, margin and centre are closely connected, for someone in the centre is clearly responsible for the terrors on the margin and for releasing them into the centre.  Thus, the margin is in a sense created by an element in the centre.  If the margin threatens the centre, always attempting to enter it, the centre also penetrates beyond itself to create the margin or to extend itself beyond the centre.  Someone in Hogwarts, after all, must have been responsible for letting the troll in and eventually for attempting to steal the sorcerer’s stone.

       The dynamics of not only this story, but of any story, are such, that the sense of mystery and terror attendant upon the margin’s threat to penetrate the centre works only because someone at the centre goes out to the margins in order to threaten the existence of the centre.  The individual threat to the centre or the majority necessarily resolves itself into a tussle for power and centrality between margin and centre.  Paradoxically enough, our interest in the troll, in Fluffy, and the sorcerer’s stone is due to our interest in the wizard world which they threaten and due to Harry Potter who encounters them in a bid to defend the centre.

       For the story to work, it is of utmost importance that someone we have seen or known must be responsible for attempting to steal the sorcerer’s stone.  The question: who is Voldemort?  becomes interesting only when we suspect that Voldemort is in league with someone at Hogwarts.  Thus, “Who is Voldemort?” might be re-phrased to form the question: “Who in Hogwarts would want the sorcerer’s stone?”  Our interest in this margin populated by monsters is stimulated in much the same way as our interest in the other margin inhabited by wizards is stimulated: by our sense that the centre underlies the margin and is responsible for its creation (The wizard world is at once a margin and a centre with respect to the world of Muggles, as I have tried to explain.).

       Harry Potter’s role in this story is to strictly enforce the border between margin and centre.  And, it is thus that the wizard world functions as the centre: by keeping its borders between its own world and that of the monsters as well as that between itself and the Muggle world intact.  The centre by definition struggles to retain its primacy and centrality, functioning to maintain and reinforce the frontiers that define its status.  Unlike the monsters and trolls, who threaten to enter the centre, wizards do not threaten to penetrate the Muggle world.  It is by keeping their regions pure and exclusive that they shift the arrangement to establish themselves as belonging to the centre in the visual image I created earlier in my paper: that of a small centre surrounded by a thick border.

       The dynamics of the story in Rowling’s book and of the gaze in the film, which focuses from the beginning on Harry, enable us to define and re-define the centre and the margin and to see each as being interconnected, arising one from the other, exisiting because of each other instead of being two mutually exclusive regions that just happen to be there.

                                             Works Cited

Rowling, J.K.  Harrry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  New York: Scholastic Inc.  1999