Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Literary Elements

Fantasy, Adventure, Young Adult

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (1994-1995)

Close third-person narration of Harry Potter's perspective

The tone and mood of the story is dark, suspenseful, and sometimes hopeful.

Harry Potter is the protagonist, Hermione Granger the deuteragonist, and Ron Weasley the tritagonist. Lord Voldemort, Barty Crouch Jr. (as Mad-Eye Moody), and Rita Skeeter are antagonists.

Harry competes in the Triwizard Tournament, a dangerous tournament meant for older students. Harry does not, however, enter his own name to compete in the tournament; therefore, he knows throughout the book that someone is trying to put him in harm's way. The overarching conflict of the book is that Lord Voldemort is manipulating Harry to facilitate his own rise to power.

During the final task, Harry and Cedric run through the maze, reach the cup, and are transported to a graveyard where Voldemort rises once again.

At the beginning of the novel, Harry has a dream that Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew are plotting to kill him; Harry's dream turns out to be more of a vision, in which he sees what Voldemort and Pettigrew are up to in real-time. Barty Crouch Jr. shoots a Dark Mark into the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, which also foreshadows Voldemort's return to power, since it was his summoning symbol at the height of his reign of terror.

When Voldemort orders Pettigrew to "“kill the spare" (258), he is referring to Cedric Diggory. By referring to Cedric as "the spare," he is vastly understating his value as a character and to his community. His death, while it may seem like a casual nothing to Voldemort, sends shockwaves through Hogwarts and the wizarding community at large.

Harry faces a sphinx, which is an Egyptian mythical creature that is part human (its head) and part lion (its body). The Sphinx is mentioned in Egyptian Mythology.

The imagery of book four tends to be darker, thus emphasizing the gravity of Lord Voldemort's resurgence.

At one point, Harry observes a clock in the Weasleys' burrow. Rowling writes, "Harry liked this clock. It was completely useless if you wanted to know the time, but otherwise very informative" (61). It is a bit of an ironic paradox that a clock, whose primary use is to tell time, actually does not tell time, but is otherwise quite useful. One would think that in this case it would be called something other than a clock.

Harry learns that Neville Longbottom's family was also torn apart as a result of Voldemort's movement. Neville's parents were Aurors, and they were tortured by Death Eaters to the point of irreversible insanity. Harry and Neville's paths run almost parallel in the sense that their lives changed at approximately the same moment, in very similar ways, as a result of the same evil movement. Harry feels like Neville's situation is even worse than his own, because though Neville's parents are still alive, they don't even recognize him when he visits.

At one point in the book, Rowling writes, "the lamps around the hospital wing seemed to be winking at [Harry] in a friendly way through the screen around his bed" (283), personifying the lamps as being "friendly."