Magic and the Supernatural Lauren Walsburg College

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman explore the themes of magic and the supernatural. Harry Potter is a story about a young, seemingly ordinary boy, finding out that he is in fact a wizard. Together with his friends Ron and Hermione, Harry battles enemies within Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and without. Nobody Owens, or Bod for short, from The Graveyard Book grows up in a very unconventional situation being raised by Mr. and Mrs. Owens ghosts of the graveyard he lives in. Silas, his guardian who also happens to be a vampire, teaches Bod the ways of the world all the while trying to protect him from the villainous Jacks of All Trades. Both texts use of magic and the supernatural enable the authors to set up a hierarchal structure between those within the magical world and outside of it. There are clear distinctions between the two worlds, for example ghosts versus humans in The Graveyard Book and wizards versus muggles in Harry Potter. Both texts aim to break down the barriers of this social construction through the characters particularly Bod in The Graveyard Book and Hermione in Harry Potter. The two texts can be described as a hybrid of fantasy fiction...