Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Literary Elements

Fantasy, Young Adult

The action takes place in England, early 1990s. Major locations include Number 4 Privet Drive, Hogwarts campus, and Hogsmeade Village.

The novel has a third-person narrator; this narrative voice focuses on Harry Potter and his friends, and most closely on Harry's interiority.

The tone fluctuates depending on Harry's situation. When he finds himself in danger or in suspense, the tone darkens from its usual playful wonder that delights in the magical elements of the world.

The protagonist is Harry Potter, and the main antagonists of the novel are the Dementors, with Voldemort as the overarching antagonist of the series.

Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban and is somewhere near Hogwarts, allegedly aiming to kill Harry Potter.

In the Shrieking Shack, Harry, Ron, and Hermione finally confront Sirius Black, but they learn that there is more to his story than the Ministery knows. Shortly thereafter they find out that Lupin is a werewolf and Ron's rat Scabbers is actually a man named Peter Pettigrew, who is responsible for the death of Harry's parents.

Instances of foreshadowing include Hermione's impossibly timed schedule, suggesting that she is somehow able to manipulate time. When Lupin turns the Boggart into a full moon, it foreshadows the revelation that he is a werewolf.

This novel alludes to real locations in the city of London, like King's Cross Station.

Professor Trelawney is a paradox in the sense that she perpetuates her own self-delusion that the predictions she makes on a regular basis are true and that she has control over her "inner eye," however the reality is that the only true predictions she makes send her into a trance and upon finishing the vision, she has no recollection of it. So, she is actually a psychic, but she doesn't know she's actually a psychic, and yet she spends her life trying to convince people that she's a psychic.

The situation with Buckbeak's trial parallels Sirius's wrongful convinction at the hands of the ministry. Both defendents are wrongfully accused and, for political reasons, their innocence isn't taken seriously and their punishment is carried out by the Ministry. Their paths finally cross at the end of the novel, when Sirius escapes on the back of Buckbeak.

Dementors personify death and sorrow; they are the physical manifestation of these intangible concepts.