Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Chapter 5 to Chapter 8)

STATS

Title: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Series: Harry Potter (Book 4)

Author(s): JK Rowling

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy (Urban)

First Printing: 2000

Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books

SPOILER WARNING

Heavy spoilers will be provided for the entire Harry Potter franchise. Heavy spoilers will also be provided for the entirety of both Fourth Wing and Iron Flame (but not Onyx Storm, which has not yet been released at the time of this post). I will be confining the Fourth Wing and Iron Flame spoilers to the sections where I analyze the plot of Fourth Wing and compare it to Goblet of Fire. All spoilers shall otherwise be unmarked and can pop up at any time.

STORY

Harry arrives at the Burrow. We get reintroductions for the rest of the Weasley family and Hermione, as well as introductions for Bill and Charlie Weasley. It is also at this time that we get our first foreshadowing Barty Crouch Sr. and the Triwizard Tournament via Percy’s talk about his work, as well as more information of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes.

The characters rise early the next morning to travel to the cup. We get a character moment for Mrs. Weasley and the twins as she confiscates the jinxed sweets that the twins were trying to smuggle out of the house. The concept of Portkeys are introduced as the group walks towards the Portkey location. Cedric Diggory and his father are introduced during the search for the Portkey, and then we get to see the Portkey in action as it teleports them all to the Quidditch World Cup site.

At the campsite outside of the World Cup, Harry is exposed to the diversity of wizard cultures from around the world and gets his first exposure to the concept of foreign magic schools. We get character introductions for Barty Crouch Sr. and Ludo Bagman, as well as setup for Viktor Krum’s introduction. Bertha Jorkins is brought up during the conversation with Bagman, and the twins bet their live savings on the match.

The time for the Cup arrives. Harry and the others travel to the stadium. In the top box, we get a character introduction for Bagman’s house-elf Winky and re-introduction for the Malfoys and Cornelius Fudge. The World Cup takes place, introducing Krum and his skills in the process. The chapter ends with the twins trying to get their gambling winnings from Bagman.

ANALYSIS

The pace within these chapters is very slow, with the emphasis being put upon introducing new ideas and distracting the audience with whimsical spectacle. Nevertheless, given the amount of stuff that Rowling needed to set up for this book to work, I feel like she handled this as well as could be expected. She doesn’t overload us with too much information at once, and the spectacle is only used for as long as is necessary to keep us entertaining while the exposition is delivered.

Establishment

Plot

Most of my analysis of plot threads needs to be saved for the mysteries, but I’d like to shine light on one specific bit of setup: the Triwizard Tournament.

The Tournament is mentioned twice in these chapters. The first is when Percy alludes to this big, classified event that his department at the Ministry is setting up. This is a bid to get his younger siblings to ask about his work. Later, it is brought up during the scene with Bagman and Crouch, with Bagman trying to talk about it while Crouch shuts him down.

Rowling is a master at foreshadowing … but if I’m being perfectly honest, this particular setup is not her best work. This is little different from Yarros playing the pronoun game to mask the identity of characters whom her 1st-Person POV knows, recognizes, and has no reason to doubt the identity of.

Percy being vague about the Tournament is fair enough. He has a strong, in-character reason to trying to make people curious. It’s Bagman and Crouch (and, by extension, the whole Ministry) whose behavior baffles me. Why would the Tournament not be public knowledge? What is the point of keeping it secret from the Wizarding public? Why would the families of Hogwarts students not be informed (or, if they were informed, not be allowed to tell their children)? Half-Blood Prince establishes that the Tournament needed to import “three foreign dragons and a sphinx” for the Tournament - would there not be public backlash when people watched the Tournament and found out the government was covering this up?

Maybe this wouldn’t bother me so much if it stopped with Bagman and Crouch, but Chapter 11 is going to double down on it. Mrs. Weasley, Charlie, and Bill are going to be coy about the Tournament when they drop everyone off at the Hogwarts Express, and then Malfoy will make a big deal out of knowing this secret. Yes, you can say that there are in-character reasons for all of these people to know the classified information and not spill it in full, but when this many characters dance on the edge of revealing the truth, it stops being realistic and enters the realm of farce.

I don’t think the argument of a child’s perspective works to justify this. Rowling has provided an example for why it doesn’t. The Quidditch World Cup, another major magical competition, is public knowledge. Young wizards are aware of it. In the last chapter of Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron mentions the World Cup and suggests Harry to come stay at the Burrow that summer so he can see it with them. At a bare minimum, Harry would have found out about it through Hogwarts, which should have sent some sort of letter home with their students to tell parents, “Oh, next year there’s going to be a big event that will disrupt the usual schedules and require us to suspend our Quidditch tournament for the year. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

This is a small detail. I didn’t mind this as a child, nor is it a huge deal now in terms of the reading experience. However, after all the flak I’ve given Yarros for her lazy foreshadowing, I’m not going to pretend like this was a master stroke. It’s pretty dumb.

Characters

The various characters introduced within these chapters will serve major or minor roles later within the story. While Bill and Charlie amount to little more than cameos within Goblet of Fire, Bill will be recurring in later books and have his own role to play within them. Winky, Bagman, and Crouch are important to not only the plot milestone that is the Cup but also to the broader narrative. Krum is, of course, the Drumstrang Champion later in the book, so this demonstration of his abilities is practical for understanding him as a rival to Harry in the Tournament.

I think that the most important of the introductions in these chapters is Cedric While he was technically introduced in Prisoner of Azkaban, he had no dialogue shown on the page, outside of a line indicating that he congratulated Harry on acquiring a Firebolt. The only trait established there was his sense of fairness. Here, it is made clear that he is also humble, a quality contrasted by his father’s boastful pride. Rowling is putting in the legwork here to set up Cedric as someone likeable so that his later relationship with Harry during the Tournament has a strong foundation.

Worldbuilding

The pivotal element established within these chapters is the Portkey. We get an explanation of how they work and how they can be anything, followed by a practical demonstration of how they work.

This is the only setup that Portkeys get in the entire book, outside of a throwaway line in Chapter 10 about Harry and the others using one to return to the Burrow after the Cup. It is used to enable the twist of the Triwizard Cup being a Portkey that delivers Harry to Voldemort for the resurrection. A full 561 pages (76.4% of the entire book) passes between the demonstration of the Portkey and when it become relevant to the twist.

However, despite this very limited setup, the Portkey twist down the line works for a simple reason: the introduction of the Portkey is not foreshadowing. It is not feeding into a mystery. All that is being established here is a mechanic of the world, a tool within the magic system. Rowling doesn’t need to keep it fresh in the audience’s memory; she only needs to not contradict herself later.

(The plot contrivance of Barty Crouch Jr. not abducting Harry by turning a textbook or a piece of chalk into a Portkey is not a contradiction of the Portkey mechanics. It’s very silly, but it’s a flaw with the plot or, arguably, character, not the worldbuilding.)

Mysteries

The only mystery introduced in these chapters is the mystery of what secret event the Ministry is preparing for. Elements like the twins gambling with Bagman and Winky being in the top box of the Cup stadium to save Mr. Crouch’s seat will feed into mysteries down the line, but at this stage, the questions that they will either feed into or help answer have not yet been raised.

These chapters are where Bertha Jorkins finally begins to pull her weight, subtly sliding back into the story through two offhanded comments.

First, in Chapter 5, Percy and Mr. Weasley are talking about Ludo Bagman.

“Oh, Bagman’s likeable enough, of course,” said Percy dismissively, “but how he ever got to be Head of Department … when I compare him to Mr. Crouch! I can’t see Mr. Crouch losing a member of our department and not trying to find out what’s happened to them. You realize Bertha Jorkins has been missing for over a month now? Went on holiday to Albania and never came back?”

“Yes, I was asking Ludo about that,” said Mr. Weasley, frowning. “He says Bertha’s gotten lost plenty of times before now - thought I must say, if it was someone in my department, I’d be worries …”

“Oh Bertha’s hopeless, all right,” said Percy. “I hear she’s been shunted from department to department for years, much more trouble than she’s worth … but all the same, Bagman ought to be trying to find her. Mr. Crouch has been taking a personal interest, she working in our department at one time, you know, and I think Mr. Crouch was quite fond of her - but Bagman keeps laughing and saying she probably misread the map and ended up in Australia instead of Albania. However” - Percy heaved an impressive sigh and took a deep swig of elderflower wine - “we’ve got quite enough on our plates at the Department of International Magical Cooperation without trying to find members of other departments, too. As you know, we’ve got another big event to organize right after the World Cup.”

This is subtle. Rowling isn’t bringing Bertha up to shout, “HEY! DO YOU THINK THAT SOMEONE IS HIDING INFORMATION FROM THE POV CHARACTER?!” She is subtly sliding in a reminder to the audience that the looming threat of Voldemort is still in play, and she does this by having two characters discuss a third character within a natural context. Even without the foreknowledge that Bertha ran into Wormtail and Voldemort, this moment stands on its own. We are here to learn about Bagman and Crouch. The reminder of the mystery is a bonus.

The same can be said for her being mentioned in Chapter 7.

“Any news of Bertha Jorkins yet, Ludo?” Mr. Weasley asked as Bagman settled himself down on the grass besdie them all.

“Not a dicky bird,” said Bagan comfortably. “But she’ll turn up. Poor old Bertha … memory like a leaky cauldron and no sense of direction. Lost, you take my word for it. She’ll wander back into the office sometime in October, thinking it’s still July.”

“You don’t think it might be time to send someone to look for her?” Mr. Weasley suggested tentatively as Percy handed Bagman his tea.

“Barty Crouch keeps saying that,” said Bagman, his round eyes widening innocently, “but we really can’t spare anyone at the moment. Oh - talk of the devil! Barty!”

Amidst the whimsical spectacle of the campsite, Rowling keeps Voldemort and the mystery of his plans in our minds, and she does so through a moment that reinforces the previously established characterization of both Barty and Crouch.

I will continue to gush about the use of Bertha Jorkins as Goblet of Fire progresses. If the many allusions to the Triwizard Tournament is some of Rowling’s worst foreshadowing, her use of this character whom we never meet (outside of her shade never the end of the book) is some of her best.

COMPARISON TO FOURTH WING (Chapter 2 to Chapters 6)

While there is no shortage of things to criticize about these chapters, I do believe they are largely successful in setting up the narrative ahead. We learn the basic of how the Quadrant operates, are introduced to concepts like the Signets and the Codex, and meet important characters (such that they are) like Dain, Jack, and Nolon.

That said, held side-by-side with Goblet of Fire, it is clear that Yarros squandered significant opportunities to build towards her plot milestones and twists.

School Calendar

While I am not a big fan of how Rowling foreshadowing the Triwizard Tournament, at least she took the effort to prime the audience for a special event coming after the Quidditch World Cup. By contrast, Yarros did not set up any event after Threshing. If anything, between it being the only event established within the school year and the estimated death toll that she established and will work towards, she chose to establish that the school year, and indeed the book, would end after Violet bonded with a dragon.

Had Yarros established the Squad Battle and War Games as milestone events during these chapters, she would had properly set audience expectations for the story ahead. This wouldn’t entire eliminate the sense of wheel-spinning that we currently get after Chapter 16, but at least we would understand where the road ahead is going once the wheels pop free of the mud.

Foreshadowing

While crossing the Parapet, Violet vomits up exposition. This is justified as a stress-relief technique. If used consistently (it’s not), this would be decent character quirk and a means to feed necessary exposition to the audience. Yarros currently uses it to feed us author’s notes.

What Yarros could have done instead was use these moments in the same way that Rowling uses Bertha Jorkins: to keep the audience aware of the looming threat outside of Navarre. All she needed to have Violet recite a story from her book of folklore, particularly one about the venin or the wyverns. This could work regardless of whether Yarros added a prologue to establish the venin and wyverns. With the prologue, such a reminder would keep the venin and wyverns from slipping out of our minds; without the prologue, she would build a stronger connection between Violet and the folklore, allowing future references to that folklore to feel more natural.

Another way in which Yarros could have woven the venin naturally into the narrative would be to give Violet her book of lore back by the end of Chapter 6. To refresh everyone’s memory, the current version of the story has Mira slip Brennan’s journal, with all of his advice for surviving the Quadrant, into Violet’s bunk (technically, she bribes a scribe to do it). Violet finds this book at the end of Chapter 6. She will later provide Violet with the book of folklore, which Violet had to leave behind to reduce the weight she took over the Parapet, after the Squad Battle. The thing is, Mira could have just had the book of folklore delivered to Violet at this point, too. It’s not like Violet is not allowed to have it (as far as Mira knows). By letting Violet have this book and express her enthusiasm for folklore, Yarros would provide an avenue to continue folding the venin naturally into her narrative prior to the big reveal.

SINISTER THINGS AWAKEN

On November 1st, stories take a darker turn in Chapter 9 of Goblet of Fire and Chapter 7 Fourth Wing.

With the Quidditch Cup past, Goblet of Fire can properly dive into the darker elements of its narrative. We are introduced to the Death Eaters and the Dark Mark and explore implications of them both. It’s also where we get the first kindling of Hermione’s fight for house-elf rights, which will have major implications down the line.

For Fourth Wing, this is the point where we learn that rebel children aren’t allowed to assemble and where Violet witnesses one such forbidden assembly. It’s also where the sexual tension between her and Xaden really starts to ramp up. There was an opportunity here to do more, though. What we get is still functional. It’s just that, in light of what happens down the line, the squandering of this opportunity is noticeable.

It’s coming your way in two weeks’ time. I hope to see you all then. Have a good day.