Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Prelude and Chapter 1)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to a series that a promised 9 months ago: the plot analysis of The Goblet of Fire.
For those who aren’t aware, the idea for this series came to me while I was reviewing Chapters 33 through 35 of Fourth Wing. The climax of that book comes completely out of left field. What was a school story suddenly becomes focused on an existential conflict against life-draining fiends, the existence of whom received minimal setup that was frankly inadequate for the bloated mess of that book. As a point of comparison, I looked to Goblet of Fire, which successfully combined its own magical school story with the existential threat of Voldemort’s resurrection. The climax of that book is also a surprise twist, and it is not without plot holes, but it also serves as the answer to multiple mysteries that were spread throughout the school story. I had intended to dive into this analysis right away, only to change plans once Iron Flame took precedence.
This biweekly series will be structured as a book club-style review, and it will have two goals.
Assess the plot for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to gain an appreciation for how it juggles its mysteries ad plot threads and to learn lessons that we can apply to our own work.
Compare the approach taken in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to that of Fourth Wing, both to better understand how Fourth Wing fell short and to identify ways that those issues could be resolves with a few changes as possible. (I will be doing my best to avoid commenting on the wider issues of Fourth Wing, focusing primarily on plot issues, and will only draw comparisons for other elements if the example from Goblet of Fire is particularly strong.)
With that being said, let’s dive in, shall we?
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. If spoilers concern you, I highly recommend reading the Harry Potter books and my reviews of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame first. (I cannot in good conscience recommend that you actually read the books of Fourth Wing or Iron Flame. If you choose to read them, it is at your own peril.)
PRELUDE
The Harry Potter series does not need introduction. It has been a cornerstone of the literary landscape for a quarter of a century of this point.
I was first introduced to Harry Potter through my second-grade homeroom teacher. If the class behaved and got all our work done, she would take the last 10 to 15 minutes of the day to read to us from Middle Grade novels. It was in this manner that I was first exposed to the works of Louis Sachar, including Holes and Wayside School, but it was our journeys through the first three Harry Potter books that really excited the class. Goblet of Fire released that following summer, and I attended a midnight release to acquire a copy of it.
For many years, Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite Harry Potter book, but Goblet of Fire has edged ahead of it in recent years. There is just something about how it weaves its complex narrative together and transitions the series from whimsical Middle Grade Fantasy to darker Young Adult Fantasy. The variety present within the narrative all keeps things interesting, with the challenges of the Triward Tournament and the looming threat of Voldemort balancing out the school life story in a manner that the other books never quite manage.
Mysteries of Magic
One element that I think is important to highlight with all of the Harry Potter books is something that was first brought to my attention by YouTuber AustinMcConnell during his analysis of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: that, despite the Harry Potter books centering around life at Hogwarts, the books are mysteries, not magical school stories. Every book centers around a different question that hangs over the Harry throughout the narrative, with him either actively pursuing the answer of having the answer revealed in the course of resolving the plot. McConnell summed up Goblet of Fire as “the mystery of who put Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire”. I think this works well enough as a summation, though I’d argue that there are multiple other mysteries that are expertly interwoven into the text as well:
The mystery of what Voldemort and Wormtail are up to and why Harry keeps dreaming about them
The mystery of why Bertha Jorkins was so important to Voldemort
The mystery of what’s going on with Barty Crouch Sr.
The mystery of why Fred and George are acting so shady for much of the book
The mystery of what’s going on with Snape and Karkaroff, and what history Mad-Eye Moody has with both of them
The mystery of who set off the Dark Mark during the Quidditch World Cup
The mystery of how Rita Skeeter keeps getting access to inside information after being banned from the Hogwarts grounds
Indeed, it is the way these mysteries are so expertly interwoven that makes the plot of Goblet of Fire so remarkable to me. Rowling set up a lot of questions, and they were not evenly focused upon throughout the734 pages of this book, yet she still manages to answer all of them, without the answers ever feeling like twists that were pulled out of nowhere.
Flaws
This analysis will be focused upon the structure of the plot, and thus won’t provide a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and flaws of the text. Due to my deep attachment to this book, I do not feel I could provide a fair assessment of all of these flaws. That said, there are two flaws that I will freely acknowledge while also establishing why I don’t find them as catastrophic as they may first appear.
Rowling is Terrible at Worldbuilding
Almost no aspect of this setting really survives if put under a critical eye. While Rowling is very good at thinking up fantastical ideas to enthrall her audience with whimsy, she is very bad at tying those elements together into a coherent whole. This is not as pervasively self-destructive as the worldbuilding in The Empyrean - I don’t feel like a fresh virus bomb is getting dropped every few chapters - but it is still clear that Rowling didn’t fully think through the implications of new elements as she was adding them.
That being said, I feel like a lot of these problems are either a function of or justified by the target audience, so I do not consider this a big enough flaw to lower the overall quality of the book.
The original Harry Potter books were written for Middle Grade audiences, meant to appeal to a child’s imagination and perspective on the world. This is not in any way to say that a children’s book has lower standards of quality. It’s just that, much like how YA audiences often more emphasis on emotions and dynamics than internal consistency or the bigger picture of the plot and world, children care more about the whimsy and usually lack the life experience to appreciate things like internal consistency. In other words, to quote Market Power’s analysis of the economics of the first Harry Potter book:
When I was calling [Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone] a children’s book, I wasn’t trying to be derisive. The first book is indisputably a children’s book, and it is given from a child’s perspective of the Wizarding World. And children just don’t notice that much of the economics of the world. My son has no idea what the Federal Reserve is. My daughter isn’t examining trade deficits. So when their life stories are told from their limited perspectives, we can’t expect them to capture all of the economic details or the economic institutions. They’re coming into and influencing that world. In the same way, our understanding of the economics of the Wizarding World are going to be limited by the fact that most of our understanding is being filtered through the insights of a child. So there will be many times when I give the worldbuilding a pass because we wouldn’t expect a child to notice some of those details.
For another example, consider The Ickabog, another children’s book Rowling put out in 2020. The only two economic centers in the kingdom in that book each produce just one product, one being meat and the other being cheese. However, the reason by this very silly economic system is not a problem is that it simply isn’t that important to the story. The Ickabog is a faerie tale that, at its deepest, is a warning to children about how quickly the world can slide into tyranny if people are ruled by fear or turn a blind eye of tyranny. The simplified economics is merely there to help the children understand the world a bit better, not fully explain said world.
I’m not saying not to criticize the worldbuilding of Harry Potter at all. By all means, let us have at it. It’s just that I don’t count is as anywhere near as significant an objective flaw as I would if, say, it were story aimed at adult audiences that was told from the perspective of a “rational woman” chosen by her dragon for her “intelligence” after a childhood of being educated in the central information hub of her entire kingdom.
The Overcomplicated Plan
A gripe that I have heard a couple of times about Voldemort’s plan in Goblet of Fire is needlessly complicated. If all he needed to do was abduct Harry by tricking Harry into touching a Portkey, than this hypothetically could have been done at any time. Mad-Eye Moody / Barty Crouch, Jr. could have done that at any time with any object. This gets worse in Order of the Phoenix, when we see Dumbledore create a Portkey with a single quick spell. It’s claimed down the line that the point was to make Harry disappear in a manner that kept Dumbledore from realizing that Voldemort had done it, but given how Dumbledore only figured that out because Harry escaped and made it back to Hogwarts, there was no reason that Harry couldn’t have been quietly abducted at any prior point in the school year.
And, yeah. This is an enormous contrivance. I’m shocked neither Rowling nor an editor called this out.
The reason I feel like this doesn’t break the narrative is that it is a contrivance, not a plot hole. Yes, Voldemort could have grabbed Harry at any point. Yes, the only reason that he didn’t do so is so that the rest of the story could happen. However, it doesn’t break the story for Voldemort to wait. It doesn’t undermine any of his plans. He isn’t going to die. The absolute worst-case scenario is that Harry dies during the Tournament, thereby preventing Voldemort from assimilating the protective charm within Harry’s blood … but if Harry is dead, he doesn’t necessarily need the protective charm anymore. He can just use the blood of any of the many other wizards that count as foes towards him, something that he acknowledges as a perfectly viable option when Wormtail proposes it in Chapter 1.
Structure
The following entries in this series will all follow a slightly different structure from recent book reviews. Each post will include:
A story breakdown for the chapters of Goblet of Fire that are being covered.
An analysis of the plot of those chapters, with emphasis put on the interwoven plot threads, the progression of the mysteries, and any key bits of foreshadowing.
Tangents into pertinent topics as necessary
Comparison to Fourth Wing, along with a discussion of how Fourth Wing could have been improved by applying the lessons from Goblet of Fire.
Schedule
In order to accommodate that last point, the chapters of Goblet of Fire that we tackle each week will be dictated by analogous structural points within Fourth Wing. Obviously, these two books have different pacing, so there are going to be cases where we cover several chapters of Goblet of Fire for just one or two chapters of Fourth Wing (and vice versa). The breakdown will be as follows:
September 20th (today)
Prelude
Goblet of Fire: Chapter 1
Fourth Wing: N/A
October 4th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 2 - 4
Fourth Wing: Chapter 1
October 18th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 5 - 8
Fourth Wing: Chapters 2 - 6
November 1st
Goblet of Fire: Chapter 9
Fourth Wing: Chapter 7
November 15th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 10 - 15
Fourth Wing: Chapters 8 & 9
November 29th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 16 & 17
Fourth Wing: Chapters 10 - 14
December 13th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 18 & 19
Fourth Wing: Chapters 15 & 16
December 27th
Goblet of Fire: Chapter 20
Fourth Wing: Chapters 17 - 20
January 10th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 21 - 23
Fourth Wing: Chapters 21 - 24
January 24th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 24 - 26
Fourth Wing: Chapter 25
February 7th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 27 - 30
Fourth Wing: Chapters 26 & 27
February 21st
Goblet of Fire: Chapter 31
Fourth Wing: Chapters 29 - 32
March 7th
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 32 - 35
Fourth Wing: Chapters 33 - 38
March 21st
Goblet of Fire: Chapters 36 & 37
Fourth Wing: Chapter 39
Final Retrospective & Conclusion
As we progress through the series, I will make an effort to double back and add hyperlinks so that you can jump from this schedule to any date that has already been posted.
CHAPTER 1
With all our groundwork laid, let’s put it into practice and take a look at Chapter 1 of Goblet of Fire.
Story
The book opens by recounting the mysterious murders of the Riddle family in the 1940s and introduces the character of Frank Bryce, the Riddles’ gardener. We then timeskip to the present day, when Frank is an old man. He sees that someone has starting a fire inside the abandoned Riddle house and goes to investigate, coming upon Voldemort and Wormtail and eavesdropping on their plans. He is discovered when Nagini, who was exploring the house, returns. Voldemort exchanges a few words with Frank, toying with the old gardener, before executing him with the Killing Curse. The chapter ends on the line, “Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with the start,” setting up the reveal in Chapter 2 that Harry was dreaming about the events of Chapter 1 as they occurred.
Analysis
Prologue
Despite being called Chapter 1, this is really the book’s prologue. Rowling is feeding the audience events that are separated from the main story by time / distance while also making use of a different POV character than the one used for the bulk of the narrative. This is something she also does in the first, sixth, and seventh books, with Half-Blood Prince actually having two of these prologues.
Prologues have become cliché in modern Fantasy literature, often feeling like they are included out of a sense of obligation or as a means to bury the audience in exposition that couldn’t fit naturally in the rest of the story. I’ve heard a few different people say that they skip prologues. However, they do still have their place. A well-executed prologue will do far more than establish information for the audience’s sakes - it will establish expectations.
A common example I see for this is A Game of Thrones (the book). The vast majority of the book is political intrigue set within a world where magic is believed to have fully died out and where the existential threat opposed by the Night’s Watch isn’t taken seriously. Through the prologue of the book, we are shown the Others, establishing that both magic and the threat are very real. When both these facts are confirmed at the end of the book, it therefore feels like a natural payoff, rather than an abrupt reversal.
The same applies to this prologue. The idea that Voldemort is trying to come back is nothing new in this series; he also tried it in the first book. What makes this time different is both the complexity of the plan and the fact that he is going to succeed this time. By showing this scene, Rowling makes the threat much more real that it was last time while also planting flags for things we should keep an eye out for while the narrative progresses, things such as:
Voldemort needs Harry to complete this plan.
Bertha Jorkins has enabled Voldemort’s plan, and she is now dead because she outlived her usefuless to him.
Voldemort plans to plant a loyal servant inside Hogwarts
Voldemort won’t act until after the Quidditch World Cup
The fact that Wormtail is taking care of Voldemort also provides continuity with Prisoner of Azkaban, where it was accepted that he would seek Voldemort out after his identity was exposed.
This is a lot of information to drop upon the audience, of course, but Rowling uses Frank to mitigate this. Rather than telling the audience that they need to assimilate and memorize all of this information, she has a POV character who doesn’t understanding anything about what’s happening eavesdrop on a conversation. She’s not turning to us and saying, “This is important. Remember it.” She is sowing seeds that will grow over time as we progress through the story and encounter things that make us think, “Hey, this is familiar.”
Mysteries
Despite the amount of information delivered in this prologue, only two of the mysteries are actually introduced in this chapter.
The mystery of what Voldemort and Wormtail are up to and why Harry keeps dreaming about them. This one is a straightforward introduction. It is made clear that Voldemort has a plan that requires Harry. We just don’t know what yet.
The mystery of why Bertha Jorkins was so important to Voldemort. This is a more interesting case. Throughout the book, the question of, “What happens to Bertha?” will be raised multiple times. The audience already has the answer: Voldemort got vital information out of her and then disposed of her. It won’t be until the end of the book that we will finally get an answer as to why her encountering Wormtail and Voldemort was such a turning point for this series. For now, this is merely planting a flag. From here on out, whenever Bertha’s disappearance is mentioned, we will be reminded that Voldemort is up to something big and that Bertha played a part in it.
Comparison to Fourth Wing
There is no analogous chapter in Fourth Wing for us to study here - and there should be.
I do not believe that prologues are essential for every Fantasy story. Fourth Wing, however, is one of those cases where a prologue would have brought enormous benefits to the narrative. This would have been the perfect way to introduce the conflict between the venin and Poromiel prior to the twist in Chapter 35.
Imagine if Fourth Wing had started with a patrol of fliers in eastern Poromiel, somewhere close to the Barrens but far enough back that no one seriously expects a venin (building upon the idea from Iron Flame that a concentrated push out of the Barrens was a new phenomena). The fliers could be responding to reports that a dragon had raided a village. As they approach the site, the fliers could talk among themselves about how it’s strange enough that riders would actually leave the safety of Navarre, let alone raid a village in the middle of nowhere. When they arrive, however, they are shocked to discover that the land in and around the village has been drained, revealing that a venin has somehow bypassed whatever protections keep them in the Barrens. Before the fliers can find the venin, though, the venin’s wyverns attack and slaughter them.
This is just one potential option, and it would accomplish the following objectives:
Introduce the audience to the idea that Poromiel is fighting a two-front war. Not only would this provide some context when Violet talks about Poromish attacks on Navarre’s border, but it would also enhance the theme of history being altered. We would have contrast between the reality and the edited version of events that Violet has access to.
Introduce the venin and the wyverns as real threats through a memorable encounter. What Yarros tries to do in the existing version with the various dialogues about folklore is too forces. It’s an element that’s so subtle that it’s easy to forget, and therefore not enough to work as foreshadowing on its own; to compensate, so much emphasis needs to be put upon it that the effort becomes noticeable, telegraphing the twist without properly earning it. By showing the audience that these things are real, Yarros could put less emphasis on the folklore. Even if she keeps the same amount of emphasis, it won’t feel like telegraphing information without earning it. It will be like the disappearance of Bertha Jorkins, bringing the audience’s attention back to the looming threat that they know exists.
An alternative option would be to have Xaden be the POV for the prologue and show a scene with Fen Riorson. This could either be the execution of the rebel officers (and, with it, the creation of the rebel relics) or else a conversation between Xaden and Fen before the final battle. Rather than outright stating that the venin and wyvern are out there, this prologue would establish the idea that Navarre is turning its back on an existential threat that is destroying the outside world and that Fen wants to stop that, thereby setting up the reveal of the venin as the payoff to a mystery. What’s more, this would allow Yarros the opportunity to do some preemptive damage control on issues called out in the Fourth Wing and Iron Flame reviews, such as establishing reasons why Fen didn’t just spread the truth throughout Navarre and why he felt violent uprising against a military armed with dragons was at all a good idea. Having Xaden be the POV comes with the added bonus of justifying the wonkiness of making him the POV in the final chapter, despite the rest of the book being from Violet’s POV. This creates a pattern, rather than feeling like a cop-out because Yarros needed to avoid writing out Violet thought process for throwing herself into the rebellion.
Regardless of the type of prologue and what precisely it set up, it would have serves as a strong pillar on which to lay the book’s foundation. It would set the audience’s expectations for a conflict above and beyond those within the school, and it would have provided context that turned heavy-handed details into nods towards established information. Part of me hopes that Yarros implements prologues from Onyx Storm onwards and/or adds prologues into Fourth Wing and Iron Flame if ever she does a second edition of those books. This is a rather simple and effective tool that would offer significant benefit to her plots.
FROM THE MUNDANE TO THE MAGICAL
On October 4th, we continue our journey with Chapters 2 through 4 of Goblet of Fire, comparing them with Chapter 1 of Fourth Wing.
These chapters serve as a launch platform for their particular books. They lay important groundwork while the protagonist is still within the familiar and mundane world, introducing characters and presenting the most essential bits of exposition. In the end, both protagonists begin their journeys into the magical world, with Harry traveling to the Burrow via Floo Power and Violet confronted by the Parapet.
Next week, we have a one-shot review: Caraval, by Stephanie Garber. This is a YA Romantasy (a proper Romance Fantasy, not an incoherent power fantasy with a terribly written Romance subplot) that was not the best fit for me personally. However, I feel that it is another of those books that is honest about what it is and who its for, and it is quite successful in that regard.
I look forward to seeing you all next week and the week after. Have a good day.
