Within Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, there are various characters gaining and seeking knowledge. The obvious choices are Ron, Hermione, Harry or any first year. There are numerous examples for their pursuits in gaining knowledge from saving the day or just surviving their first year at Hogwarts; however, the Sorting Hat is an interesting character briefly shown in the series. He usually gains knowledge directly, but he can also gain insight indirectly.
The Sorting Hat is just as his name implies; he sorts first year students into their respective houses. When placed on a student's head, he has access to various forms of knowledge. This is where the direct component of his informational gathering comes into play. By having access to this information, he can usually surmise a quick decision. When presented with Harry Potter, the Sorting Hat had a difficult time deciding the respective house for the student. This is where the direct knowledge of his abilities, history and talents cannot fully answer the placement. Harry pleads to not be placed in Slytherin; the Sorting Hat tells him that it could be a suitable placement, but he decides on Gryffindor. This was a new informational set for the Sorting Hat. He had to consider personal preference outside of his direct knowledge set. This shows that he is adaptable. He is able to take new knowledge and shape his decision. It also shows two different forms of cognition, essentially. Before he used abilities, history and talents, and he assimilated that information into a certain house; with Harry, he accommodates to the new information by seeing that preference is another important factor.
Let alone the experience he had with Harry, his acquisition of knowledge and use of that knowledge is additionally interesting. The Sorting Hat can essentially acquire any information on his wearer. This is completely different that any other character in the story. Some characters have certain intuitions or minor magical abilities, but the Sorting Hat gets a complete picture of a person from simple contact. He also has reign over truth and total pictures in a person's life, yet he only uses that information for sorting students into their houses. Unlike others, he has quite a bit of power, but he only uses it for a minimal task.
Samuel,
ReplyDeleteI like your choice of character for your post and I have to admit that the Sorting Hat didn’t even come to mind when working on this blog. Many people overlook these characters and focus on the ones that are actually human you can say. Being able to adapt and accommodate to any situation can make learning more crucial and enjoyable. The Sorting Hat may not have much to do but sort the students, but his use of knowledge is quite important. He does have quite a bit of power because he does know certain information about the other characters in the book.
Samuel,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great selection of character for this weeks post! I really enjoyed your article! In my article I selected a human character so it was quite interesting to read one about the sorting hat. I completely overlooked the sorting hat. I think that the sorting hat may have been one of the most important characters even with its small role. The hat could possibly be the greatest selection for this blog entry. The hat makes a selection based on each wizard and sorts students to the correct houses. Each house helps to mold the wizards. The wizards begin to collect knowledge based on their house, thanks to the hats selection for them. This was a very creative character!
As others have said, the sorting hat is indeed an exciting choice for this blog. Whenever I think about the sorting hat, there are just so many thoughts that come to mind. The major thought I have is whether or not the hat would have placed Harry in Slytherin if Harry had not wished to not be in Slytherin. There is a perfectly good chance that the hat would have picked Gryffindor regardless. Maybe he was just having a little bit of fun with Harry. I don’t really see a reason for him to announce Harry’s thought to everyone, unless he wants them to be known. If that was the case, was he just trying to scare Harry, or was he trying to let others know Harry’s desires? I think there are a lot of unanswered questions on the personality and motives of the sorting hat.
ReplyDelete