Continuing with our examination of chapter one of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we should savor the final paragraph of this "prologue" to the series. I love rhetorical devices and constantly study their uses. In the quote below we have an anaphora. An anaphora is the name for a rhetorical devices that simply repeats the first word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or paragraphs. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech is a famous example. The author, in the paragraph cited below, does such an incredible job of exciting the reader about what is to come. In my copy, I have many notes surrounding this paragraph, some in ALL-CAPS, like the word "FORESHADOW." Rhetorical devices, and in this instance Ms. Rowling repeats the words "not knowing" three times within one sentence, should be used sparingly and strategically for a powerful effect. Ms. Rowling wowed me and excited me with this concluding paragraph to chapter one. I could not wait to turn the page!
I need to to give a shout out to the word choice of "inky sky." "Inky" - all that will happen next will happen beneath the sky of the world that Ms. Rowling has inked!
"A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky. The very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottle, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley. . . . He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter -- the boy who lived!" ( page 17 - emphases mine)
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