Short Stories

Ginny Weasley - Drop_Of_Inspiration

Title: Analysis of the character Ginevra Molly "Ginny" Potter (née Weasley) from Harry Potter
Category: Non-fiction
Weird geeky author: Drop_Of_Inspiration
Credits: J.K. Rowling, the author and creator of Harry Potter (nope, I don't own HP, she does) and my grey cells.
Btw: Hey guys, this is NON-FICTION and actually a bit of an essay. I guess it would be more appropriate to post it on the Harry Potter essays website, but whatevs. These are just my thoughts.

J.K. Rowling is known worldwide for Harry Potter, an epic fantasy/adventure seven-book, eight-film-long series. The main themes of the series are bravery, friendship, love and, according to Rowling herself, death. One thing I like personally about Rowling is the way she cleverly paints her characters, arguably none more so than Ginny Weasley.

Ginny has the typical physical appearance of her family; she has light red hair, many freckles, and bright brown eyes which she inherited from her mother Molly Weasley (though her actress in the films, Bonnie Wright, is blue-eyed). Ginny is stated to grow up to be somewhat pretty in her teen years and attracts attention through this, though, as we have seen with characters such as the intelligent Hermione Granger, beauty is only skin-deep. Admittedly her prettiness and popular put me off slightly, and some other fans have also stated that she is yet another tiresome-to-read 'Mary Sue', but despite her seemingly 'imperfect' nature, I do think she is flawed somewhat as we see with her hot temper in the second half of the series.

Looking beneath the surface, Ginny is an independent young girl who knows what she wants but at the same time knows her limits. Her character has been greatly shaped from having six older brothers (Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George and Ron). It is this very attitude which has made her somewhat inspirational to me. Rowling has said the following on Ginny in past:

• "I think you can see that she is a fairly forceful personality, and she always has been, Ron saying that she 'never shuts up' in the second book (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)."
• "Ginny's tough, not in an unpleasant way, but she's gutsy ... I think she's funny, and I think that she's very warm and compassionate ... So, I enjoyed writing that. I really like Ginny as a character."
• "The backstory with Ginny was, she was the first girl to arrive in the Weasley family in generations, but there's that old tradition of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter and a seventh son of a seventh son, so that's why she's the seventh, because she is a gifted witch. I think you get hints of that, because she does some pretty impressive stuff here and there."

Of course, looking at that third comment makes one consider the use of the number seven throughout the series. Peculiar, isn't it? Seven years at Hogwarts, seven players on a Quidditch team, seven Weasley children, seven Horcruxes ... seven.

But looking yet deeper, you can find a lot of things out about Ginny just by the way she is physically described in the books, and looking at how often this happens, it can't be a coincidence; Rowling really knew what she was doing when she wrote Ginny. Some fans have speculated on this, noticing certain things about Ginny. For example, one fan wrote the following on the character:

"Harry's descriptions of Ginny are incredible even considering just their symbolism. A lot of the imagery throughout the series associated Ginny with fire. The most prevalent of these descriptions is her hair, which is described as 'fiery red' like the other Weasleys. Harry also described her blushing as 'flowing like the setting sun' and how her face turns the same colour as her hair when she's embarrassed by something. In the fifth book, he calls attention to her eyes as 'reflecting the firelight'. When she's sick and takes 'Pepper-Up Potion', he says that 'the smoke pouring from her ears made her whole head look as if it was on fire' There is also what Harry refers to as her 'blazing look' (most often seen when she is extremely happy or angry), which would probably be the most common descriptor of Ginny in the sixth book. The way he describes her hair as though it is 'dancing' from behind her also accentuates the energy Ginny has, though the reader probably takes in all this information subconsciously like many other aspects of Ginny.