Harry Potter and the Acts of Folly

I'm over the limit by 282 characters. I think this draft expresses my passion about Harry Potter rather well. lol Does it make sense? I feel that I'm repeating "an act of folly" too much in the first paragraph.

What do you consider to be an act of folly? Explain why. 1500 character limit with punctuations and spaces.
In my opinion, folly is a synonym for foolishness, unnecessary, and a lack of common sense. Passing acts of folly onto other people is also folly in itself. An act of folly is usually something others make an example out of; actions that are exemplars of dangerous, foolish or unnecessary acts. The morals of those types of stories typically end with the protagonists learning their lesson, and never doing them again.

Not so for Harry Potter and his little band of friends, it seems.

As eleven year olds, the group ran head first into unknown situations with no plans nor back up. Ron almost died, and Harry faced Voldemort completely unprepared. If it was not for the Deus Ex Machina that is his mother's protection, he would have died. Second year, same thing. They ran head first into facing what they knew was a dangerous creature, without any preparations beforehand. Third year, Harry had to face hundreds of soul-sucking creatures in defence of a man he knew for ten minutes. The list can go on, but one moral of the story is usually "acts of folly that results in good consequences will be rewarded".

Now, I have no problem with Harry Potter. As a matter of fact, I love it. But as an internationally acclaimed, universally adored franchise, it falls short of delivering a good moral. Through Harry's reckless actions, J.K. Rowling is teaching young, impressionable minds that those dangerous acts of folly are encouraged. Breaking rules, sneaking past a three-headed dog and destroying a centuries old artefact result in winning the House Cup. I understand that the author is also teaching morals about bravery and loyalty, but does it have to come at the price of teaching reckless acts of folly as well? No. To me, her promotion of those acts is the ultimate act of folly.

1782 characters

First year, saves 10 characteres


stating them as Dementors can save you 13 characters!


isn't that supposed to be artifact

yeah does make sense... need a lot of characters to go away.. And most importantly the Harry Potter fans ain't gonna like it! :D

I forgot to mention my main concern about this essay though. What if the readers don't know anything about Harry Potter? If I say First year, would the readers know how young the cast is? If I mention dementors and the reader have no idea what a dementor is, then I'm screwed. I tried to make this as vague as possible so that non-Harry Potter readers can understand too.

And again, it's America vs. the World. Artefact is used everywhere except for the US.

I really enjoyed reading this.
I am very worried about this essay.
The foundation of this essay is on harry potterdanger
You talked more of harry potter than on folly. i know you were trying to contrive something from it , but it really shows because the the last 2 paragraph is more harry less folly

Since you mentioning Harry potter and J.K Rowling means you have assumed the reader knows what you are talking about.
My advice
First part of the question says what do you consider as folly?
First define folly
Second find the historical meaning of the word e.g it also means madness, and folly in french means delight
Third:What do we consider as folly in today's world
Fourth: what do you think folly is from what you learned from the dictionary, historical, peronal... then you can bring VOLDEMORT AND THE SMIGGLE , whoever you like..

Just what i think.Like i said, its easy write out of point with this kind of prompt

I don't really have space to write all that in 1500 characters or less.
And what do you mean by smiggle anyways?

Also, do you know anything about Harry Potter? If you don't, then can you tell me if you understand this essay even without reading a synopsis of it? Thanks.

I love harry potter.
For someone who isn't has passionate as you are might find it hard to follow. e.g Deus Ex Machina : the reader might not know what this is.

So, if you want to stick with this story line , write the aspect that are general and can still make sense in an ordinary movie

Deus Ex Machina is a common plot device used by most movie/novel/plot that is fictional. It's not Harry Potter specific at all. And what's general about Harry Potter? In Narnia, the kids had a battle plan. Alice in Wonderland? There's no logic in it anyways. Transformers? They knew what had to be done at least. James Bond? He's a trained agent. Harry Potter? NO plan, NO advice, only a vague, cryptic answer left by a dead man. Heck, Harry went into the confrontation expecting to DIE. As in, his PLAN was to die. I don't think that's common in other generic movies.

OK,
All am saying , for example, if the dude reading your paper is kind of not in the cohort who watch fantasy movies, he wouldn't know that Voldemort was the antagonist .

Or when you said ,second year the same thing: he might not understand what you mean.
All this is just under the assumption that the reader is WEIRD . if not you should be fine.

lol Okay, thank you :)
although the more I read this essay the more off topic I feel I sound. Argh. And even worse, I just got another good idea about this essay, so draft 3 may be coming soon to a thread near you!

I have no advice that will benefit you as Kabal already pointed out what needs to be strengthened to improve your essay.
However,if you already completed it, post thread 3 so we can critique.

And the third one is up here

Thank you all so much for your help! I'd probably sound like a dictionary to those admission folks without your inputs...