Erin Munro

When children become as crazy about books as they are for Pokèmon, it’s cause to turn and wonder. When young people who have all but given up reading suddenly find novels more exciting than internet video games or instant messenger, one hasn’t any other choice but to pick up those same books and find out why they have captured millions of readers. The Harry Potter phenomenon, reaching readers across the country with its mysterious draw, has proven to be quite a controversy. While some condemn its popularity as a simple marketing scheme and others claim the novels are works of witchcraft, it is clear that these novels are not only affecting people greatly, but are doing so in a way not thought possible by authors of other children’s books. Though these books are somewhat expensive and seem available to only the middle classes, it is, perhaps, only to the middle classes of Western society that these books speak. The difference, however, between the Harry Potter series and other children’s books representing the same sort of themes is that J. K. Rowling’s books rely on magic and myth, allowing the reader to accept the novels on a more personal level, thus coming to terms more easily with their own desires illustrated within the stories. By creating for readers a magical world of realities, the Harry Potter series represents a repressed desire for community by Western middle class societies.

The series begins with a satire of a modern North American or British family, a stereotype easily identified and understood by Western middle class readers. Harry’s guardians, the Dursleys, put every effort into being an average/normal family: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, on number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 1). Though exaggerated, the Dursleys represent what each child or adult reading the series has experienced at one point in his/her life: family members who seem mostly concerned with what others believe. The Dursleys base their ideas of what it means to be normal on the activities of others living on Privet Drive and others like the those on Privet Drive with whom they come into contact. The Dursleys were in constant fear of their acquaintances associating the strange or abnormal with them: "The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 2). The Potters, the black sheep of the Dursleys’ extended family, represent everything "strange and mysterious" to the Dursleys because they are "unDursleyish," or do not follow the behavior patterns of those living on Privet Drive. Interestingly, the Dursleys’ system of beliefs is very similar to what sociologist David Reisman indicates as the behaviors of modern families in situations similar to those of Western middle class societies in his book The Lonely Crowd. The Dursleys represent what he would term "other- directed" individuals: "These relatively stable and individualistic pursuits are today being replaced by the fluctuating tastes which the other-directed person accepts from his peer-group" (Reisman 79). Reisman explains other-directed types as individuals whose "social characters" are "insured by their tendency to be sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others," such as peers and the mass media (Reisman 8). The Dursleys, as they constantly wonder what their neighbors will think of them, are a perfect example of these types of individuals.

Distinguishing how to behave based on the "preferences of others," however, is difficult. In previous times, when people looked to history or tradition to learn how to behave, their limited choices were clearly defined. They did not question, as one does in modern society, the correct path or set of rules by which to live. Today, living amongst a multitude of choices and possibilities of existence, one’s correct path is both abstract and unclear: "The other-directed person is cosmopolitan. For him the border between the familiar and the strange ¯ a border clearly marked in the societies depending on tradition-direction ¯ has broken down" (Reisman 25). By labeling the "other-directed" individual as cosmopolitan, Reisman indicates that these people are living in a world filled with many different cultures and behavior patterns. It is almost impossible to keep strict rules based in tradition, as one was able to in the past, when one is interacting with so many other cultures. It is this growth of cultural awareness that not only creates ultra-sensitivity to what others think and believe, but also sustains an inability to clearly define correct behavior. Consequently, individuals are left to constantly sort through many signals presented to them by their peers and little or none presented by family in order to distinguish what is and is not correct behavior. Though The Lonely Crowd was written in the 1960s, its implications are still important today. Jerry Herron, author of After Culture, believes an overall lack of history is the culprit of a person’s ambiguous sense of cultural norms: "Nevertheless, the fact remains that the material body of the culture is one that we necessarily inhabit and consume; otherwise life would not be possible. But it is a body no longer real to us, no longer expressive of our history, except as the pseudo-history of our desires to possess the objects of some still industrial Other" (Herron 79). A person’s history composes the rules of behavior that person lives by. The difference between history and peers or mass media is that the rules put forth by it are based on how past generations behaved, while the rules put forth by mass media are based on current trends accepted by an abstract majority. One has an extremely difficult time now asking why he/she does or likes something. Jack Zipes, a professor of German at the University of Minnesota, believes that the difficulty in grasping modes of behavior could even be disastrous to the human psyche: "Too often it is the inability to articulate an effective response to homogenization that leads to self-destructive acts and lifestyles" (Zipes 33). The importance of where a person came from or who a person is diminishes, and the individual is left to wander alone and confused in search of that lost something from an unattainable past to answer questions and offer assurances. 

Today, many children seem to have turned to not only self-destructive lifestyles but also complete destruction in response to the confusions of a society with rules dictated by an abstract other. For the past five or six years, the United States has experienced many school shootings or potential school shootings committed not by children from broken, poverty-stricken homes, but middle class children from first class schools and safe neighborhoods. Though these murders can be seen separately and with different possible causes, there are some similarities between them. For instance, an individual who did not fit in, or was living as an outsider committed nearly each one of these crimes: "With the exception of the few who have turned out to be clinically mentally insane, the shooters have mostly been kids who existed on the outside, who felt profoundly uncared for" (Crutcher). These children rejected the teachings of their peers and the mass media, existing instead in a situation with only the rules provided by their families. These, it seems, are few and, in many cases, not extremely enforced. In the cases of the Columbine shootings of 1999, Eric Harris, the leader of the two shooters involved, had used a web-site to express his desire to kill his classmates before the shootings occurred: "Harris longed to ‘blow up and shoot everything. I can feel no remorse, no sense of shame . . .. I don’t care if I live or die in the shootout, all I want to do is kill . . ." ("Portrait of a Deadly Bond"). The police, as well as Harris’s parents, knew about the web-site, but seem to have done nothing ("Portrait of a Deadly Bond"). Perhaps, like the Dursleys, they feared what their neighbors would think, or they just did not pay attention to something so different from what they believed to be "normal." As instances of this type of violence increase and as more children express feelings of alienation, it seems clear there is a major problem, one perhaps addressed by the Harry Potter series.

Harry Potter, because he lives amongst the Dursleys as an outsider, represents to the reader someone like them, someone who is also having a difficult time understanding or even succumbing to the lifestyle of the other-directed individual. Similar to a young person outcast or belittled by his/her family due to an alternate lifestyle, Harry is constantly harassed and alienated by the Dursleys because he is different. The Dursleys’ son, Dudley, an overweight and obnoxious boy, spends any extra time he has to torment Harry: "Dudley’s favorite punching bad was Harry, but he couldn’t often catch him. Harry didn’t look it, but he was very fast" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 20). Though Dudley harasses Harry constantly, his parents do not do anything to stop it. In fact, they encourage it by treating Harry in much the same manner: "The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn’t there ¯ or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 22). As the reader is aware from the beginning that Harry is a wizard, the Dursleys hate of anything abnormal suggests why they do not like Harry. Though it is exaggerated, Harry’s life and alienation from the Dursleys because of his "abnormal" genealogy is somewhat like what many youths today feel in school and perhaps even at home. Dudley torments Harry, just as kids who are "more with it" in school torment their peers who are a bit different. Because he does not match what neighbors and the rest of society think a young man should be, the Dursleys also torment Harry and ignore any torture put forth by Dudley. Harry’s life with the Dursleys, though extreme, is very much like the reality many youths today must endure. Because they are different, or do not follow the norms presented by their peers and the mass media, as those norms are confusing and have no real base in authority, children today feel apart from the rest of society, outsiders searching for answers.

Harry does not find contentment in his existence, or feel good about himself, until he discovers he is a wizard and is suddenly flung into a community packed full of tradition and rules. For Harry, joining the wizard community means he would finally belong, and all of the strange things that used to happen to him, like speaking to a boa constrictor in the zoo, could be explained. Upon hearing he is a wizard, Harry doubted it was true because, under harassment, he had been made to feel an outcast: "A wizard? Him? How could he possibly be? He’d spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon . . ." (The Sorcerer’s Stone 57). As many people doubt themselves today because they have been made to feel the hampering of their difference, Harry feels he is not good enough to be a wizard. Hagrid, the man sent to get him, explains his worthiness by alluding to the strange occurrences in Harry’s life for which the Dursleys had always hated him: "Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 58). After believing he could not be a wizard because he is "strange," he found that everything he had once thought was different about himself, is not "different" at all, but a part of his history. When he realizes his place in the wizard community, Harry feels much more sure of who he is: "Harry looked back at Hagrid, smiling, and saw that Hagrid was positively beaming at him. ‘See?’ said Hagrid. ‘Harry Potter, not a wizard ¯ you wait, you’ll be right famous at Hogwarts’" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 58). Harry is, for the first time in his life with the Dursleys, happy because he has found a community where he belongs.

This transcendence into a community of rules based on years of tradition is very much like what Reisman labeled a "tradition-directed" community. Unlike societies directed by others, "tradition-directed" communities base societal norms on rules developed through history: ". . . the major agents of character formation in societies dependent on tradition-direction is the extended family and its environing clan or group . . . . The growing child does not confront problems of choice very different from those he watched his elders face . . ." (Reisman 40). A child growing up in this type of society would not need much development. Living in close confines with the family and surrounding community, he/she would, from the minute comprehension of surroundings occurred, know exactly what to do and how to behave. Questioning purpose in life or future, as happens today, would not exist. Philippe Ariès, a demographic historian, while studying the development of the family, noticed that children, or the way modern society thinks of children, were not present in the art of the Middle Ages, a time when societies were directed by tradition: "In a world of Romanesque formulas, right up to the end of the thirteenth century, there are no children characterized by a special expression but only men on a reduced scale" (Ariès 33-34). He explained their absence with a suggestion of how the people of that period thought of childhood: "This undoubtedly means that the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries did not dwell on the image of childhood, and that that image had neither interest nor even reality for them. It suggests too that in the realm of real life, and not simply in that of aesthetic transportation, childhood was a period of transition which passed quickly and which was just as quickly forgotten" (Ariès 34). Childhood as a modern concept did not exist in the Middle Ages due to a shortened life span of the individual. Survival was the main concern of people in the Middle Ages. It forced children to very quickly take on a profession, one they would most likely keep for the rest of their lives, and transition into adulthood, skipping the modern developmental stages of childhood. Children also quickly found their place in society as well as an extreme sense of belonging to the community in which they lived: "For the individual in a society dependant on tradition-direction has a well-defined functional relationship to other members of the group. If he is not killed off, he ‘belongs’ ¯ he is not ‘surplus’, as the modern unemployed are surplus, nor is he expendable as the unskilled are expendable in modern society" (Reisman 11). Though the wizard community includes diverse groups of people, such as the pure-blood wizards and the wizards with muggle parents, all children in that society know they are wizards and that they belong in the wizard community. This is a direct contrast to how Harry feels while in the other-directed society, the society closely related to those where the Harry Potter novels are so well received. Like tradition-directed societies, children in the wizard community learn how to behave from tradition and history, which is taught to them at Hogwarts. Harry, especially, found his way successfully through his time in the wizard community with the use of tradition and history as he, like Hargrid had predicted, becomes a hero at Hogwarts. 

It is only with information from the past that Harry and his friends, Ron and Hermione, are able to save Hogwarts from disaster in each novel of the series. In order to save the school in the first novel, Harry, Hermione, and Ron must first discover the secret on the third floor corridor. Their one clue, the name Nicholas Flamel, costs them hours of studying in the library to figure out his connection to the plot. They discover who he is when Harry remembers his name on a Famous Wizard Card, collectable items giving wizard children a look at what their history is all about and those famous wizards who created it for them. These cards are different from modern trading cards because they record the history of a community, not the history of a sport or fantasy world. It is Harry’s knowledge of the card that spurs Hermione to find more information, allowing the three of them to learn what is on the third floor: "‘Nicholas Flamel,’ she whispered dramatically, ‘is the only known maker of the Sorcerer’s Stone’" (The Sorcerer’s Stone 219). When Harry and Ron do not understand the significance of her knowledge, she has them read the book where she found the information, explaining Nicholas Flamel’s discovery to be the result of alchemy (The Sorcerer’s Stone 220). The idea of a sorcerer’s stone coming from an alchemist is not unfamiliar to the reader’s past as well as the past of the wizard community. Alchemy, the ancient art of chemistry, is the father of modern pharmacy. One primary thing alchemists did was to find the philosopher’s stone, a magic ingredient that would turn metal into gold (Colbert 19-22). Rowling plays on the idea of a philosopher’s stone to create the presence of the sorcerer’s stone. Including it allows the reader to identify with the ancient history of the wizard community, almost making it his/her own lost community. With this information, Harry and his friends not only save the school, but also feel more secure in their positions within the community as well as in their connection to its history.

In the second book, the history or myth of the wizard world is played upon much more as Harry, Ron, and Hermione need knowledge of Hogwarts’s history in order to solve the major problem in the book, the origin of the chamber of secrets. Hermione raises the question in their History of Magic class. At first, the teacher is somewhat unwilling to talk about it, as its origins are based in myth, but Hermione induces him to do it by saying: "‘Please, sir, don’t legends always have a basis in fact?’" (Chamber of Secrets 149). By bringing it up in this way, Rowling suggests something extremely familiar to the modern reader. North American and British, people for the most part, do not think much of myth and legend, using science and facts to explain most of what happens in the world. Ancient cultures, which were directed by tradition, did believe in myth and legend to explain what they did not understand. In tradition-directed societies, taking into account what the ancients believed helps one to understand who he/she is; therefore, Hermione was correct in asserting that legends always have a basis in fact, not just to understand the peoples who created the legends, but also to understand those who grew from them. As it turns out, the chamber of secrets came from Salazar Slytherin, one of the school’s founding fathers, who used the chamber as a holding cell for a monster that would "‘. . . purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic’" (Chamber of Secrets 151). Those unworthy of studying magic are those who are not pureblooded wizards (Chamber of Secrets 150). This myth of the chamber of secrets is a similar concept to Nazi ideals during World War II. Paralleling their myth with something familiar to modern Western history allows the reader to better understand the chamber of secrets, accepting its history as truth. Knowledge of this history permits Harry, Ron, and Hermione to eventually discover the chamber of secrets and stop the "horror within" from petrifying, perhaps even killing, any more students. Knowing the history of Hogwarts helps them find another aspect of the chamber of secrets when they learn Harry can speak the snake language, Parseltongue (Chamber of Secrets 196). This information motivates Hermione to discover what is living in the chamber of secrets. Harry and Ron do not discover it until they visit Hermione in the hospital wing and find a page from a book in her hand with the word "pipes" written in her own hand: "‘Ron,’ he breathed, ‘This is it. This is the answer. The monster in the Chamber is a basilik ¯ a giant serpent. That’s why I’ve been hearing that voice all over the place, and nobody else has heard it. It’s because I understand Parseltongue’" (Chamber of Secrets 290). Basiliks are also not unknown to Western thought. Snakes able to petrify by merely looking at someone were created in Greek myth through characters like Medusa, whose hair was made of snakes. Such a snake also appeared in William Shakespeare’s Richard III (Colbert 35-36). A monster like the basilik is familiar to Western ideas today because its origins lie in Western history, allowing the reader to understand its appearance as well as understand a bit of his/her own history.

In the third book, Harry uses a bit of his own personal history to save his godfather, Sirius Black. Throughout the series, Harry is obsessed with this personal history. Similar to how youths today seeming to desire a connection to a lost community or place in society, what Harry desires above all else is a closer connection to his parents, his true link to the wizard community. It is this need, this desire for his parents and his history, that allows him to save himself, Hermione, and Sirius from the dementors. In order to fight the dementors, Harry must produce a Patronus by focusing on some very happy moment in his life. Finding he could live with Sirius Black instead of the Dursleys is the happy moment he uses. He would be able, finally, to live always within the wizard community, rather than have to constantly go back to the Dursleys over the summer holidays, where he is an outcast: "I’m going to live with my godfather. I’m leaving the Dursleys. He forced himself to think of Black, and only Black, and began to chant: ‘Expecto patronum!’" (Prisoner of Azkaban 383). This particular attempt at producing a Patronus does not work. Instead, Harry sees someone else’s Patronus save them all: "Fighting to stay conscious, Harry watched it canter to a halt as it reached the opposite shore. For a moment, Harry saw, by its brightness, somebody welcoming it back . . . raising his hand to pat it . . . someone who looked strangely familiar . . . but it couldn’t be . . ." (Prisoner of Azkaban 385). The Patronus that saves them is an animal, and its creator, Harry believes, is his father come back to save him. He and the reader discover later, however, that it was not his father he saw, but himself, who creates the Patronus on a trip back in time. The animal, a stag, is the same stag that his father had been able to transform himself into during his youth (Prisoner of Azkaban 411-412). Harry is able to use the history of his father to produce not only his own savior, but also his friends’ savior. Without connecting to his past, Harry would not have been able to survive the night. Dumbledore explains to Harry that his father had actually come back to save him: "’Your father is alive in you, Harry, and shows himself most plainly when you have need of him. How else could you produce that particular Patronus? . . . You know, Harry, in a way, you did see your father last night. . . . You found him inside yourself’" (Prisoner of Azkaban 427-428). Harry’s desire to see and talk to his mother and father again, his true links to the wizard world who could answer any questions he might have had, is something that many people today could understand. Losing parents before one has the ability to know them creates a very confused individual who may not know his/her own history. Through Hagrid, Dumbledore, and Sirius, Harry’s instructors in the wizard world, Harry is able to find out more and more about the parents he lost, something for which an orphan today could only wish. In the fourth novel, Harry is able to find out even more about his parents, but through magic rather than individual members of the community.

In order to save himself and the entire wizard community, Harry Potter uses the appearance of his family to escape Lord Voldemort in the fourth novel of the series. When Harry finally comes face to face with Voledemort, it seems he will survive. Voldemort, bent of killing Harry, forces him into a wizard duel. At the exact point of casting the death curse, Harry casts the disarming spell he had learned at school. The two beams from their wands meet, and Harry, urged on by the hopeful Phoenix sound, concentrats enough to force his spell into Voldemort’s wand. The Phoenix’s sound gives Harry hope because he learned two years before how helpful a Phoenix could be: "It was a sound Harry recognized, though he had heard it only once before in his life: phoenix song. It was the sound of hope to Harry . . . the most beautiful and welcome thing he had ever heard in his life . . .. It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore, and it was almost as though a friend were speaking in his ear" (Goblet of Fire 664). Dumbledore is Harry’s teacher and adviser. He guides Harry through the realm of the wizard community, often offering him advice and information about his parents and his past. Hearing the phoenix is like hearing the strength of the wizard community backing him up and telling him, "Don’t break the connection" (Goblet of Fire 664). This allows Harry to increase his concentration, thus pushing the power between the wands back to Voldemort’s wand, expelling the shadows of those most recently killed by it. Each wizard who was set free from Voldemort’s wand encourages Harry to keep going, giving him strength to hold on until his parents appear. Once his mother is set free, she gives him the guidance he needs to escape Lord Voldemort (Goblet of Fire 667). The guidance of his mother, his history, brought out by magic he learned at Hogwarts, allows Harry to escape and become a hero. Magic brought him his history, his true community, his saving grace.

As magic gives Harry a supportive and secure world in which he can belong, it also allows the reader to step into the story and realize his/her fantasy of a stronger community. Rather than push a disturbing concept upon a reader by creating it in a realistic story, the Harry Potter stories place it under the guise of magic, similar to magical realism. This genre, developed by Latin American authors, who, under many social and economic pressures, needed magic to understand their reality, articulates harsh truths under the pretext of magic. Similar to superstition, using magic as explanation allows a person to better accept an unjustified death, position of inferiority, or lack of voice. As middle class Western society, particularly that of the United States, is not accustomed to the social and economic pressures of Latin America, the magical realism that comes from it is different. Physical or economic oppression is replaced with mental oppression, such as the desire for a lost sense of community. The magical realism that comes from North America, and perhaps Great Britain, is also not as fantastic as that coming from Latin America. This North American and British representation of oppression is filtered through a subtle questioning by the reader induced, perhaps, by something like a child’s fantasy world. The Harry Potter series uses magical realism effectively because it is written through the eyes of a child who embarks into a realm of the fantastic where the unusual becomes usual. As Harry questions the new world into which he has been admitted and finally comes to accept the magic as fact, the readers can also feel more at ease with the unusual, setting aside their natural inclinations to doubt. They realize it is clearly meant to be fantastic. Readers fall further into accepting Harry’s world as realities they understand, such as trading cards, studying, references to true history, and feeling pressured to behave based on abstract rules created by others, are combined with magic or the unusual. Because the Harry Potter series is a series of children’s books and takes place through the eyes of a child, readers can relax when reading, recognizing the usual within the stories and experiencing, as Harry does, the realization of their own desires and wishes.    

The readers’ desire for a community with rules based in tradition is achieved in the Harry Potter series through magic placed in the concepts of reality. Modern readers enjoy these books because they present situations they crave. As Harry is not allowed to remain a permanent member of wizard community, and must go back to the Dursleys for his summer holiday, it seems that this craving for traditional community is, perhaps, only a fantasy. The world today cannot revert back to the past, as it contained some even harsher realities Western society has overcome. How to help assuage the middle class anxiety over a lost community is unclear. Maybe the Harry Potter series will help children to understand the reality they cannot leave, or maybe society will change again and something new will replace and improve upon the current situation.

Works Cited

Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood. A Social History of Family Life. Tran. Robert Baldick. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970.

Crutcher, Chris. "The Outsiders". School Library Journal. August 2001, pg. 54.

Herron, Jerry. After Culture: Detroit and the Humiliation of History. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1993.

"Portrait of a Deadly Bond". Time. May 10, 1999, pg. 26+.

Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer, and Revel Denny. The Lonely Crowd. New Haven: Yale Press, 1989.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic Inc, 2000.

__________. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic Inc, 2000.

__________. Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic Inc, 1999.

__________. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. New York: Scholastic Inc, 1999.

Zipes, Jack. The Troublesome Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter. New York: Routledge, 2001.