Harry Potter: The Subtext Behind the Texts

By: Alix Wells

     The magic of Harry Potter has been a household topic in many homes for the past two decades. This literary epic takes readers of all ages on a journey not only to save the British magical community but the battles through the growing pains of becoming an adult through the traumatic mess of navigating through a rift of generational disparities, political opposition, and suppression, class hierarchy.

     The government portrayed in Harry potter can be categorized as a mixture of modern-day governance. We get the general indication that it is a democracy, in which the Minister of Magic is voted into his seat, but as the story goes on, we find out that there are multiple layers of this. While the Minister of Magic holds the position of a modern-day President, this position also turns out to be more of a political front as the laws that are passed are not under his jurisdiction. The minister is more of a face for the system, and a spokesperson while those who are in the Wizengamot are the lawmakers; this branch is most relatively compared to the U.S. Senate. The Wizengamot is a collection of Wizards who hold a high stature in the magical world, and those who are only considered to be of higher class (determined by the longevity of the bloodline ancestry) or those who are lucky enough to buy their way into the seat. As such, these individuals are much older than the populace, thus creating a progressive movement forward. Their laws tend to keep things very conservative to protect the secrecy of the magical world while also intentionally (or perhaps not) disallowing the modernizing of their society. This approach causes disdain from the younger generation, who are ready for a more progressive and democratic system, and yet are told, indirectly, to “shut up and sit down” because this is how it has always been.

     This political and social hierarchy also highlights the generation disparity between the students of Hogwarts and the adults. The First Wizarding War was a big power struggle between wizards that started in the 1940s and ended in 1981. It started Lord Voldemort’s original “reign” as the most powerful Dark Wizard ever. The war resulted in a devastating number of casualties, most of whom were from young families. Many of those who fell victim to Lord Voldemort’s reign were young adults, presumably between the ages of twenty and forty years old, resulting in a massive gap in the generational presence in their society. With this generational gap increasing in the younger population, the younger generation consistently experienced negative reinforcement for their differences in thoughts and actions while growing into independent adults. While the older generation continues to maintain its hold on the government, the younger generation cannot help but call out their inability to adapt and grow the community. The older generation, being afraid of losing any more wizards in their community, resorted to a more conservative stance, doing their best to preserve and rebuild after the war. On the other hand, the younger generation says that the conservative way of life is making it harder for them to live. These disparities do not end in just politics; they also fall into how to handle emotional intelligence. The older generation never properly healed from the first war, and because of this, they became incapable of aiding the students with the proper coping mechanisms required to heal themselves while they too became witness to a second war developing.

     Mental health is subtly expressed within the series and becomes more prominent once we reach book five, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Harry has to learn how to control his feelings on his own because he is a child who has to get along in the world without the help of a parent. As he grows older, he finds that many of the adults in his life take what he says (even when time after time he has proven them right), especially noted at the end of Book Four where Voldemort returns), as nothing more than a child who knows nothing of how the world works. His self-appointed mentor, Headmaster Dumbledore, even dismisses Harry’s concerns when they are brought up. Thus, to avoid having to process these intense emotions, he does not seek help from adults, nor from his friends, to avoid burdening them even further than he feels like he has to… He is angry with everyone and everything, even dabbling with thoughts of committing a heinous crime against Dumbledore. Instead, he cuts himself off from his two best friends, Hermione and Ron. In his fifth year, he internalizes these emotions and begins to behave very poorly as a result. He has a short fuse, both with his peers and the adults in his life. Besides having rage issues, he is also losing sleep, experiencing night terrors due to his anxiousness, and developing depression. During this point in Harry’s life, as his depression deepens, Voldemort gains complete control of him.

    In conclusion, the Harry Potter series is more than simply its magic and fantasy. Each of the novels caters to the mental and physical maturation of the students, the teachers, the government, and notably, their universe. The books allow fans of the films which may not have read the series and new fans of the series searching for additional insight into the characters an opportunity to develop a relationship between themselves and other readers and establish connections that are much deeper than they appear to be. The portrayal of mental health challenges, resistance to political repression, the navigation of adulthood, and indifference to classist ideals are all topics that are represented in the minds and lives of people of all ages around the globe and throughout history.