The sometimes unusual hidden messages of Harry Potter

If you read Harry Potter closely enough then you start to pick up on what must be author J.K. Rowling’s real ideas about life. Most authors in some form or fashion relate their own personal viewpoints into their characters; Stephen King’s personal views on religion, parenthood and other topics were obvious if you read enough of his stories, and you could track his own changing opinions on religion and mortality from books like The Shining and It to Under The Dome and the later Dark Tower books.

Rowling, who gained her fame from children’s books, arguably is less transparent about her adult viewpoints as King given the audience and overall subject matter. Where Stephen King wrote about kids for adults, Rowling wrote about kids for kids… or at least were meant to be accessible for a younger audience. Granted, the Harry Potter series evolved from a strictly children’s book to a much darker one… growing up much like the titular characters in her story. But a careful read of her early books still brings up a couple points that surely were a bit of personal commentary sneaking through. Things like…

Rowling is completely obsessed about status

The backdrop for the big conflict in the books is the philosophical disagreement between “pure blood” wizards and “mixed relation” wizards. The primary villain’s entire motivation is to kill off and punish wizards that do not have a “pure” bloodline, his secret shame that he is the child of a witch/human parentage. It’s the focus for the big fight and the “prejudice” that Harry Potter fights against. But this basic conflict isn’t just about wizard bloodlines… it’s the source of every conflict the book has, even the minor ones. Every plot has roots in a disagreement around status with one group discriminating against another. It also isn’t just played as a simple disagreement, but a life threatening one.

Harry Potter’s human relatives provide comic relief by keeping Harry in a closet under the stairs and fawning over their fat son. It’s ridiculous humor that often overlooks little things like the fact that Harry’s uncle attempts to kill him on multiple occasions or that Harry’s aunt expresses happiness that his actual parents died and openly argues that Harry should have been drowned at birth. When reading these books to your children it’s a sticky point to explain why Harry’s relatives aren’t just fond of him but wish he was dead and at times act on the wish.

But Harry’s encounter with House Elves, Goblins, Cats, teachers, animals, creatures in the forest… every single encounter involves one group looking down their noses at another. It feels like Rowling is a bit obsessed herself about measuring up at some point in her life, because the basic status conflict is at the root of every problem, big or small, in every book. But there’s also…

Smart people can pretty much do whatever the hell they want with no consequences

One of the group of children, Hermione, is established early on as “the smart one” of the group, often saving Harry and Ron from various predicaments. She’s the best wizard in the class (a fact that is repeated in every book, multiple times) but has a stuffy, know-it-all attitude that at times causes conflicts in the books. Except outside of the first encounter that brings the three together, Hermione is never called out on her bitchy, often obnoxious behavior that is both callous and condescending to her friends.
Even though her constant nagging and scolding is the subject for eye rolling and comic relief, Rowling continuously points out that she was right all along, and even when she could have handled the situation better in a million different ways, it’s Harry and Ron that apologize or are proven wrong. Hermione’s behavior never really evolves either; she doesn’t explain her thoughts clearly, is instantly skeptical of anyone else’s ideas, and puts her opinion constantly over the opinions of her friends.

But she’s not alone in this treatment; head wizard Dumbledore is also highly intelligent and we are reminded of this (often from Dumbledore himself) on a regular basis. But his intelligence is marred by the fact that he never explains anything properly and a simple conversation would have not only made most of the last book irrelevant but also saved dozens of lives. It’s hard to look at Dumbledore’s actions as being positive when his secrecy and general dicking around could be directly linked to the deaths of nearly every character from the fifth book on.

Intelligence is constantly shown to be an excuse for any amount of bad behavior and reckless actions… even to the point that a time travel device, arguably the most powerful function in all of the books, is given to a 12-year-old girl so she can take more classes. It’s not used to prevent death, destruction or tragedy, but it is used so Hermione can balance her class schedule. We’re even reminded what a dangerous tool time travel is that should never be used casually… but then shown that Hermione is using it so she can take both Herbology and Arithmancy at the same time.

Despite reminders about the virtues of honesty and friendship, people who are smart don’t have to live by these rules and can continuously mislead, manipulate and lie to their “friends” with no consequences… or worse, are excused for the behavior as ‘well, I’m sure they knew what they were doing better than me’. There’s a level of arrogance here that feels both casual and deliberate. Finally, there’s…

You’ve just got to accept evil a perfectly normal part of life

Now, certainly you can’t live life expecting that the world is full of happy people with good intentions. But the Harry Potter books run the bizarre gauntlet of not only accepting that evil exists, but actually encouraging it and allowing it to continue. Right from the start we’re introduced to the four houses where young wizards are sorted for the duration of their education. You have the bravery house, the hard working house (read: strong but stupid), the intelligence house and the evil dicks house. Now, given that the consequences of the evil dicks house has been chaos, war and rampant death and destruction you would think that at some point tradition be dammed and “House Slytherin” would be disbanded. Even the house’s origins involve the founder of Slytherin losing his mind and creating an evil snake monster to kill children in the school.

Yet, not only is the house allowed to continue but it regularly pumps out little maniac children who attempt to maim and murder their classmates through the years. Harry’s primary foil Draco moves from being a little asshole in year one to spouting off racist terms and openly wishing for students to be murdered in year two… things escalated quickly. So why keep it running? Consider if this was real life: there is zero chance you would group all of the evil dicks into one place and then hire a dubious teacher to watch over them who openly cheats to help the little assholes succeed. In later books when parents express concern over one of the teachers being half-giant it rings hollow given that parents are perfectly OK with letting their children be in mortal danger from a school-sanctioned and supported house of maniacs.

It isn’t that Rowling is suggesting that we accept evil as inevitable; she’s taking it one step further that it’s ok for it to be supported, cultivated and the consequences of it are unavoidable… so don’t even bother fighting it.

It’s interesting to see Rowling’s later “non-Harry” books and her philosophies and views on life come through in her writing. Her stories are entertaining and rich, but under the covers there are some pretty strange messages being conveyed that certainly make it awkward at times for parents reading these stories to their children.