Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

First Advisor

Harry Brown

Second Advisor

Victoria Weit

Third Advisor

Clark Sage

Abstract

In order to begin to unpack the question of why do so many people connect with and are drawn to the world of Harry Potter, I thought it would be important to analyze certain themes that are present in each of the books of this series. However, because there are seven, I will be focusing my analysis on three. The books that I chose from the series are the first one, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, the fifth one, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and the seventh one, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. These particular works were selected due to their placement in the series and because of the emphasis placed on the different aspects and themes that I am examining. The first of which is mental health; the characters not only encounter and struggle with different forms of mental issues, but they also teach the reader how to handle and overcome them. The second aspect that I am looking at in-depth is racism, supremacy, and prejudice. The characters of this series witness, are subjected to, and actively resist the notion that pure-blood wizards/witches are greater than and different from Muggle-born wizards/witches. Because the characters speak out against these ideas and literally go to war to prevent this mindset from becoming the norm, the characters once again educate the reader about the necessity of taking action. In this paper, I argue that people connect with the Harry Potter series and are drawn to recreating and actively participating in it because these works introduce readers to situations that directly apply to the real world, and also offer guidelines for how to navigate circumstances that are both sensitive and not spoken of enough.

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