So I just finished reading the entire "Harry Potter" series for the first time. They were entertaining books, surprisingly. I'm reading them aloud to my wife, now, and she seems to be enjoying them, as well.
Mulling over the grand storyline, I get the idea that, to some extent, the books promote anarchy (the idea of "no government" rather than the popular conception of "violent chaos", of course). The wizards have a government body, the Ministry of Magic, that passes laws for the wizarding world, and there is no group more contemptible present in the books. Even Voldemort, the archvillain, is dealt with more sympathetically than Cornelius Fudge, the buffoonish "Wizard Prime Minister". The wizard's government is borderline Big Brother, and becomes more so as the story advances. Rules passed in the 19th century and earlier that were intended to "keep people safe" actually make the wizards more vulnerable. The most odious character in the book is a government official who takes over the school and practices low-level torture on students. Meanwhile, the students (with the implicit, then explicit, support of Dumbledore, the Headmaster) form a secret group to train themselves in the skills they need to fight Dark Magic, since the government passed laws forbidding the students from learning how to defend themselves.
The characters themselves display an anarchist bent. Harry is continually breaking school (and later, government) rules in order to figure out what's going on, who is behind it, and to stop the insanity. Dumbledore, the Headmaster, is pretty much the same way. He acknowledges at one point that he wanted to go into the government, but that he discovered what a monster he would become in that position, and so has remained rather at the school, even though multiple opportunities existed for him to accept the prime minister position, as well as pressure from friends and fans for him to do so. A review of the 6th book compared Dumbledore to Churchill, but this comparison is false, because of Dumbledore's rejection of government power. Dumbledore's familiar (a phoenix) is named Fawkes.
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Topic: Harry Potter the anarchist (Read 3822 times)