Maybe the Wizarding World Isn't Always the Best...

Blog Post 2

In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it’s the first time Rowling introduces us to the idea that not everything is always as perfect in the wizarding world as we would like to believe. Beginning with the introduction of house elves as basically legalized slavery to seeing that wizards have their own form of racism in the form of blood purity, it’s clear that the wizarding world has their own social issues that are not entirely up to par.  

Dobby is introduced as a humorous character that Rowling tends to use as a form of comic relief. While he is giving important information that Hogwarts is too dangerous for Harry to return to, Rowling makes the situation less reliable by giving Dobby the characteristics of feeling the need to beat himself anytime he gives anything close to a hint of what is to happen. The reader views this situation as funny, but when we look deeper, it’s clear that Dobby is a mistreated individual.

Because of the simple reasoning that Dobby is a house elf, he is looked at as less than a wizard. The name “house elf” literally comes from the idea that he belongs in a wizard home to do their work. This is clearly slavery! Dobby is the first glimpse we get into the horrors of the wizarding world. His abuse from his masters as well as his abuse of himself shows how harshly the house elves are treated.

As a kid, I never viewed Dobby in this way. I always just thought of him as the adorable elf trying to rescue Harry Potter in his own twisted way, but that was what made him so endearing. On the reread, I still view him as adorable, but instead it feels more like pity. I just want to rescue him from the horrible conditions he’s placed in, much like Harry does later in the story. However, in the wizarding world the use of house elves are completely normal. Nobody tends to really think twice about it because it’s so normalized, much like slavery once was viewed in our own culture. It comes to the point where not even the house elves want to be rescued because they wouldn’t know how to survive otherwise.

Next, we have the whole pureblood, half-blood debacle. It’s obviously ridiculous that any wizard’s blood would be “more pure” than another’s, but it is one of the main driving factors of Chamber of Secrets and later in the series involving Voldemort’s war. Rowling uses the pureblood, muggle blood debate as a way to highlight racial injustice in the real world. Just because someone comes from a long line of wizard ancestry doesn’t make them any better than someone who didn’t know they were a wizard until they got their Hogwarts letter, the same way one person’s skin color doesn’t make them any better than somebody else.

Voldemort’s hatred for muggle borns doesn’t even make sense considering he is one! He says he feels his hatred because of his muggle father, but he can’t exterminate the muggle-born race without getting rid of himself too… Also, you would think that him being one of the most feared, powerful wizards in the world would make him realize that just because he’s not a pure-blood doesn’t mean he’s worse than other wizards…

Overall, Chamber of Secrets is the first time we’re introduced to bigger social issues rather than just the idea of Voldemort and those ideas carry through into the rest of the series. As a kid, I didn’t always pick up on the severity of the injustices which are now much easier to see. It gives me a deeper appreciation for the series seeing that Rowling put in deeper themes than just a boy coming of age in the wizarding world and instead can be applied to our own lives today.