39 Lauren Massing – Deconstructing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Hero’s Journey
Lauren (she/hers) is a 4th year English Literature major from Dallas, Texas. This is a snippet from her final theory paper, “Deconstructing Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey,” that she wrote for Dr. Clapp-Itnyre’s class, English L371 in the Fall of 2023. Professor Alisa Clapp-Itnyre notes, “Lauren’s paper applied Deconstruction to Harry Potter in a VERY clever and sophisticated argument! Good for you, Lauren!”
Deconstructing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the Hero’s Journey
The hero’s journey is a trope common to not only literature, but is a popular theme within movies, songs, and other forms of art in our culture. It’s no wonder movies like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter are so widely known and loved. They contain universal appeal for a wide variety of people and age groups, because the stories, despite taking place in fantasy worlds, contain elements of the hero’s journey that everyone can relate to. Stories about overcoming adversity, facing one’s fears, and defeating the enemy within are universal and timeless, because the hero’s journey resonates with a part of us that recognizes the truth within them.
One thing that makes the Harry Potter series unique is that in addition to the series as a whole, each individual novel follows the pattern for the hero’s journey (Boll 86). There are several ways to define the hero’s journey, but according to Boll, the hero’s journey serves as a rite of passage for the protagonist or hero. In the case of the Harry Potter series, Harry repeats the first two phases of the hero’s journey in each of the seven novels (Boll 86). Using deconstruction to examine the ways the plot of the novel both adheres to and strays from the pattern of the hero’s journey, what emerges is a less than straightforward ending to what may have appeared as “closure” at first glance.
Upon closer examination of the Harry Potter books, we see that Rowling’s attempts to give the reader a sense of closure achieve the opposite of their intended effect. Instead of answering the reader’s questions and laying our doubts and fears to rest, Rowling leaves the reader with even more questions than they had at the beginning of the novel, an intentional design on her part to encourage a continued interest in the series, and to engage the young reader in an opportunity to think critically and exercise personal agency by using their imagination.
The hero’s journey was first identified by Joseph Campbell, when he outlined the stages of what he calls the monomyth, or hero’s journey, in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Although Campbell’s model for the monomyth contains seventeen stages, they can be divided into three sections or phases: Departure, Initiation, and Return (Boll 93). In an article by Julia Boll, one of the foremost researchers regarding the archetypal journey within the entire Harry Potter series, she mentions the Swedish literary critic Maria Nikolajeva observed that the cycle of the monomyth “corresponds exactly to the master plot of children’s fiction: home, away, homecoming” (Boll 88).
Works Cited
Boll, Julia. “Harry Potter’s Archetypal Journey.” Heroism in the Harry Potter Series. Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to Present. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2011.
Chappell, Drew. “Sneaking out after dark: Resistance, agency, and the Postmodern Child in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series.” Children’s Literature in Education, vol. 39, no. 4, 2008, pp. 281–293.
Rowling, J. K., and Mary GrandPré. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Scholastic, 2023.
Singer, Rita. (2011). “Harry Potter and the battle for the soul: The revival of the psychomachia in secular fiction.” ResearchGate.
Yeo, Michelle. “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Feminist Interpretations/Jungian Dreams.” Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education 4.1 (2004).