Love and Death in Harry Potter

Love and Death in Harry Potter

To describe the sensation that Harry Potter has caused as a phenomenon would be an understatement. During the whole history of children’s literature, none other series of books have wracked a bigger havoc of craziness. Ever since 1997, when the black-haired, bespectacled eleven-year-old wizard first rose onto the stage of the fiction genre, there has been a shelf in every bookstore devoted to adventure to the trio --- Harry, Ron and Hermione --- in their quest against the Dark Lord. However, is Harry Potter merely about some immature wizarding children waving some silly sticks and saying a few funny words? Not at all. A careful reading would reveal the true underlying theme---love and death.

Death

The first death we encountered with Harry was that of his parents, Lily and James Potter. In due course, Harry learnt, piece by piece, that actually he was the intended victim. He only escaped on that fateful Halloween night “by luck and chance” (DH 01). But, this was hardly the end. Things were just beginning to get darker and messier. As Harry progressed through his years at Hogwarts, more threat of death materialized and more actual death occurred. In the first and second book, Harry only managed to escape narrowly, firstly from the slave of the Dark Lord and then from Tom Riddle (Lord Voldemort) himself. Barely a year later, Harry along with his friends nearly had their souls sucked out of his mouth by the Dementors. Following these were the deaths of his school friend, beloved godfather, wise headmaster, and countless courageous others, who refused to surrender to the evil clutches of Lord Voldemort. Death is something that continuously appears throughout the series, that weaves in and out of the plot, and that is both painful and, yet, unavoidable for Harry.

But Harry had to learn to recover from the death of his loved ones. After all, death is irreversible, and “no spell can reawaken the dead”(GF 36). Through the years,...