Book review: Harry Potter 5

I have just finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix.  (Here’s my review of the fourth and earlier books.)

In this fifth book, the big baddie, Voldemort, is finally back.  The main problem is that most people, including the wizarding political leaders, don’t believe (or don’t want to believe) Harry that Voldemort is back, and so for most of the book Harry is fighting against the political forces who wish to silence and discredit him.  The politicians appoint an overseer to Harry’s school, Hogwarts, who forces on the school some very strict and repressive rules.

Harry is also fighting with his emotions.  The main theme of this book is clearly that of learning how to deal with the two very different, but equally difficult, emotions of anger and love.  Clearly, once again, the book has an age-appropriate and nicely integrated moral to teach its teenage readers (and perhaps their parents, too).

Harry is now 15, and he is struggling to control his frustrations.  He is angry at the world for not understanding him, and the unfairness that he feels different, and he is taking this out on the people around him.  He is basically a decent person, and he is working hard at being reasonable and understanding, but all too often he can no longer control himself and he explodes at his friends.

In a very clever little plot device, it turns out that Harry’s emotions are connected to the Big Baddie Voldemort’s emotions, which means that Harry feels angry and hatred whenever Voldemort has those feelings (and since he is a baddie, he hates a lot!).  This gives us more sympathy towards Harry, and we accept that in some sense the emotions he is feeling are external to who he really is.

It seems to me that this is intended as a parallel to how hormones are a challenge to teenagers.  In some sense, it is useful to say that hormones are an outside influence on teenagers.  Even when teenagers explode, we can still be sympathetic and not see these explosions as who the teenagers really are at heart.  Hormones are any teenager’s Voldemort.

But acknowledging that Voldemort (i.e. hormones) is external does not excuse Harry when he explodes.  We can be sympathetic and understanding when Harry fails, but Harry still needs to learn how to deal, in socially appropriate ways, with his anger and frustrations.  It is not good enough to yell and throw things around, or sit stewing inside his head.  This book is, at heart, an examination of how Harry struggles to work through his anger.  It is a good teaching tool for its readers.

The other emotion is love.  There is love lost.  There is the discovery that those who you lovingly look up to are not quite so perfect.  And there are issues of how to deal with existing love.

In this book, Harry’s has three quite different moments of love lost.  One is a first girlfriend, one is the death of a close family member, and one is the absence of a mentor.  Each of these three sorts of lost loves challenge Harry in different ways, and he needs to work through each of them.

Harry also discovers that his father, who died when he was one year old, was not so perfect.  It turns out that Harry’s father was a bit of an arrogant bully at school, and not the decent guy Harry thought he was.

The side-issue of Harry’s first girlfriend is a teaching moment for teenagers about first love.  Harry, of course, is a typical boy, and he is clueless about how to interact on a date.  The wise advice on dating comes (in perhaps a slightly plot-inappropriate way) from his long-time friend, Hermione, who give some pretty good explanations of what girls are expecting and how Harry should have responded.  Hermione’s advice is a must-read for any teenage boy.

But the most complicated issue of love is raised towards the end of the book.  Love is, by its nature, partial.  When we love, we have favourites whose happiness and wellbeing we prioritise above that of others.  But sometimes others, who we don’t love, need our help too.  The question raised is how to balance this.  Harry’s mentor, Dumbledore, explains (in another example of how admired elders are not always perfect) that because he cared for Harry so much, he prioritised Harry’s immediate happiness too much, and consequently other people suffered.

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As I am reading these books, another piece of academic research has been reported in the media.  A political studies professor has published a book looking at the political views of millennials who read the books as youngsters and are now of voting age.  To quote:

[T]he evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration. Furthermore, these differences do not disappear when controlling for other important predictors of these perspectives, lending support to the argument that the series indeed had an independent effect on its audience.

Alright then.  Another good reason to get our children to read Harry Potter.

(Update: my review of the sixth book is here.)

UPDATE 21/12/2016: At age 9 3/4, Mulan is currently reading Harry Potter number 5.  I expect she will finish it in the next day or two.  She says that it is no problem for her and she is enjoying it.

At the moment Mama is also reading the series in Chinese, for the first time.  She is also up to number 5, and has enjoyed the previous four.  But Mama is not finding this book so pleasant going, and says she is skipping over some of the more emotionally negative parts.  While she can appreciate the skill and accuracy of the descriptions of the emotions, and can see important teaching points, she is still feeling that as a book the reading is not so enjoyable.