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I’ve been listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Italian over the past few weeks. This was my favorite book as a kid, probably because the series ended here for me for a while on my nightly relistens(1), as my Dad took a few years to get the audiobooks of Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows out of the library to illegally burn onto iTunes. While many parts of the book don’t hold up very well: this book is the only one in the series where I skip chapters, on the current reread I was struck by the thematic tightness of Order. The political aspects are obviously more relevant than ever, especially with the current Trump presidency, although was funny to see the millennial left circa 2010-2020 act exactly like Umbridge when it came to cancel culture. There is also a very powerful sense of dread throughout the whole book: Voldemort is out there but no one has any idea what he’s doing, people are turning up in unexpected places with unexpected wounds at the Ministry, and the reformation of the Order of the Phoenix is a constant reminder of how much the last war cost on a human level. But the theme that has stood out most strongly on this read to me is social isolation, and how this can be overcome through deliberate community building.
When Order starts, Harry has been back at his aunt and uncle’s house in Little Whinging for nearly a month with practically no news from the Wizarding World. Unlike in his second year, he is still receiving letters from his friends, but they contain almost no content related to what is actually going on with Voldemort. David Yates captures this in one of the opening shots of the film of Order, depicting Harry alone a swing-set that is far too childish for him (more on this later), surround by a bleak chain link fence and dying vegetation.
Things get no better when Harry does manage to return to the Wizarding World. After an attack by dementors, he is nearly expelled from Hogwarts, a place that he views as his real home. While awaiting trial at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, a paramilitary group that opposes Voldemort and his own paramilitary group, Harry is also systematically excluded from the operations of the group by its adult members. When it comes time to return to school, things get even worse. Harry’s traditional mentor figures are either absent (Hagrid), or distant (McGonnagal, Dumbledore, Sirius). He is excluded from the traditional forms of social advancement when Ron and Hermione are made prefects and not him, kicked off his sports team, and his favorite subject (Defense Against the Dark Arts) is basically not taught at all. He is even isolated from his own peer group: the Wizard newspaper has been slandering Harry all summer, so upon his return to school, a lot of the individuals he thinks of as friends have turned against him.
In the movie this social isolation is depicted brilliantly in a scene where Harry is arguing with classmate and friend Seamus Finnegan.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zc5SnGw21HQ
As you can see from even the thumbnail, the scene is constructed such that Harry is alone facing Seamus and a bunch of other students who are positioned as to be taking his side physically, if not literally.
In the book there’s no such scene, but another similar moment that reinforces Harry’s isolation, even from his closest friends. When he’s getting on the train, Hermione and Ron have to go perform their prefect duties, leaving Harry alone.
Of course this is not the first time that Harry has been at odds with his classmates and the rest of the school, but importantly it is the first time that this isolation has been so complete, and that his adult mentor figures are so thoroughly unreliable. Even Harry’s rosy view of his dad is shattered in this book when he sees him tormenting Snape in one of Snape’s memories.
This isolation is an important part of Harry’s maturation process. Harry is undergoing parts of two archetypal transitions during Order. The first is the transition between the child and orphan archetypes. This is a typical transition during early adolescence, in which the child gains intellectual independence from his/her parents (or parent figures) and becomes skeptical of the broader superstructure of society. This is very much a deconstructive stage and is not long-term stable, requiring a fairly rapid transition to the adult stage.
In Order, Harry is reaching the end of his child to orphan transition. This transition begun much earlier, perhaps in books 2 or 3, where things like the wizard government, justice system, and social system are brought into question. In Order, even trusted adults, like Dumbledore and Sirius are questioned, and institutions that Harry trusted in the past, such as Hogwarts have the rug pulled out from under them. The isolation that Harry feels is a natural result of this transition, and we all feel it to some extent in our normal, Voldemort-free, lives.
Of course, the orphan archetype must itself be overcome in order for the individual to become an adult. The main form this takes is an increase in agency, a power to actually enact change in the real world.
As he completes the child-orphan transition in this book, Harry begins his own orphan-adult transition, which he will not complete until the end of book 7. Social isolation is not a problem that he just accepts passively. Harry of Order of the Phoenix is a very angry teenager, and while a lot this anger is wildly misdirected, he does begin to use his agency to redirect it towards external change.
The most important of these acts of adult agency is the deliberate construction of community. Harry has been denied membership in not only “standard” communities, such as the quidditch team, his peer group at Hogwarts, and the wider wizarding world at large, but also in the “alternative” Order of the Phoenix (2). While he does fight to gain acceptance in the wider Wizarding community throughout the book, doing an exclusive interview on Voldemort’s return for the magazine The Quibbler, most of Harry’s actions in this book center around building up his own alternative social groups out of people he actually likes and respects (3), in forming his own paramilitary group, Dumbledore’s Army.
In the film Harry’s overcoming of his own social isolation is shown literally. At the climax of the film, in the Department of Mysteries Harry is shown surrounded by his friends.
At the actual end of the film, Harry is also shown to be surrounded by the community he built.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=P7JB0ez_00E
In the book this transition is well highlighted by how Harry’s opinions of his friends shifts from the beginning of Order to the beginning of Half-Blood Prince.
In an age of social atomization, where traditional and alternative community organizations have been corrupted or destroyed, the importance of deliberate community building to overcome isolation is more important than ever. It is essential for each one of us to build and participate in our own organic, grass-roots communities.
Substack link if you want to see photos from the film: https://substack.com/@joshuaderrick/p-177318643
I really enjoyed reading this post. I also grew up with Harry Potter, not quite as extreme as every night for ten years but I read all the books multiple times, and your post reminded me that I used to spend hours reading HP essays on https://www.hp-lexicon.org/ back in the early 2000s.
I found your analysis of OOTP interesting and insightful. I haven't read a HP book for some years and it would be curious to read them again from an adult perspective but I'm a little worried the magic would be tarnished and i already have too many books to read.
I don't see the culture war angle of your post though, seems more suited to Friday Fun?
Perhaps the muse visited our OP and he had to write today. I suggest OP crosslinks to his post when the Friday Fun Thread drops.
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