It is what this ordinary Harry can achieve that makes him more attractive and inspiring to contemporary readers than a traditional hero.12 Nikolajeva points out that the tendency to level heroes with ordinary people is
“a relatively recent development”: “contemporary characters are not meant as examples for young readers to admire, but as equal subjectivities” (132). M.
Katherine Grimes also maintains that Harry’s falling short of the criteria of a traditional hero, or his lack of heroic superiority, turns out to be a bliss and comfort for readers (105).13 According to Grimes, if Harry, as imperfect as most of us, manages to achieve great things in life, we can also overcome our present difficulties and improve our status quo (101). Pharr further hazards the suggestion that Harry is the type of hero we particularly need in contemporary society, as we “live with a daily media-driven awareness of the interconnectedness of our world, of its vulnerability as a whole to individual acts of violence and mayhem” (54). Despite his doubt and fear, Harry
11 I am grateful to Professor Rachel Falconer for pointing out that the heroism in the series is based on fellowship and it is eventually democratised, as every member in Dumbledore and Harry’s party contributes to defeating Voldemort and his gang. Also see Nel 49.
12 Roni Natov suggests that Harry has attracted readers of different generations because of his duality, his leading an extraordinary life as an adventurous hero yet possessing traits that are common to most people. See Natov 310-27. Deborah de Rosa argues that Harry does not “re-create himself as a powerful and oppressive, Dudley-like figure,” even though he suddenly becomes resourceful and powerful in the magic world: “Instead, [he] gauges his footing along with his peers to find his place among them, not above them” (174).
13 Cf. Terence Blacker’s argument about Harry Potter as a suitable hero for contemporary society:
“Potter […] is the perfect hero for the late 1990s, a time when readers are looking for reassurance and a certain nannyish moral certainty. Unwittingly, Rowling has invented the perfect protagonist and set-up for the age.”
manages to “do something” to redress the chaos in his life and his society (54).
However, Harry is more an alternative kind of hero than a faulty one in terms of the heroic conventions. Instead of being individualistic and self-centred like the would-be conventional hero, Voldemort, Harry chooses unselfish sacrifice, and he eventually earns his agency and independence, protects his friends and saves the magic world.14 Harry refuses to compromise his concerns for suffering human beings and to privilege the task of destroying evil and saving the world, as shown in the episode where he gives up the urgent task to destroy another of Voldemort’s Horcruxes and goes to rescue his long-standing school enemies, Draco Malfoy and his acolytes, who are trapped in the fire they themselves have caused: “[Harry] swooped as low as he dared over the marauding monsters of flame to try to find them [Malfoy, Crabbe or Goyle] . . . . what a terrible way to die . . . . he had never wanted this” (The Deathly Hallows 508). Because Harry is ordinary yet empathetic, he cannot bear to sacrifice others’ welfare and life to make himself successful, even when it comes to those he dislikes. As his conscience remains clear, his ultimate triumph is greater and more untarnished. Harry’s courageous defence of humanity and human beings can thus serve as a corrective to the progressive myth, which has long taken root in most developed societies or perhaps, in our own upbringing, that success is something worth pursuing at any cost. The alternative heroism illustrated by Harry indicates that there could be an alternative way to treat life: one can achieve marvellous things in life, even if one privileges humanity and empathy over the determination to reach success or “greater good”; a hero can protect his people more when he sacrifices none of them.
Harry’s alternative heroism can also be regarded as a corrective to consumerist culture in which an identity can be asserted through owning certain commodities. Harry’s ability to see beyond signs and icons prevents him from committing the same folly as Voldemort, who dies in pursuing the forms of the rightness of power, such as a prophecy that proclaims his uniqueness, a ritual for his rebirth, and rarities for his Horcruxes, to elevate
14 The hero’s willingness to sacrifice himself for his people may stem from the tradition of Christianity.
John Steadman suggests that in the canonical epic, Paradise Lost, John Milton combines Classic and Christian ethics and complicates the concept of heroism (Steadman xix).
his self-importance.15 Unlike Voldemort, Harry is not bound by forms and symbols to make himself prominent. His choosing “not to act” thus can modify the prophecy about him and Voldemort. This ability is equally important when Harry relocates himself in the more mundane magic society, which, like the Muggle (or non-magic) world, is saturated with commodities, advertisements and sensational news coverage. As Karin E. Westman avers, in contrast with Dudley’s insatiable desire for material goods, Harry manifests circumspection and frugality even though he can afford many personal items in the similarly materially excessive magic world (310-11).16
Furthermore, instead of just owning them, Harry extends and explores the significance of his belongings, which, in turn, leads him to a richer, spiritual world. Harry’s invisible cloak, for example, is not just a handy tool for his clandestine investigations into school mysteries. As a family legacy, the cloak connects Harry with his deceased parents and family past. As the cloak further turns out to be one of the three Deathly Hallows, which were once used to outwit Death as recorded in a ballad, “The Tale of Three Brothers,” Harry comes to grasp a greater historical picture of the magic world, learning that most magic families have been somehow connected with one another in the ancient past. Even if they are deadly enemies now, Harry and Voldemort possibly share the same origin, as Harry inherits the third Deathly Hallow and Voldemort owns the second, the resurrection stone (The Deathly Hallows 332). Giving up the first Deathly Hallow, the Elder Wand, Harry shows that he has no interest in collecting magical items to enhance his importance. Instead, seeing through them, he deepens his knowledge of the past and the present, which helps him to make more positive connections with others in society.
Harry may also become an example for readers to distance themselves from patriarchal or monologic readings of the series and to form their own interpretations. Rowling continuously demonstrates that Harry finds himself
15 In this respect, Rowling seems to protest against Tucker’s argument that Harry’s adventure attracts millions of young readers because it also mirrors a video game they might enjoy. Cf. Tucker 231-32.
As Nel suggests, although Rowling provides many magical items in her series, she often “carefully alter[s] them to suit the plot . . . . [So, her] plots are always grounded in characters, not gimmicks”
(33-34).
16 I agree that Rowling’s fictional world is modelled on a consumerist society and is thus invested with a sense of realism and contemporariness. But it does not follow that Rowling curries favour with her readers by satisfying their desires to own many personal belongings, for Harry himself does not seem to enjoy spending and purchasing.
more capable than he expected when his mentor, Dumbledore, is absent. In the episode where he meets the deceased Dumbledore and Voldemort’s split soul in limbo, instead of being annihilated by death or “the unformed nothingness,” Harry creates a chance for himself to return to life, transforming the threshold of death into a train station, a junction where a passenger like him can decide where he would like to go (The Deathly Hallows 570, 565). At this moment, Dumbledore defers to Harry, suggesting that he needs no patriarchal approval to host his own life “party”: “My dear boy, I have no idea.
This is, as they say, your party” (570). This episode thus suggests that readers, like Harry, have no less capacity for making meaning out of the Harry Potter series and suggestively, their own lives.
Returning from the limbo-like train station, Harry is reborn as a purged hero, who will hence have an independent life, as he symbolically leaves behind both the small, repulsive child and the deceased Dumbledore. He recognises his bonds with his past and other predecessors, be they good or evil, but learns not to be bound by them. The repulsive, unredeemable child is not just Voldemort’s split, much reduced soul; it also mirrors the unhappy memory of childhood Harry similarly had, which could have turned Harry into a negative adult like Voldemort, if he had not left it behind. On the other hand, by sympathising with Dumbledore and understanding what he has paid for his old obsession with power, Harry realises that by seeking different aims in life, he can avoid reliving Dumbledore’s remorse. Harry thus is able to mend the once broken relationship with Dumbledore and bid a fond farewell to him. Harry is eventually transformed into a hero, but he achieves his chivalry and independence by choosing to be different from his patriarchal, heroic role models. Together with his ability to see beyond signs and to empathise with suffering people, Harry’s alternative heroism can be inspiring to contemporary readers, for Harry illustrates a possibility of confronting the rapidly changing, increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world with a more positive attitude.
Through Harry, Rowling suggests a positive pattern of how people can embed themselves in a world they come to belong to: how they can more actively engage themselves in the society and culture they are forging. By presenting Harry as an alternative kind of hero, Rowling challenges her readers’ preconceptions of traditional, patriarchal heroism. Whether or not it becomes a literary classic, the Harry Potter series influenced millions of
readers in the decade between 1997 and 2007. Rather than simply being acted upon by Pottermania, readers can share the responsibility of enacting and contributing to the series’ global influence, as Rowling reflects the heroism she creates in postmodern context. Instead of dismissing writing for young people as sub-literary, we may choose the alternative of exploring what it conveys to us, why we read it and how we can be inspired by it. As Rowling has demonstrated in her Harry Potter series, it helps us be mindful of the culture we are creating now.
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