Rating:
PG
House:
HP InkPot
Genres:
Essay
Era:
Multiple Eras
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix Half-Blood Prince
Stats:
Published: 11/17/2009
Updated: 11/17/2009
Words: 3,487
Chapters: 1
Hits: 661

Harry Potter on the Couch

Snuffy

Story Summary:
The Effects of a Violent Childhood on the Boy Who Lived This is an academic essay for a Master's level course on the effects of violence on children, particularly domestic violence. It discusses the effects of Harry Potter's traumatic upbringing and school years on his psyche. I'm considering a rewrite to include events of the last book. Reviews are appreciated! I got an A+.

Chapter 01

Posted:
11/17/2009
Hits:
661


Harry Potter on the Couch:
The Effects of a Violent Childhood on the Boy Who Lived

Violence never really ends, no more than a symphony ceases to exist when the orchestra has stopped playing.
-- Gary A. Braunbeck, "Safe"

"Ah, music! A magic beyond all we do here!"
-- Albus Dumbledore


According to the National Library Association, the most frequently challenged and banned books of the nineties were the Harry Potter series. There is likely to be another flurry of challenges and bannings this July when the last Harry Potter book comes out. It's too easy to blame the Christian Right for all of these challenges. Indeed, many of the people who call for the removal of the book from school libraries are level-headed moderates who don't oppose the witchcraft in the books as much as they oppose the violence. J.K. Rowling presents to children a world torn by a recent war. That war, against Voldemort and his followers, orphaned many of Hogwarts students (not just Harry), and will likely resume in the final book of the series. The book series is rife with violence, from the callous murder of Harry's parents to the extremely violent game called Quidditch. Yet, through all of this violence, Harry Potter perseveres. While his body may be scarred physically by his experiences, he remains a remarkable well-adjusted boy mentally and emotionally. The cruelest episodes in Harry Potter's youth do cause some expected psychological repercussions--namely a nascent rage problem. However, the damage is not nearly as extensive as one might expect. Not only does Harry start out as a well-behaved and polite child, he also copes remarkably well with the brutality he faces while at Hogwarts. This paper will explore the violent childhood experiences of Harry, from his parents' murders to the neglect of his maternal aunt and uncle, to a gloss of his experiences in school. Further, this paper will also examine the expected and actual effects of that violence on his memory, and his mental and emotional health. Finally, this paper will try and explain the considerable resiliency of the Boy Who Lived.

The first and foremost violent act of Harry's young childhood--the act that forged him as "the Boy Who Lived" and gave him his characteristic scar--is death of his parents when he was just over a year old. Exactly how much a child can remember at that age is up for debate. According to Terr's study of the effects of traumatic events on preschoolers, the attack on Harry's family would not likely be readily accessible to him as a verbal memory. Perhaps he would enact the event in his play. But the chances that he would, as a baby of only fifteen months of age at the time, have an accurate and complete verbal memory of the event are minimal (Terr, 1987). By Harry's own recount, this is exactly the case. "'I can't remember it,'" Harry says, "'Well--I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else,'" (Sorcerer's Stone, 99). In spite of the lack of memory, psychiatrists might expect to find evidence of PTSD from the experience (Terr, 1987). Considering Harry's age and gender, psychiatrists would specifically expect to see some kind of externalization of his trauma (Lynch, 2006). However, Harry does not appear to be particularly traumatized or maladjusted before he enters Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. He is presented as a clean, somewhat well-groomed boy of eleven. Harry is intelligent, kind, and rational--easily better adjusted than his pampered cousin (who is a bully). He is polite and respectful, even to his abusers (Sorcerer's Stone, 32-50). His lack of memory would certainly account for his apparent adjustment, if one doesn't consider the circumstances that Harry grows up in (Lynch, 2006).

Unfortunately, Harry begins to have accurate memories of his trauma through nightmares when he enters Hogwarts. Two distinct memories surface through the boy's dreams--the "high, cold" laugh of Voldemort and an explosion of green light. (Though it should be mentioned, that Harry first remembers the laugh not in a dream, but as Rubeus Hagrid tells him how his mother and father died.) These dream-memories mark the beginning of Harry's maladjustment. The process of filling in Harry's lost memories begins when Harry is given a clear image of his parents. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the Mirror of Erised (Desire) shows Harry standing with the large extended family that Voldemort denied him. Because Harry was raised by two people who detested his parents and kept no mementos of them, this mirror gives Harry what the reader must assume is his first glimpse of his mother and father. He spends hours in front of that mirror, fixated just as a real orphan might fixate on a favorite snapshot. Later, his need to be with the mirror robs him of his appetite. "Harry couldn't eat. He'd seen his parents and would be seeing them again tonight," (Sorcerer's Stone, 209). Joshi, et. all say that older children exposed to community violence may rely on a transitional object, like a blanket or a teddy bear (Joshi, et all, 2006). This mirror, in spite of being neither soft and fuzzy, nor particularly portable, seems to become a transitional object for Harry. If Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts, didn't put the mirror away, Harry might have ended up "wasting away before it," or "dwell[ing] on [his] dreams and forget[ting] to live," (Sorcerer's Stone, 214).

In the third book, Harry encounters creatures called Dementors. The Dementors, which J.K. Rowling has said in a number of interviews represent depression, pull forth their victims' worst memories and force them to relive the trauma. In Harry's case, predictably, these are the memories of the night his parents died. Harry's memories are much clearer through the magic of the Dementors--he can now hear and see his mother dying. Considering the "tossed salad" theory of memory, more than magic may be at work here. Harry may have incorporated the stories he'd been told of his parents' lives and deaths, as well as the images that he saw in the Mirror of Erised into his existing memories. Terr suggests that children frequently unconsciously augment their memories of traumatic events as they grow (Terr, 1986). This theory is echoed by Van der Kolk and Van der Hart, who argue that through the process of analyzing and categorizing information, the brain combines "new ideas and pieces of knowledge" with older experiences, to render memories inaccurate (Van der Kolk and Van der Hart, 1995). For Harry, some of his memories do seem to be legitimate details of his parents' murders that he could not previously verbally express because of his age. But the blank and patchy spots in his memory that cease to exist after his encounter with the mirror are clearly reconstructed. It is too easy to simply blame the Dementor's magic for Harry's newfound clarity--especially when the author herself admits that she uses magic as a metaphor for concepts too difficult for her target readership to grasp.

These new memories give Harry a closeness that he did not previously have with his parents. This new, somewhat constructed, intimacy triggers shows of defensiveness and rage in any situation that involves his parents' deaths. A dramatic example of this newfound righteousness occurs in the beginning of the third book. Harry's Aunt Marge (who is not actually blood related to him) tells him, "'It all comes down to blood...Bad blood will out...[Harry's mother] ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us,'" (Azkaban, 26). Aunt Marge then insinuates that the reason that Harry's parents died in a car accident (which is the lie that Harry's relatives constructed) is because Harry's father was driving drunk. Harry, in his rage, accidentally magically inflates Aunt Marge and sends her flying like a tweed-coated balloon (Azkaban, 27). Harry's rage gets more dangerous for him near the end of the same book, when Harry confronts Sirius Black, the man he believes betrayed his parents to Voldemort. For the first time, Harry's anger turns to physical violence, as "a boiling hate erupted in Harry's chest, leaving no place for fear. For the first time in his life, he wanted...to attack...to kill," (Azkaban, 249). The man he faces is a tall, full-grown wizard, who has Harry's wand, so he cannot use magic. In a moment of mindless fury, Harry throws himself at this man and tries to kill him with his bare hands (Azkaban, 249).

Joshi, et. all, also believe that the preschooler who is traumatized by war violence or terrorism is likely to feel like they are to blame for the initial trauma and are quick to blame themselves for subsequent traumas (Joshi, et all. 2006.) This is somewhat complicated in Harry Potter's case, as his parents died protecting him from Voldemort. His parents were collateral damage--the real target of the attack was Harry himself. Worse, the family that he was sent to live with saw him as an unwanted burden born of unsavory people--inherently deviant and probably nothing but trouble.

Which leads us to a discussion of Harry's trauma-laden upbringing. After his parents' murders, Harry is sent to live with his mother's sister, Petunia Evans Dursley, her husband, Vernon Dursley, and their son, Dudley. In this environment, Harry is treated as a modern Cinderella, or perhaps Victor Hugo's Cosette. Simply put, Harry is considered a terrible burden by his aunt and uncle and Dudley is spoiled at Harry's expense. Dudley is allowed to abuse Harry in any way he pleases. "Dudley's favorite punching bag was Harry," and he'd "punched him on the nose" so often, that Harry's glasses are held together by scotch tape (Sorcerer's Stone, 28).

There are many modern narratives that talk about the process of scapegoating a single child in a family (A Child Called "It," Don't Ever Tell), and these children always end up exceptionally disturbed. Like the shunned real children in the aforementioned narrative, Harry was forced to live separate of the rest of the family. In Harry's case, he lived in a spider-infested cupboard under the stairs until he was eleven years old. As punishment, he was frequently locked inside the cupboard, not allowed to be in the rest of the house. Harry also lived in his cousin's hand-me-downs. He was not allowed toys or games. The sole thing that the Dursleys bought especially for Harry was his glasses, but these were allowed to remain broken and taped together. The Dursleys have some wealth, it should be noted, enough to spoil their own child with. Young Harry sleeps in a cupboard under the stairs, while the Dursleys maintain a guest bedroom. Dudley has two bedrooms--one for him and one for the toys he has broken.

Beyond the trauma that being the family scapegoat will cause, Harry was denied an attachment figure from the time he was fifteen months old. The potential in that situation existed for Harry to end up emotionally barren, or even feral. As Henry Krystal puts it, in cases of without "adequate mothering--but enough care is available to make survival possible--anhedonia sets in (Krystal, 1995). Harry grew up in a house that, at best, pretended he was invisible. At worst, his adopted family was openly hostile. There is no indication in the book that Harry found relief at school. "At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter...and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang," (Sorcerer's Stone, 30). Physically assaulted regularly, ignored as much as possible, and, paradoxically, scrutinized for any show of his Wizarding heritage, Harry lived.

Aside from intense loneliness and dread of returning to the Dursleys in the summer, Harry does not show any ill effects from his treatment at the hands of his adopted family. When he meets new people, he is polite and well-spoken. Even when he meets people he doesn't like, he reacts civilly. When Draco Malfoy confronts him on the Hogwarts Express, he doesn't even raise his voice (Sorcerer's Stone, 109). Later, as Professor Snape is humiliating him in front of the Potions class, Harry manages to address his teacher as "sir" and only engages in a minor act of sarcasm (Sorcerer's Stone, 139).

Remarkably, Harry does not have trouble making friends. He is respectful of his elders, neatly groomed, and in every way a normal, likable little boy. He is clever in the subjects he likes, trudges through the ones he does not. He becomes a respected and accomplished athlete (playing a position that requires keen eyesight in spite of his reliance on eyeglasses.)
Harry has nightmares, but not about being locked in his cupboard. Harry has rage issues, but these are traced back to his parent's murders, or else to a violent episode in his more recent past. Even then, he seems amazingly unscathed. Harry's grades do not fall, an excellent indicator of overall emotional and mental state, even after he witnesses the murder of a classmate. The classmate died in the same manner that his mother and father did--by the same hand that killed his parents. The message is clear--the way that Harry was raised is terrible, so is the subsequent violence he suffers as he and Voldemort try and kill each other. But all of that can be overcome. Harry's parents' murders, however, are unforgivable and unforgettable.

The reasons for Harry's resilience, according to Feerick and company, must spring from his personal coping skills. Outside of that, it may also be fruitful to examine the differences between the Wizarding community and the Muggle (non-magical) world. Most of Rowling's characters were preschoolers when Voldemort disappeared, and bear scars similar to (if less visible than) the one bore by her protagonist. Harry Potter is not the only war orphan at Hogwarts. It is possible to extrapolate that Harry knew this, and could have gained some personal comfort and social reassurance from being in an environment with children who have similar experiences. There have been many studies to confirm that being a member of a traumatized community is frequently "better" than being the only victim of trauma (Erikson, 1995, Lynch, 2006, Joshi, et. all, 2006). Harry Potter also has tremendous social capital by being the Boy Who Lived. He's treated more kindly by teachers and students than he might otherwise be, and more easily forgiven when he does break the rules. (The major exception to this being Professor Snape, who takes out his frustration at being bullied in school by Harry's father on Harry. The cycle of violence continues.)

On the other hand, Harry may be more able to rationalize his experience as an abused and neglected Muggle child in the context of the violence that is normative Wizarding world. While disfunctional families in the Wizarding world are rare (the only ones we are shown are the Snapes and the Gaunts, and in the former, the abusive husband is a Muggle), the level of violence in the Wizarding world is arguably more extreme than in the Muggle world. Quidditch is a very dangerous game that can easily result in death, though Harry's team captain assures him that it's never happened at Hogwarts (Sorcerer's Stone, 169). The school is haunted by several ghosts, one of whom, Nearly Headless Nick, died by being struck forty-five times with a blunt axe (Chamber, 128). Another school ghost is Moaning Myrtle, a former Hogwarts student who was killed by the basilisk that Harry fights at the end of Chamber of Secrets. Ron Weasley has a terrible phobia of spiders because his brothers turned his teddy bear into a giant spider, which attacked him (Chamber, 155). House elves, ugly gnome-like servants of wizards, abuse themselves with hot irons, blunt objects, or their own fists whenever they commit the most minor transgressions (Chamber, 14). The school contains many dangerous things; namely a trained attack tree, and in the first book, a very angry three-headed dog that will kill trespassers. The TriWizarding Tournament pits three teenaged wizards against one another, with the implicit knowledge that the competition is deadly (Goblet, 245). Harry's solution to Headmaster Dumbledore being forced out of his position is to form Dumbledore's Army, wherein he trains his fellow students for combat (Phoenix, 374). Wizarding life is brutal, mostly because wizards can be easily patched up. A broken bone takes normal humans six weeks to heal, but wizards can fix simple fractures in minutes. The added physical resiliency of a wizard makes violence that would be devastating to Muggles a mere inconvenience. This alone accounts for a more violent society. So, perhaps in the light of all this violence, Harry might gauge his experiences as not so bad. Humans do tend to look at their living situations comparatively instead of rationally examining their surroundings from a more objective point of view. Frankly, growing up with Dudley Dursley is much better than being eaten by a giant, angry three-headed dog.

Conversely, Harry's experience of being in a family that did not value him may have contributed to his ability to handle whatever challenges he meets at Hogwarts. He easily created and maintains close attachments with his two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. He gets along well enough in school, and has Quidditch to look forward to (he's the team captain by the fifth book.) In spite of all the bad things he encounters in the Wizarding world, Harry still dreads returning to the Dursleys in the summers. Perhaps Harry believes that nothing could be worse than not being loved, and because of this, he remains exceptionally resilient to the hardships that he encounters at school.
Neither of these possible explanations do a very good job of accounting for the fact that Harry came out of the Dursley's home better adjusted than any child psychiatrist could hope for. I can offer only one explanation for this--Harry Potter is a fictional character. A real boy, taken from his loving parents at the age of fifteen months and put in a similar spider-infested cupboard, would not fare so well. But, alas, the story of the Boy Who Lived to Eventually Be Committed is not nearly as entertaining as a magical retelling of the Horatio Alger myth. Societal faith in the Protestant work ethic (the case study) triumphs over science (the statistical trend) yet again.

As I reread the Harry Potter books in order to write this paper, I was stunned by the level of violence that this work contains. In spite of myself, I can understand why some parents wouldn't want their children to read these books. (But that does not, in any way, condone the banning of books.) I am glad that children are reading this and being inspired by Harry's bravery in the face of impossible odds. But part of me is intensely concerned about children who are in bad home situations, and who compare themselves unfavorably to the Boy Who Lived. Our world is full of Boys and Girls Who Lived. What does it mean for this likeable, talented, largely unscathed boy to be (arguably) the most visible child victim of violence in modern literature? What does it mean that the disaffected children who wouldn't touch a book before Harry Potter read these books again and again, until they fall out of their bindings? I don't have an answer for these questions. Gary Braunbeck's eloquent quote echoes in the pages of this boy's life. His victimization plays on in the lives of his readers. The real Children Who Lived ripple like sound waves, groping toward each other, but never finding shore.

Works Cited

Joshi, P., O'Donnell, D., Cullins, L., & Lewin, S. (2006). Children Exposed to War and Terrorism. In M. M. Feerick & G. B. Silverman (Eds.), Children Exposed to Violence (pp. 53-84). Baltimore: Brookes.

Krystal, H. (1995). Trauma and Aging: A Thirty-Year Follow-Up. In C. Caruth (Ed.) Trauma: Explorations in Memory (pp. 76-99). Baltimore: John Hopkins.

Lynch, M. (2006). Children Exposed to Community Violence. In M. M. Feerick & G. B. Silverman (Eds.), Children Exposed to Violence (pp. 29-52). Baltimore: Brookes.

Rowling, J.K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. New York: Scholastic.

Rowling, J.K. (1999). Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic.

Rowling, J.K. (1999). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Vancouver: Raincoast.

Rowling, J.K. (2000). Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Vancouver: Raincoast.

Rowling, J.K. (2003). Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. New York: Scholastic.

Rowling, J.K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic.

Terr, L. (1987). What Happens to Early Memories of Trauma? A Study of Twenty Children Under Age Five at the Time of Documented Traumatic Events. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 27(1), 96-104.

Van der Kolk, B., & Van der Hart, O. (1995). The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma. In C. Caruth (Ed.) Trauma: Explorations in Memory (pp. 158-182). Baltimore: John Hopkins.