Harry Potter and the Secret Subtext
A subtle theme it’s easy to miss in the novels
Charlotte Alter raises an interesting question in her new book about millennials: Were millennials shaped by Harry Potter, or did they shape him?
The answer might seem obvious: Of course, J.K. Rowling influenced millennials, and not vice versa. If it weren’t true, millennials wouldn’t have packed bookstores at midnight, or joined the 300 Quidditch teams that Alter says exist at high schools and colleges.
But it’s not that simple, as Alter sees it. She argues that for millennials, Harry represented an escape from the pressures of being young when their elders expected them to do far more to prepare for college or work than had earlier generations:
“He was an orphan with little adult supervision and few parental figures in his life, a fantasy of power and independence for a generation of overscheduled kids who weren’t allowed to do anything on their own.”
What’s more, Harry’s universe reflected many of the values millennials shared, or at least that their boomer parents had tried to instill in them: “Women and people of different races were all treated equally in the Potter universe and, most important, always had been: two of the four Hogwarts houses were founded by women, a fact that seems so obvious to…
