Friendship, Loyalty, and Bravery Theme Analysis

Though Harry is the hero of The Chamber of Secrets, as well as the series as a whole, he rarely accomplishes anything completely alone. He is aided by his best friends Ron and Hermione as well as several other mentors like Dumbledore and Hagrid. At times, mostly when Harry feels abandoned by those around him, he becomes quite paralyzed and seemingly unable to act. But when he remembers the loyalty of those friends, and when he shows them loyalty himself, he rediscovers his bravery and is ultimately able to kill the monster within the Chamber of Secrets. In The Chamber of Secrets and beyond, loyalty and friendship are what give Harry the confidence and courage that he needs to defeat the forces of evil. Through Harry’s experience, Rowling suggests that true bravery stems from camaraderie and loyalty to others, rather than individual action.

Whenever Harry is in trouble or needs to find strength, Ron and Hermione are always there to help him. When Harry is imprisoned in his room by the Dursleys at the beginning of the book, Ron and his brothers, Fred and George, borrow their father’s flying car and break Harry out of his room. Subsequently, Harry spends the rest of the summer with the Weasleys, incredibly glad to be with a supportive family. After the attacks begin at Hogwarts, Ron, Hermione, and Harry work together to find out information about the Chamber of Secrets and to try and discover whether Draco Malfoy has opened it. Harry’s friends prove instrumental in gleaning more information from Draco: Hermione makes Polyjuice Potion, which can disguise them as other students in Slytherin, while Harry and Ron impersonate Crabbe and Goyle in order to get truthful answers from Malfoy. Without Ron by his side, Harry would have made a very unconvincing Goyle (as Crabbe and Goyle always seem to be together), and without Hermione, Harry wouldn’t have been able to put the plan into action at all. After Hermione is attacked by the mysterious monster, Ron and Harry become even determined to find out who opened the Chamber of Secrets. When Ron and Harry go into the Forbidden Forest to “follow the spiders,” they do so despite the facts that Ron is terrified of spiders and that Harry’s first experience in the Forbidden Forest a year prior was terrifying. Ron and Harry’s friendship buoys them, but their love and concern for Hermione is what really pushes them to face their fears, once again revealing how instrumental Harry’s friends are in his creating his own courage.

But having friends to back him up is not the only thing that inspires Harry’s bravery. Harry also demonstrates immense loyalty to mentors like Hagrid and Dumbledore. This loyalty allows Harry to call up his bravery even when his mentors are absent, because he wants to prove his support for them. When Harry discovers in Tom Riddle’s diary that Hagrid is the one who was expelled fifty years earlier for opening the Chamber of Secrets, instead of immediately reporting Hagrid, Harry and Ron go to Hagrid find out the truth. Additionally, once they learn that he was not in fact the one who opened the Chamber, they work hard to exonerate Hagrid despite the fact that this entails going into the Forbidden Forest at great personal risk. Dumbledore, too, is removed from Hogwarts because of the attacks on the students and his inability to catch the culprit. But before he leaves, he says that he will “only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to [him],” looking pointedly towards Harry. When Harry eventually goes down into the Chamber and Tom Riddle remarks that Dumbledore isn’t there to protect Harry, Harry says that Dumbledore isn’t as absent as Riddle might think. This act of loyalty summons Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes, who helps Harry by blinding the basilisk. Fawkes also brings with him the Sorting Hat, which produces the Sword of Gryffindor and allows Harry to kill the basilisk. As Dumbledore explains later, Harry demonstrated incredible loyalty in the Chamber, and in return, that loyalty was reciprocated and enabled him to be brave.

Rowling also demonstrates the opposite: when Harry feels like his best friends, Ron and Hermione, have deserted him, this feeling of isolation completely inhibits his sense of confidence or bravery. At the beginning of the novel, a house elf named Dobby intercepts Harry’s letters over the summer, making Harry believe that his friends have not written to him at all. As a result, Harry feels “cut off from the magical world” and worries that “he didn’t have any friends at Hogwarts.” Thus, the simple question of their loyalty makes Harry feel vulnerable and alone. Similarly, when it is revealed that Harry can speak Parseltongue (snake language), Hermione and Ron become concerned about him, unsure whether he might actually be the heir of Slytherin. As the only person at school who can speak Parseltongue, Harry feels set apart from his peers, including his two best friends. This experience saps Harry’s courage, making him feel suspected and isolated from those around him.

Despite these few moments, Hermione and Ron are exceptionally faithful to Harry, as they so often demonstrate. Their friendship is the backbone of the series, and its consistent value to Harry proves one of the central ideas of the series: loyalty and support from friends enable people to have confidence in themselves, which in turn allows them to accomplish extraordinary things.