The Purpose of Education
For Harry and his friends' fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the stakes are higher than ever. With the Dark Lord Voldemort returned to his body and fifth-year students sitting their O.W.L. exams (standardized tests that determine which classes students can take going forward), Harry finds himself caught between his schoolwork and the turmoil he knows is taking place outside of Hogwarts. Then, with the appointment of Dolores Umbridge to Hogwarts, first…
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Trauma, Silence, and Speech
The previous installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, ended with a major traumatic experience for Harry: he witnessed Voldemort return to his body and kill Harry's friend and classmate, Cedric Diggory. Hours afterward, Harry's trauma is compounded when Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, refuses to believe that Voldemort returned, thereby invalidating Harry's experiences and, thanks to the newpaper articles published by Rita Skeeter…
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Choices, Family, and Love
Having grown up with his abusive Muggle aunt and uncle as adoptive parents, Harry's experiences of family have been fractured at best. To compensate, Harry relies on Sirius, his godfather and his father's best friend, as well as others who knew his parents, to give him a sense of who his parents were and where he fits into his biological family. However, as the year progresses, Harry learns some unsavory things about his father…
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War: Excitement vs. The Mundane
At the beginning of the novel, much of Harry's anger stems from his belief that Ron, Hermione, and Sirius are all closely involved with the exciting and meaningful resistance effort against Voldemort, while he sits, alone and ignored, in his bedroom at the Dursleys' house. However, once Harry travels to number 12, Grimmauld Place--the headquarters of the resistance group the Order of the Phoenix--Harry discovers that resistance is nowhere near as exciting…
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Prejudice and Discrimination
As Harry's understanding of the Wizarding world expands, he comes into progressively more contact with non-human beings and the ways in which his society actively discriminates and disempowers them. In addition to looking at the non-human beings that share Harry's world, Order of the Phoenix also examines the way that racism and prejudice among humans function through Voldemort's rise to power and in the very systems that organize Hogwarts itself. By exploring these different modes…
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