Harry Potter and the Ritualistic Macro-Quest

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is noticeably lacking in the sort of rituals formerly associated with adolescent spell-casters: no pentagrams are carved, no blood is consumed (save that of a few unlucky unicorns and the odd werewolf victim), and the phrase “Bloody Mary” isn't uttered once. In fact, thanks to the boy wizard and his friends, the phrase “teenage witch” is more likely to invoke an image of Emma Watson in a striped scarf than of the mini-skirted goths of The Cult. (Of course, there will always be those whose first thoughts are of Melissa Joan Hart, but they haven't fully recovered from years of exposure to TGIF.) With a new schema comes a new script, and the rules of the Potterverse indicate that a re-visioning of old mythologies can lead to a pop culture phenomenon. The series' emphasis on rebirth and redemption, the archetypal nature of Harry's adventures, and the real-life traditions that sprang up around the release and reading of each new book point to the fact that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' cultural significance lies not in the fact that it is the final instalment of one of the most wildly successful literary series of all time, but that it represents the final leg of the macro-quest for both protagonist and reader. Rituals may be thought of as static or confining, but it is the Harry Potter books' relationship with ritual that allows readers to connect with the narrative and enables the hero to connect with himself. 

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell describes a hero as “someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself,” and explains the quest motif that emerges from such dedication: 

You leave the world that you're in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height.Then you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem either of staying with that, and letting the world drop off, or returning with that boon and trying to hold onto it as you move back into your social world again. 

The linking of Harry's annual rebirth as a wizard to the beginning of the school year and, by extension, the harvest season, the many reappearances of the Sorting Hat, and the books' pervasive phoenix motif are inextricably linked to the themes of rebirth, redemption, and redefinition that characterize the series, but exploring all of this would result in a critical article of epic proportions. For now, it's sufficient to say that although the first six novels all begin with: Harry's departure from Number 4, Privet Drive; the introduction of a spell that will come in handy within a few hundred pages; Harry learning an important lesson  about his place in the world (related to either his celebrity status or his relationships with those around him); and end with the temporary defeat of Voldemort and/or his agents, the movement of Harry and company out of Hogwarts and into the wilderness for much of The Deathly Hallows indicates that the events of each individual book represent an adventure cycle of the greater macro-quest of the series.  Harry performs the archetypal hero-ritual a significant seven times before he fully comprehends his mentor Dumbledore's assertion that “it is our choices ... that show what we really are, far more than our abilities.” Accordingly, Harry – who refuses to use an Unforgivable Curse at the beginning of the novel – ultimately defeats Voldemort with the Expelliarmus spell that has been his signature move since The Philosopher's Stone. By electing to have her hero triumph by performing a spell she introduced in the series' first book rather than teaching him a more powerful curse in its last, Rowling replicates the structure of The Deathly Hallows’ six predecessors on a grand scale. Thus, although the emphasis placed on the name of Harry's second son, Albus Severus, may seem like a trite way to end the series, it functions as a handy hero-quest shorthand: in Harry's case, the “boon” of which Campbell speaks is not the death of Voldemort, but rather the knowledge that, although magic hats may be excellent judges of character, humans are ultimately responsible for defining themselves.  

But what does this have to do with Harry's fans? If the popularity of Facebook applications and online quizzes modelled on the Sorting Hat (not to mention the abundance of striped scarves at release parties) are any indication, Potterheads are just as concerned with defining themselves as are the characters they can't get enough of. (In case you're interested, I've been sorted into Ravenclaw.) Although the ritualistic midnight release parties that sprang up as soon as the series became popular were corporately engineered, they were successful for a reason:  when performed in a group, rituals create a sense of community and belonging, and they enable us to locate ourselves in an often chaotic world (if only for as long as it takes to perform them). For Harry's acolytes, The Deathly Hallows was simultaneously the last chance to don their ceremonial ties, robes, scarves, and pointed hats and to participate in the midnight rituals that symbolically usher in the next cycle of their hero's story, the last chance to speculate on and then dissect the events of a Potter book with the sort of frenzied immediacy that can only arise from total immersion in the pop-culture zeitgeist, and the concluding adventure of their ten-year quest. Perhaps, then, the magic of Rowling's series lies in the pervasiveness of its rituals. In the worlds both in- and outside the text, ample opportunities are provided for us to latch on to these patterns in an attempt to “show what we really are” or wish to become, and to whom we are – or would like to be – connected.

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