Harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban hero's journey

A Rankian Analysis of the Hero of Hogwarts by M. KATHERINE GRIMES

WHAT TO EXPECT . . . Harry Potter is both a figure in popular culture and an extremely well known contemporary literary character. As a result, he can provide us with a range of insights into how heroes operate in our society and what they show us about ourselves. This chapter investigates the young wizard and the series of books in which he appears from the perspective of psychologist Otto Rank. As you read, look for a greater understanding of trends in psychology and how they apply to mythology. The question Rank wanted to answer in his studies was, “Where does mythology come from?” His investigations showed that it was part of human nature to tell mythological stories, and that this aspect of our humanity emerges from the way we interact with the members of our families. Thus, the fundamental concept you will encounter here is Rank's family romance, which explains how hero myths result from basic family conflicts that transcend culture and history,

In this chapter, M. Katherine Grimes applies Rank's theories to the Harry Potter series and updates them to reflect the social conditions of our time. As a result, she presents new perspectives on the books and films about Harry Potter and the mission of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Her discussion leads us to reexamine the role of female characters as heroes and to think about the importance of the mother figure in mythological stories, as well as to ponder the significance of the themes of birth and rebirth.

Before you read this essay, you might want to review the discussion of heroes earlier in this section as well as the other archetypes as presented by Jung in the previous section. As you read this chapter, compare Harry Potter with other ancient and classical heroes like Gilgamesh and Hercules, as well as contemporary uses of the hero archetype like Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) or Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games).

The psychological theories of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank have used the images found in myth to explain conflicts in the human unconscious (As seen in previous sections of this course). By the same token, these theories can enrich our understanding of the meaning of myth. We began this book by suggesting that myths are not just false stories. Rather, they express important truths about the experiences of human beings. Interestingly, the psychological view is yet another perspective from which the traditions preserved as mythology represents such truths,

Rank identified a process called the family romance and argued that it has produced a wide range of stories about the birth and adventures of heroes. Rank himself collected stories from all over the world to show how the family romance worked, but his theories apply as well to other stories as yet unknown and even untold. In this essay, M. Katherine Grimes shows the relevance of Rank's ideas to the beloved popular series of Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling, When Grimes wrote this article, only the first four books had been published: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1997; hereafter Stone), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998; hereafter Chamber), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999; hereafter Prisoner), and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000; hereafter Goblet). As you will see later, however, she was able to forecast the outcome of the series on the basis of her analysis. In the marginalia, we have supplemented her views with additional detail from the last three books, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003; hereafter Phoenix), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005; hereafter Prince), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007; hereafter Hallows),

If Freud, Jung, and Rank are correct, myths come from the human unconscious, and the forces that create them are innate in every human being. "Innate" means "born in" and refers to the complex

of features that makes human beings what they are. For example, language-learning ability is innate: every normal human child is born with the ability to develop language. The child is not born speaking Japanese or Hindi or English but rather has the structures in her brain that allow her to develop language through interaction with her environment. It is not a particular language that is innate in the child, but the ability to develop language.

Grimes' analysis shows that the Harry Potter books are a wonderful illustration of the way stories with mythological meaning continue to enthrall people in contemporary society, providing them with images expressing their fears, hopes, and dreams.

OTO RANK AND THE FAMILY ROMANCE Like Freud, Rank was a clinical practitioner. As part of this profession, he studied the behavior of his patients who were neurotic. However, Freud used the behavior of neurotic patients to explain human nature in general, while Rank preferred to consider the behavior of normal subjects and derive from it an understanding of neurotics. His theories about family relationships developed from actual clinical experiences with both parents and children.

Freud believed that the Oedipus complex, a stage in which a boy desires his mother, and is jealous of his father, was the primary mechanism of sexual and psychic development. In a different vein, Melanie Klein, a contemporary of Freud's who viewed herself as following his lead, actually focused on the so-called pre-Oedipal period in which children of both sexes interacted primarily with the mother. Rank generally agreed with Freud that a complex kind of possessive anger underlies the dynamic of the family. However, he insisted that daughters as well as sons exhibit such behavior, This complex of feelings, he maintained, motivates the creation of the hero myth. Therefore, we might say that Rank sees myth as arising out of basic human conflicts. He understands the child's wanting the mother for itself as one of the most basic conflicts in life: first the (male) child idealizes its parents, but ultimately he is disenchanted with them. He sees that his parents are not perfect and comes to believe they are not of the high social stature he would like. The child Substitutes more exalted figures for his parents in his imaginings, because he wants to return to what he sees as the "vanished happy time" of early childhood.

In the child's view, the parents are first seen as ideals. As he meets other grown-ups and Compares his parents' actions and abilities with them, the child becomes dissatisfied and often feels rejected. Sexual rivalry is often involved in these feelings of rejection. As the child notices the existence of sexual relationships, he begins to imagine his role as part of the sexual relationship of his parents. The child then resents the role his father enjoys and wishes such a relationship with his mother.

Because his parents do not live up to his expectations, the child fantasizes about getting rid of them. This feeling arises as the child is trying to establish his independence. However, despite any negative feelings, the child still harbors his original affection for his parents. Rank emphasizes that the child does not really want to do away with his parents, but that he enjoys imaginary Scenarios in which things work out to his perceived advantage. These fantasies and daydreams express important emotions that children may not be aware of. The child's complex of feelings of longing and rejection, love, and anger together make up the phenomenon that Rank calls the family romance.

THE MYTH OF THE BIRTH OF THE HERO For the child, one of the mechanisms for coping with the feelings he experiences in the family romance is to transform them into a myth. In this story, the child sees himself as an exceptional person who is unjustly treated by a tyrannical older relative (usually a father), but who accomplishes great deeds and is recognized far and wide for these actions.

In his book The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, Rank showed the same common pattern in stories about heroes from many parts of the world dating from the twenty-fourth century B.C.E. as shown in the table. He believed that people create these heroes as a way of expressing the sense of powerlessness a child feels in the family. If, like the hero, the child can fulfill the unlikely task of defeating the powerful oppressor, then he can succeed in satisfying his individual psychic needs. For the child, who resents the power wielded by his parents, the hero's task is always to overpower them. This process is called projection, the reversal of relationship roles. In the myth, the son's real-life rebellion against the father is reversed, so that it is the father who is hostile to the son, not vice versa. And Rank points out that the great myths through the ages emphasize such defeats of oppressive power by the hero. Note, though, that a great number of the heroes Rank describes are in the final analysis the builders of nations, cultures, and religions. Though their stories express the rebellion of the Son against the father, these heroes at the same time channel the creative energies of the son into the Creation of a new way of life.

A Selection of Heroes Studied by Otto Rank in The Myth of the Birth of the Hero Sargon 24th C. B.C.E Mesopotamia Founded Babylon and destroyed the walls

of Uruk, whose Construction is celebrated in the Epic of Gilgamesh

Moses 15OO (1200) B.C.E. Israel Led the Hebrew people out of Egypt to the Promise Land

Paris Nonhistorical: 8th c. B.C.E.

Troy Son of the king; brought about the Trojan War, which caused the downfall of the city

Romulus Nonhistorical: 8th c. B.C.E.

Rome Founder of Rome, first a city, then an empire

Cyrus 6th c. B.C.E. Persia Founded the Persian Empire

Hercules Nonhistorical; throughout classical antiquity

Greece/Rome Hero who performed 12 labors, extending across and beyond the Greek world; was later made a god

Oedipus Nonhistorical: 5th c. B.C.E.

Greece King of Thebes who killed his father and married his mother, which brought about the downfall of his regime, although he was considered a hero in Athens

Jesus 1st c. C.E. Christian Founder of Christianity

Tristan Norihistorical: 12th c. C.E. Celtic, European

Folklore figure in courtly romances who became a knight of King Arthur's Round Table

Although children themselves do not create great myths, as adults they contribute to the existing lore of their culture, adding to or modifying stories in ways that reflect their own experience and feelings, including their memories from childhood. In this way, the myths of a group become the illustrations of psychological situations and the embodiment of human fears and anxieties.

Rank's theory includes us all, for he says that all humans share the psychological experiences he has described. He says that human beings, by their basic nature, tell stories about heroes. We Create hero myths because we unconsciously represent Our infantile struggles in the adventures Of the hero. We idealize ourselves through our conception of the hero, the ego. In the excerpt that follows, through applying Rank's observations, Grimes gives us a new perspective on the books and films about Harry Potter.

UPDATING RANK TO INVESTIGATE HARRY POTTER The influence is not all in ore direction, however. In one respect in particular, Grimes updates Rank's observations to the Social conditions of our time. When Freud and Rank wrote, the family was dominated by the father, but in our day we have a rather different idea of how its dynamic should work. Today, the influence of women and mothers is more important to our understanding of the family, and the strategic role of women is increasingly accepted.

The traditional Freudian update of the story of the hero would be to describe a woman hero whose identity is defined by her competition with her mother for the affections of the opposite sex parent, her father. This is the dynamic of Freud's Electra complex. However, modern feminist Freudians like Nancy Chodorow (The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender) are more inclined to consider the roles of both parents in the development of the child, and thus the hero. And in fact, the change in the status of women in our society has not occurred in such a way as to make credible stories that plug women into the same roles as men. There are of course exceptions to this limitation, but the norm has been to craft stories reflecting the continued importance of men in our society, but with an increased role for women. ► In this scene from Harry

Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the villain, Lord Voldemort (left), separates Harry Potter (background, right) from his parents (foreground, right). The scene shows the hero and his family forming Rank's ideal "family romance," which is shattered by the evil father substitute who inhabits the body of a teacher at Hogwarts.

Some Scholars have, in fact, criticized the Harry Potter stories as not featuring powerful enough

women. Noted folklorist Jack Zipes says, "girls are always left to gawk and gaze at Harry's stunning prowess.” He cites scholar Christine Schoefer as saying, "’Harry's fictional realm of magic and wizardry perfectly mirrors the Conventional assumption that men do and should run the world’" (179). However, we might note the activities and influence of Hermione Granger and other Hogwarts women as evidence in the other direction.

Whatever view we have of this issue, we can agree that women play much more vital roles in the Harry Potter stories than they do in the myths collected by Otto Rank. Thus, to make sense of these

stories, Grimes considers first the role of the father, as a traditional Rankian analyst would, and then develops the role of the mother in the formation of the young wizard, expanding the traditional analysis to represent more closely the view of our society.

Since humans have existed, adults have attempted to make sense of our world through myth. Otto Rank applied his teacher Sigmund Freud's theories of dreams and mythology to many of the world's mythical and legendary heroes, both well and little known. According to Robert A. Segal in his introduction to In Quest of the Hero, both Freud and Rank believed that myths are “the disguised, symbolic fulfillment of repressed, overwhelmingly Oedipal wishes lingering in the adult mythmaker or reader.” In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, originally published in 1909, Rank wrote what Segal calls "the classic Freudian analysis of hero myths.”

According to Rank, hero myths, such as the stories of Oedipus, Moses, and Jesus, contain ten basic elements, eight of which have been fulfilled by Harry Potter:

1. The boy is the son of royal or even immortal parents-Harry Potter's parents are a wizard and a witch.

2. Difficulties precede the conception, and in some cases the mother is a virgin – As of book four, we do not yet know the details of Harry's conception.

3. The child's life is threatened when dream or oracle warns the father or another royal personage that the boy will be a danger – Voldemort, a sort of prince of evil, has reason to fear Harry and tries to kill him.

4. The boy is separated from his parents – Harry's parents are dead.

5. The boy is exposed, often in a basket or other receptacle – Harry is laid on the doorstep of his aunt and uncle in a bundle of blankets.

6. The boy is put into water, either to kill him or to save him- Harry and the other first-years are ferried to Hogwarts across a lake, and before Harry can be free from the Dursleys, Hagrid must fetch him from across a large body of water.

7. The child is rescued by animals or underlings, often shepherds – Harry is rescued by Hagrid, a gamekeeper, and is later aided by his godfather in the form of a dog and his father in the form of a stag.

8. The baby is suckled or reared by animals or lowly persons- Harry's aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, are lowly persons, as is Hagrid, but in a very different way.

9. The hero is eventually recognized as such, often because of a mark or a wound Harry's attack by Voldemort has left him with a scar on his forehead, a sign that other wizards recognize.

10. The hero is reconciled with his father (or his representative), OR he exacts revenge upon his father-Like the condition about conception, this characteristic has not yet been met in Rowling’s novels,

This excerpt comes from: M. Katherine Grimes, “Harry Potter: Fairy Tale Prince, Real Boy, and Archetypal Hero”

"Oedipal wishes" – Rank believed that the characteristics of the family romance were a result of the child's anger at his father for interfering with the child's desire for exclusive access to the mother. Interestingly, because the child projected his anger on the father figure, in the stories it is the father who is angry with the son. Rank explained that children store away these feelings and later express them by telling and appreciating stories that exhibit them. See the introduction (pp. 759–760) for more detail on this process.

"dream or oracle" – In Phoenix, we learn that the basis of Voldermort's fear is a prophecy (839).

"basket or other receptacle" – Moses is rescued from the Pharaoh by being placed in a basket: Jesus is born in a stable and placed into a manger, a receptacle for feeding animals.

"Hagrid, a gamekeeper" – ln Harry’s third year, Hagrid becomes Hogwarts' teacher of the "Care of Magical Creatures," and throughout the series he delights in breeding, raising, and taming all sorts of animals.

The universality of these characteristics in the world's myths and legends has caused much specula- tion as to both why they are ubiquitous and why they are popular.

FATHER FIGURES In the upcoming Section, Grimes discusses the father figure, the most important personage of a traditional Rankian analysis. An examination of the elements of the family romance listed earlier will show that it is the father who receives the warning not to bear a son, and that reconciliation or revenge for his banishment from his original family involves the father. Almost all Rankian heroes are threatened by their fathers or by some other man, of ten a royal figure, who has power over them. Oedipus's father, Laius, ordered the boy exposed, as did Paris's father, Priam. Telephus, son of Hercules; Perseus, son of Zeus; and Gilgamesh are all victims of their maternal grandfathers, and Moses is threatened by the Pharaoh, the father of his adoptive mother. Jesus is threatened by Herod, the Roman ruler of Judea; Romulus and Remus were also condemned to death by a king. Harry Potter is threatened not by his father but by the evil Voldemort, the dark lord, who has numerous ties with the boy. First, he and Voldemort have wands with feathers from the same bird, the Phoenix named Fawkes that belongs to headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Second, Voldemort has tried to kill Harry, and when he fails, he disappears for a decade. In fact, that defeat almost kills Voldemort. Third, by the end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort has been revived by the boy's blood (642-43).

Because it is the father or father figure who has attempted to destroy the child, there must come a time of reckoning between the hero and his attacker. Otto Rank points out that the hero has two choices: to try to reconcile with the father, or to avenge himself against his enemy. Sometimes the tale ends with a combination of these climaxes; the son's assumption of his father's throne is a kind of reconciliation, in the sense that the boy has become the man his father was, but the usurpation is also a sort of revenge or overthrow.

Moses overcomes the man who tried to destroy him, the Pharaoh of Egypt, who ordered all male Hebrew children put to death during Moses' infancy and later sentenced the grown Moses to death for killing an Egyptian. Because the Pharaoh is Moses' adoptive grandfather, as the child had been found and adopted by the ruler's daughter, when Moses' God sends him to save the Hebrews from their captors, Moses settles a personal score as well as a national one,

Oedipus avenges his father's attempt to have him killed, as well, but he does so unawares; he does not know that the traveler he kills in anger is his father, King Laius of Thebes. Paris of Troy is reconciled with his father, Priam, even though the king had sent a slave to leave the infant Paris to be exposed. The story of Romulus and Remus combines the themes of vengeance and reconciliation. Romulus kills his great-uncle, the king who had tried to kill him and his brother, and is reconciled with his grandfather, from whom he had been long separated.

J. K. Rowling's first four books about Harry Potter give the boy six fathers or father surrogates, each of whom is suggested by a father or father figure in myth and legend, but none of whom is completely

Origin of Threats to the Hero (Rankian View) Oedipus Paris Telephus Perseus Gilgamesh Moses Jesus Romulus and Remus

Father Father Grandfather Grandfather Grandfather Father Figure Father Figure Father Figure

“threatened not by his father but by the evil Voldemort" – In much of the series, the main father figure is the ambiguous Professor Snape, the Potions Master at Hogwarts. Though Harry's mentor Professor Dumbledore urges the boy to believe Snape is on the right side, the Potions Master ridicules and punishes Harry throughout the series, He is also responsible for the death of Dumbledore in Prince, but the event is revealed in the next book as more of collaboration than a murder. Snape's actual allegiance is not revealed until the last book, Hallows, where he is shown to have had a complex relationship with both Voldemort and Dumbledore. Despite his menacing behavior toward Harry, Snape is seen finally as his protector, and in the Epilogue, which occurs nineteen years after Hallows, Harry has a Son named Albus Severus, and refers to Snape as "probably the bravest man l ever knew" (758). In Hallows, Harry defeats and kills Voldemort.

exposed – This term refers to leaving a child in the wilderness, as was done with Oedipus. It was a common form of population control in societies that did not consider a child fully human until later in life.

satisfactory. Among them, they represent adults' needs to see fathers as both earthly and immortal. First, of course, is Harry's real father, James Potter, whom Voldemort kills when Harry is only a year old. The boy has great longing to know his father, as we see very clearly in four episodes. The first occurs in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in chapter 12, "The Mirror of Erised.” The mirror shows those who look into it their greatest desire; for Harry, this desire is to see his parents. In fact, as he looks into the mirror, Harry sees himself, his parents, and his other ancestors. He sees himself in his father, for they both are tall and thin with messy dark hair and glasses. Seeing his family for the first time in his memory, Harry is mesmerized. Rowling writes, "The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them” (Sorcerer's Stone, 208-9). It is also in the first book that Harry is given something of his father's: an invisibility cloak, which allows him to move through Hogwarts and beyond without being seen.