The Role Of Discrimination In Harry Potter

As a child, watching films taught me many lessons about the world I know today. One prominent storyline that I grew up with was the Harry Potter series. I loved to read when I was younger and I would devour myself into the books and would watch the films after I had finished reading the actual book. Harry Potter brought me into this fantasyland with wizard and witches but also had extreme similarities to the world we have today. The lesson of discrimination is shown throughout the whole Harry Potter series. The first thing we learn about Harry was that his aunt and uncle, who were his adoptive parents, weren’t treating him very fairly. They kept him locked up in a little room under the stairs with the bare minimum. Though the family was fairly rich, Harry was not well taken care of. Instead of being a child and playing, he was sort of a servant to the Dursleys while his cousin was treated with the finest clothing and toys. Since Harry was not like his family, he was treated as something less than what he actually was.

From the beginning of arriving into Hogwarts, the children are then immediately sorted into four different houses that they would be with for the next seven years. Because being divided into groups such as Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, the groups form pre-conceived notions and stereotypes about each other. For example, it is the notion that everyone who is sorted into Slyterin is evil or bad, but this is not the case. The same goes for those who are sorted into Ravenclaw. People who are sorted into Ravenclaw are seen as the smartest of the group, but one of the smartest witches, Hermione, was sorted into