Prejudice between the wizarding and muggle world in Harry Potter

The viewpoints of J.K. Rowling

The Prejudice between the wizarding world and the muggle world with the Harry and the J.K. Rowling’s perspective.

In the Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone of J.K. Rowling the writer has created the fantasy universe which seems like a utopian place especially the Wizarding world in contrary of muggle world. J.K. Rowling has described many issues in the novel through the different incidences. This essay will cover the prejudices, which wizards holds against the muggles, particularly from the Harry Potter’s perspectives regarding the inferiority and the superiority between the wizards and the muggles. And the views of the J.K. Rowling’s in the book and movie representing it as an idyllic world.

A long before Harry came to Hogwarts or even heard of the word magic, he lived his life as a muggle orphan whose parents were dead and who lived with his nasty relatives and bully cousin. On his eleventh birthday, Hagrid came to take him to wizarding world, he was all astonished and more surprised to hear about his parents and Lord Voldemort (Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone 62). And when Harry reached to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he got to know everything about muggles and wizards. The Hogwarts houses, his friends, the teachers and even the cooks in the school knew the tales of dark lord and the famous Harry Potter (Farhan). Even till the end muggles, as they were called by wizards. The central character’s thoughts about keeping both worlds in a peaceful situation explains Rowling’s viewpoints about the prejudice (Boutheyna and Manal). J.K. Rowling has bought up two worlds and throughout the entire story, she lets her readers make a diversifying thought about muggle world and wizarding world. Just like muggle world, there is prejudice ramping in wizarding world too. The sole reason of this thought was because people from both worlds did not like their idea of being different, so they themselves felt inferior about their selves. Thus, Rowling, in her book demonstrates that the idea of prejudice is based on unfounded and dangerous assumptions about people, whereas the contradictory thought to this concept is Harry, Ron and Hermoine’s friendship.

Though Hermoine is muggle-born, Harry and Ron always took her to be the smartest witch in room (Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone 192). There are several incidences in book where Draco Malfoys has tried to bully and humiliate Hermoine based on her blood status (Camacci). This proves the fact that the wizarding world did not stand up for each other many times. There have been a lot of prejudice statements made by Malfoys family, and some other characters like Snape and Kreacher, about the impure blood of muggles (Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone). When Voldemort took over the Ministry of magic, he exploited and even killed muggles in his process of looking for Harry Potter. Apart from Malfoys, Bellatrix, Lestrange also tortured Hermoine due to same reason. It can thus be said that the wizarding world and Hogwarts, as written and described by Rowling, might be the most magical place for people but it is true that there were always issues with prejudice about muggles and wizards (Rowling, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone).

Incidences of prejudice in the Potter universe

The prosecution of wizards and witches across the Europe had been growing since the early 1400’s really magic in any way to muggle kind held the major consequences in the days including imprisonment and frequently sentencing to death while some like Lissette De Lapin, able to magically escape and other like headless nick restricted their wands with no way to escape even with magic and during those dangerous time the wizarding families were to hide and live double lives to avoid themselves from burned and also when wizards truly began to hate muggles openly and wizards who supported them. The wizards called mud wallow errs or dung liquors or scum suckers, who were pro muggles.

The muggles and wizards both had issues, problems from each other they both had fear of losing their power and status in the society. The wizard community begin to lean towards hiding all the wizards and witches from the muggle world (Wizarding World ). As it was not just adult muggles were hunting anyone regardless of age, all were using magic and feared and punished many young wizards were widely prosecuted without any proper training and to hide their powers. Which lead to growing number of deaths of the wizard child and also increase in the number of accidental witches, burning of muggles because of these two terrible occurrences led to believe in wizards for making change (Rowling, The Floo Network). And for that the Great Britain wizards petition was also made for the muggle British monarch to protect the wizards under muggle law. And the government did not take any action and declared that wizards should move in the widespread secrecy, which most of the wizards does not want this change, though many believed that wizard should declare the war on the muggles and become the superiors, and rule instead of hiding themselves from the muggles. But some like.  Also, after the court declared to sign the bill of secrecy because of the muggles were gaining the rights and wizards were killed.

The wizards like Hagrid prefer to be separated from the muggles and the many other magical people especially who had pure bloods were wanted to rule the world and stay superior from the muggles. Mellifluous once proposed that the muggle hunting be legal in 20^th century and the Gellert Grindelwald criticized the status of secrecy for protecting the muggles instead of the wizards. The Lord Voldemort was one who led the wizarding wars, with the intention of making new order which based around wizard purebloods and the enslavement of the muggles. After centuries, the prosecution passed the verdict that the international status of secrecy shall remain for the wizards and that they shall continue to be restricted in the shadows of society. However, some wizards still believed that they should rule instead of hiding themselves. Additionally, some wizards started to live independently, observing and safeguarding the world.

The above essay describes that the two worlds, wizarding world and the muggle world feel very inferior about their selves. As how the Lord Voldemort is so obsessed with being superior from the muggles and initiated the war against the muggle. The Malfoys hate the muggle-born because they have impure blood, and they have to hide themselves from the muggles. The wizards were restricted to not show magics or any power on the muggles and leave their life by hiding themselves in a secret world. But there were some wizards who were agreed to live in the secrecy for protecting the world.

References

Boutheyna, Fetatnia and Bourara Manal. "From Adolescence to Adulthood: Character Development of Harry Potter in JK Rowling's novels, Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows." 2020. <https://dspace.univ-guelma.dz/jspui/bitstream/123456789/10762/1/M821.302.pdf>.

Camacci, Lauren R. "The Prisoner of Gender: Masculinity in the Potter Books." Wizards vs. Muggles: Essays on Identity and the Harry Potter Universe (2016): 27--48.

Farhan, Alsharab Osama. "The Most Popular Fantasy Novel in the Beginning of Twenty-First Century ‘Harry Potter’." International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences 4.4 (2019): 1061--1064.

Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury Children's Book, 2014.

—. Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. London: Bloomsbury Children's Book, 2014.

—. The Floo Network. August 2015.

<https://www.wizardingworld.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-floo-network>.

Warner Bros. HARRY POTTER & THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 2022.

<https://www.warnerbros.co.uk/movies/harry-potter-and-philosophers-stone>.

Wizarding World . How do wizards keep themselves so secret from Muggles? January 2018.

<https://www.wizardingworld.com/features/how-do-wizards-keep-themselves-so-secret-from-muggles>.