Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
or, the terror of bureaucracy
Catch up here:
We done grown up, kids.
If Prisoner of Azkaban was the first pubescent tingle and Goblet of Fire was us figuring out how to deal with this changing body, this growing heart, then Order of the Phoenix is when our voice finally changes and settles at that timbre.
And it is utterly packed full of wizarding. Even for a novel about the wizarding world, there sure is more of it than there ever has been before!
It’s also where Rowling really tries to solidify this haphazard world she’s somewhat accidentally tossed together. The result is quite a good novel, if you kind of ignore the stagecraft, the underpinning reality.
While I mentioned the strange state and function of bureaucracy in The Goblet of Fire, we really dive fully into how bizarre this world is, which does, honestly, threaten to shatter the worldbuilding. Because it does become clear that the wizarding world is duct taped together by bureaucracy.
And like any good work of bureaucratic fiction, it is both totalitarian, absurd, and unbreakable. If Rowling did nothing else for young readers, she managed to lead them by the hand to Kafka’s nightmare.
Because the beauty and calamity of a bureaucracy is that no one is to blame, no one is accountable, and so nothing can be done when the weight of bureaucracy begins falling upon you. It gives petty functionaries godlike power, becoming akin to forces of nature rather than smallminded petty jerks.
We also see how the bureaucracy swallows people whole. Percy Weasley, for example, has always been a kowtowing little shit, but we see, here, how his devotion to the Machine and his desire to rise within the Machine1 causes him to turn on everything and everyone who stands in his way.
This is the beauty of the Machine.
You define yourself by your relation to it.
And if you’ve given this much to the Machine, you can’t be doing it for no reason, yes? It also can’t be for such small and petty reasons, so the Machine itself must be good and true and worthy of all your time and attention.
And so we see good men and women swallowed, consumed, and regurgitated by the Machine.
And is there any wonder?
For, really, what alternative is there?
Nearly the entire wizarding world is employed by the Ministry of Magic. Everyone who does not work directly for the governmental bureaucracy (whose primary purpose, I’ll remind you, is keeping the wizarding world secret) works for one of the few magical schools or is some kind of independent adventurer or journalist or pub owner or trinket seller or just generationally wealthy to levels of obscenity.
When you graduate from Hogwarts, what are you supposed to do? Become an elementary school teacher to muggles?
No, of course not. So you apply for a job in government, of which there seems to be an inexhaustible amount, and hope that you don’t end up on the Arthur Weasley track to nowhere.
What you seem to get from this massive bureaucracy is not the best rising to the top, but those most grasping for power. So you have Cornelius Fudge in all his pettiness and Dolores Umbridge in all her vindictiveness sitting atop this mountain of mediocrity.
This also complicates the world in an interesting way, because all the truly good wizards are not only working against Voldemort, they’re working against the government itself.
This kind of narrative seems to be the backbone of the YA genre Harry Potter ejaculated into existence. A small group of freedom fighters sabotaging and subverting the totalitarian government.
What’s maybe most interesting here is that the Ministry of Magic is totalitarian but populated by mediocrities. It’s not a well oiled Reichish totalitarianism, but a bloated Blairite neoliberalism full of flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters2.
But we do have the Ministry of Magic interfering with freedom of the press and academic freedom. Here, the singular Daily Prophet is all but told what to print and when to print it.
The real world parallels here are worth discussing.
This novel came out a few months after the US, UK, and various other coalition governments, illegally invaded Iraq. The mainstream press was near universal in its approval, despite the largest anti-war protest movement in history filling up cities.
It may seem quaint, now, to equate the Bush and Blair Administrations with fascism, but I’d say the term applied better then than it does now.
I know that for many Trump was the beginning of their political consciousness, but I was alive and mostly self-aware twenty years ago and I remember—even though, like Harry, I was only a teenager—the shocking and oppressive way the media—liberal and conservative alike—manufactured consent for an endless war on terror, and how that manufacturing did not end with the election of President Obama but actually increased and solidified in meaningful ways.
Now that I’ve made sure to be as offputting as possible to my readers, let’s continue with the novel:
Rowling’s thesis, here, is that Centrism is the path to Fascism.
It is the Ministry of Magic, that stabilizing force in society, that masks and obscures the rise of an extreme and violent conservative group of militants. Even when these militants engage in actual terrorism against that same government—as in the attacks on Azkaban that freed many Deatheaters and turn the Dementors against the Ministry—the Ministry runs cover for them, all to try to maintain stability and assert their own power and control over the situation.
Rather than investigate the actual problem, they shift blame to troublemaking activist agitators, like Dumbledore. Because Dumbledore is signaling to the world that fascism is rising, that literal wizard Hitler is back from the dead, the Ministry chooses to attack Dumbledore rather than stop the rising fascist threat while it’s still small and squashable.
Honestly, this feels like the history of the last 20 years of politics.
ANYWAY.
It can be easy to overlook what makes of the bulk of this novel, which is more hanging out at Hogwarts. There’s a whole lot of wizarding hijinks, including the explosive expulsion of George and Fred Weasley, the awkward romance with Cho Chang3, the cruelty of Umbridge, the subtle rebellion of the Hogwarts professors4, the conflicts between the adults (like Sirius and Molly, for example), and so many other things that make us want to live in Hogwarts and this world, that make it feel alive and real.
And it really does begin to feel more and more solid with each book. Part of this is simple repetition. But a bigger part is that Rowling has begun to give people characteristics and lives outside of Harry’s attention.
One of the most powerful scenes in the series up to this point is Molly Weasley being haunted by the deaths of her children, especially since they’re not yet dead.
It’s a scene that probably meant little to you when you were 12 or 15, but it was like a hammer against my chest now that I’m 35 and have two kids of my own.
This is a strength in Rowling’s writing. It’s something that was not present in the early books of the series. Rowling has matured in myriad ways during the writing of this series, and that she had to do it all in front of millions upon millions of fans waiting desperately for each new book is quite remarkable.
One could compare it favorably to the ways that Patrick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch collapsed due to the immensity of pressure put on them by becoming bestsellers.
Consider this: many of you reading this may have never even heard of Rothfuss or Lynch, and yet the level of fame they had—limited as it was—crushed them.
Rowling is, perhaps, the most famous author of the last three centuries. And I choose that cutoff arbitrarily. I think it is fair to say that no author in the world has ever had so much expectation put upon them. And instead of crumbling or collapsing, she exceeded expectation at each and every novel in the series she released.
ANYWAY.
I need to mention Snape.
We’re all adults, yes? We know what happens in the next two books, yeah? I can spoil it in a major way?
Snape sucks.
He is cruel and nothing he does later justifies the way he continually demeans and berates children effectively under his care.
Snape is a coward and a bully and his unrequited love for Lily Potter doesn’t make him a hero or admirable.
If anything, his love of Harry’s mother should have given him some amount of tenderness for her child. Her child who was orphaned before he ever knew either of his parents. Before he knew anything about anything.
Knowing Harry’s background and loving his mother, you’d think that he would find some gentleness for this horrifically abused child.
But again, to excuse Rowling here, which I guess I’m doing: none of this was part of the plan.
She was winging it and eventually got an idea that she thought was real neat. A way to subvert expectations! A way to throw some pathos to a character who has been particularly one-note.
And, for all the fault I find in it, many love this specific storyline.
And who am I to tell them they’re wrong?
Well, I’m me, goddamn it!
Snape sucks!
All that being said, it really is remarkable that each Harry Potter novel does increase in quality. This is something that would seem obvious, but I have read far too many books by far too many authors who, sometimes, get worse as their career goes on, especially if they reach a certain level of fame and notoriety.
Robert Jordan, for example.
But, yes: until next time, when we Dumbledore our way into Voldemort’s childhood.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.
“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.”
― Mario Savio
For more on the distinctions, read David Graeber’s famous essay Bullshit Jobs.
While some have used the name of Cho Chang as a sign that Rowling was always racist, I’ll gently remind everyone that the Prime Minister of Magic is named Cornelius Fudge. These names are not meant to be taken seriously and their silliness is the bedrock of the Wizarding world.
A slowdown is an effective pseudo-strike, but I think it complicates their stance as good when they’re essentially standing idly by while students under their care are literally tortured by the Headmistress. I mean, come on, McGonagall! You need to protect these kids!
Yeah, that scene with Molly Weasley being tormented by visions of the deaths of her children really got me too. I remember reading it aloud to my kids and having to stop because I was near tears.
I do think, though, that the YA trope of resisting bureaucratic authority goes way back, long before Harry Potter. As soon as kids are old enough to be able to read and choose books for themselves, they are becoming aware that they are stuck having to follow rules that don’t always make sense to them, rules that are set by authorities who are sometimes benign (their parents, if the kids are lucky) and sometimes capricious and cruel (teachers and principals, religious leaders, older or higher-status kids). Stories about pioneers, independent adventures, orphans, and runaways have always been popular, because they get at kids’ developmentally-appropriate desire to escape the rules. Rowling tapped into the desire especially well, in how she makes the incompetent and malign bureaucracy of the Ministry of Magic so flagrant, but she was tapping in, not creating anew, in my opinion.
I really didn’t like the 5th book. I thought the whole Umbridge thing was unnecessarily long and cruel. I got bored about 2/3 through and had to force myself to pick it back up.
Re-reading it to my daughter didn’t change that opinion, you could chop 100 pages out of it and not change the story.