Segregation and Prejudice in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Jeremy Hester College

Although race discrimination exists as a major theme throughout the entirety of J. K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, it is in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that Harry, our protagonist for all seven books, becomes acutely aware of the discrimination of multiple groups in both Hogwarts and the Wizarding World in general. Harry is both introduced to and further familiarized with several oppressed groups in this novel, such as house elves, muggle-borns and squibs. His interactions with these groups often mirror the interactions of real children learning about and experiencing discrimination for the first time. These themes of segregation and prejudice serve to mark Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a more mature and complex novel than its predecessor.

The first new character Harry is introduced to in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is Dobby the house-elf, who happens to be heavily discriminated against. House-elves, as portrayed in the series, are a race enslaved to wizarding kind. Each house elf is forced to obey his or her master at all times, a fact so heavily ingrained in their society that when Dobby tries to save Harry Potter from his master’s evil plot, Dobby constantly punishes himself for his own...