Information, Rumors, and Fear Theme Analysis

Harry Potter’s second year at the wizarding school of Hogwarts is dominated by attacks on Muggle-born students by an unknown attacker. When students are attacked, they become completely petrified (literally, frozen like statues and almost impossible to revive), and thus are unable to provide information on who or what might have attacked them. This lack of information causes fear and doubt to fly throughout the castle. As a result, theories and rumors begin to spread about who could be carrying out these attacks and why; some focus on Harry, while others center on Draco Malfoy or Hagrid—none of whom are the real source of the attacks. Using this mystery as the center of the plot, Rowling demonstrates how a lack of information in a frightening situation spurs people to fear the unknown and spread rumors to fill those anxiety-inducing gaps in information. However, as Rowling points out, this impulse is harmful, unproductive, and distracting, and the best thing to do in a case like this is to actively and clear-mindedly seek out facts, like Hermione does.

When the attacks first occur, the lack of understanding among the students and teachers begins as uneasiness and quickly escalates to outright panic. In the first attack, Mrs. Norris (the cat belonging to Hogwarts’s caretaker, Mr. Filch), is petrified alongside the message: “The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir, beware.” Dumbledore reveals that he does not know what could have petrified her, nor does anyone understand what the message means. The fact that Dumbledore, one of the most knowledgeable wizards alive, does not know something sends the students into a nervous frenzy. Rowling describes how “for a few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack,” proving how a lack of information quickly translates into fear. The second attack is on a first-year Gryffindor student named Colin Creevey. When Colin is brought into the hospital, Harry is there recovering from a broken arm and is able to eavesdrop on Professor Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall, who are as worried as Harry is about the implications of this attack. Rowling notes that “from what Harry could see of Professor McGonagall’s shadowy face, she didn’t understand any of this better than he did.” The professors’ lack of information about what’s happening, along with their inability to prevent what has now become a series of attacks, sparks fear in the rest of the student body as well. Rowling describes how the air was “suddenly thick with rumor and suspicion,” and that first-years moved around the castle in groups, too afraid to venture out alone. Another attack, this time on a second-year student named Justin Finch-Fletchley and the ghost Nearly Headless Nick, turns “what had hitherto been nervousness into real panic.” These escalating descriptions of the mood in the castle demonstrate how fear of the unknown, perhaps even more than the monster itself, is what ultimately instills panic within the student body.

In the midst of this lack of information and the fear that it sparks, rumors start to spread in order to try to fill in the gaps. Yet the rumors are often baseless, simply blaming the most obvious candidates in order to relieve the accusers’ anxiety, rather than examining real evidence. Rumors start to spread that Harry himself is the heir of Slytherin and that he opened the Chamber of Secrets, despite the fact that after Mrs. Norris’s attack, Dumbledore assured Filch that Harry could not have accomplished this kind of advanced spell. Still, many students try to avoid Harry. One Hufflepuff boy, Ernie, says that Harry is trying to petrify anyone who interferes with him, and that Voldemort wanted to kill him as a baby because he didn’t want to compete with another dark wizard. These rumors are not only incredibly hurtful to Harry, but they also distract the students from the real heir of Slytherin, who is hiding within the castle. Harry, for his own part, starts to believe that Draco Malfoy is the heir of Slytherin, despite the fact that he has no evidence for this theory except for the fact that Malfoy is prejudiced against Muggle-born students. Just as many students are using limited information in deciding that Harry is the heir of Slytherin, so too does Harry fall victim to his lack of knowledge and simply try to confirm what he hopes to be true.

In contrast to the students who simply discuss rumors and give in to this lack of information, Hermione tries to find out information in order to combat the attacks and the fear surrounding them. After the first attack and the writing on the wall that “the Chamber of Secrets has been opened,” Rowling describes how Hermione tries to read as many books as she can, looking for information on the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione then asks Professor Binns, the History of Magic professor, what the Chamber is and what monster might be lurking inside. She is the only one who seems to be able to get reliable information, which helps Harry and Ron understand what might be happening beyond the level of rumor. When Hermione comes to a sudden realization about a mysterious voice that Harry has been hearing, she once again goes to the library to find out information on monstrous snakes—putting together the fact that Harry is the only one who hears the voice and the fact that he is the only one at school who can talk to snakes. Sadly her discovery that the monster is a basilisk comes too late, and she is petrified before she can reveal the information. But her hesitation to rely on any information of which she doesn’t know the source allows Hermione to discover the right answer rather than give in to rumors and fear.

In the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore will tell Harry: “It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.” Rowling implicitly makes that same argument in the pages of The Chamber of Secrets. Without information or knowledge, fear spreads quickly and insidiously, while the only way to fight that fear—as Harry, Ron, and Hermione discover—is to find out as much information as they can and use it to come to more accurate conclusions.