Trauma, Silence, and Speech Theme Analysis

The previous installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, ended with a major traumatic experience for Harry: he witnessed Voldemort return to his body and kill Harry's friend and classmate, Cedric Diggory. Hours afterward, Harry's trauma is compounded when Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, refuses to believe that Voldemort returned, thereby invalidating Harry's experiences and, thanks to the newpaper articles published by Rita Skeeter that called Harry's mental stability into question, discrediting his story among many in the Wizarding world. Order of the Phoenix picks up a month later, during which time Harry has received little meaningful communication with his friends and has had no opportunity to process his experiences. By illustrating how this silence makes Harry feel isolated and unsupported and leads him to question his sanity, Order of the Phoenix makes the case that the only effective way to heal from trauma like Harry’s is to talk about it. Additionally, it suggests that maintaining silence is extremely dangerous and leaves traumatized individuals vulnerable to manipulation.

It's important to note that while Harry goes back and forth about whether or not he wants to speak about what happened when Cedric died, his anger and his sense of betrayal by the adult mentors in his life, namely Dumbledore and Sirius, suggest that deep down, Harry desperately wants to be taken seriously and have someone listen to his story. In part because Harry is naturally somewhat suspicious of adult authority figures and in part because of this experience of being ignored by them, he finds that the only place he can turn to reliably seek relief is his friends, Ron and Hermione. However, though Ron and Hermione are the only characters who consistently listen to and support Harry, they are, importantly, children just like Harry is--they don't have the knowledge, skills, or adult maturity to give Harry any new information that might help him understand what's going on. This lack of support, in addition to Dolores Umbridge's campaign to torture Harry and the Daily Prophet's summer campaign of turning Harry into a joke, makes Harry feel isolated and as though he can't trust anyone--a situation that in turn makes him feel as though he has to take matters into his own hands.

By illustrating how antagonistic Ministry-affiliated individuals as well as adult mentors whom Harry trusts all make Harry feel isolated and unsupported, the novel suggests that where trauma is concerned, intention doesn't matter. Though both Sirius and Dumbledore act in ways that they believe will ultimately protect Harry, their actions do just as much harm, at least on an emotional level, as the Ministry's do. When Harry tries to tell Sirius about his disturbing "nightmare" of being the snake that attacks Mr. Weasley, Sirius brushes Harry's concern off and suggests that Harry is just overtired. Again, though it's unclear whether Sirius responds in this way because Dumbledore told him to, because he truly thinks Harry is overtired, or because he thinks he's being soothing by insisting it's not a big deal, it ultimately doesn't matter--the fact remains that this response encourages Harry to question his own sanity. In addition, not having any information about the true significance of his dreams means that Harry doesn't take Dumbledore's insistence that Harry take lessons in Occlumency (a branch of magic that protects one's mind from attack) with Snape seriously. Dumbledore reveals too late that the Occlumency lessons were intended to protect Harry from possession or manipulation, information that may have impressed upon Harry the importance of dedicating himself to learning to close his mind.

Because of Harry's isolation and his belief that what he sees in these "dreams" is entirely true (which seems to be confirmed for Harry after the snake dream, as Mr. Weasley does suffer a dangerous snake bite), Harry rushes to the Ministry of Magic with his friends when he dreams that Voldemort has Sirius there and is torturing him. This is eventually revealed to be a trap, and in the ensuing battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the Death Eaters, Sirius dies. During Dumbledore and Harry's discussion later, Dumbledore takes the blame for what happened and suggests that his choices to ignore Harry this year and deny Harry pertinent information in years past is directly responsible for Sirius's death. Dumbledore explains that the "dreams" Harry has are actually the result of a connection to Voldemort, and Voldemort is now aware of this and used the connection to plant the dream that he was torturing Sirius. Because none of the adults in Harry's life ever shared this with Harry, Harry never knew that such a thing was possible. Because Harry was silenced and lacked support from the adults in his life, he became an easy target for Voldemort. While Harry’s trauma creates psychological disturbance of a magical nature, it seems that Rowling may also be suggesting that non-magical trauma in the real world can have similarly dire consequences when it’s not processed in a supportive environment.

Further, Dumbledore also explains that Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby because of a prophecy that says that at some point, either Harry or Voldemort has to kill the other. By giving Harry this information, Dumbledore enables Harry to make sense of past events and also helps him understand what his future holds. In this way, the novel ultimately asserts the necessity of honesty, conversation, and shared knowledge, and suggests that they're essential to beginning to heal from trauma. It also makes it very clear that developing this openness with Dumbledore in particular is an essential element of Harry's journey forward.