Week Five: Hate, Fear, and Evil
• Which character, creature, thing, etc. do you most hate in Harry Potter? Why? Discuss in depth. Is your hated fair? Is it possible the character/creature is not the root cause of what you hate? Is it possible to change it? Does your hatred prevent you from seeing any good in the character/creature? Would someone else have a different perspective on it? • Rita Skeeter is a commonly hated character. Why? Is she the cause of the problem, or just a representation or embodiment of our culture? Is her writing harmful? Why? What ways might there be to eliminate or reduce Rita Skeeter-like journalism in our world? Is it possible to do so? • Umbridge may be the most hated character in the series. Why is that? Why not Voldemort? Do we pity Voldemort? If so, is it because we know more of his backstory than Umbridge’s? What is it about Umbridge that you hate most? Are you ever like Umbridge? What does Umbrige want? What is her motivation? • What motivates Death Eaters to become such? Is it possible you might have become a Death Eater if you were raised in a different environment? • Voldemort’s rise in power coincides with the dementors being let loose across England. Consider the symbolism of this: the entire country, both Muggle and magical, is in a dark, depressive fog, whether they can see the source or not. What is the difference between a personal depression, like Harry experiences during Prisoner of Azkaban, and this larger, national depression? Do you think a political structure, such as Voldemort’s tyranny, is capable of causing such widespread depression? How can citizens deal with this? • What is evil? Try to clearly define it. How easy or hard is it to determine what is evil? Think of examples where it is hard to define what is evil or not. Can “good” people commit evil? Can “evil” people do good? Is it possible for a person to be both good and evil? Is it possible for a person to change from one to the other? Explain.