Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Essay Questions

Sirius Black dies at the end of the novel while saving Harry and his friends. How is his fate ironic?

Harry is summoned to the Department of Mysteries in the first place because he believes that Sirius is being held prisoner there. In fact, he’s safe at home in Grimmauld Place and Harry has simply been tricked. However, when Sirius finds out that Harry is being held by the Death Eaters, he goes with the rest of the Order to help him. While Harry believed that he was saving Sirius by rushing to the Ministry of Magic, in reality, he indirectly caused Sirius’ death by putting himself in a dangerous situation that makes Sirius want to come help him. Furthermore, earlier on in the book Molly Weasley lectures Sirius for seeing Harry only as a younger version of James, his best friend and Harry’s dead father. Molly argues that instead of seeing Harry as a godson, Sirius sees him as a reincarnation of his best friend and someone he can mess around with, just like old times. In the end, it’s Sirius, not Harry, who models more similarities with James, because like James, he sacrifices himself to save Harry from the Death Eaters.

The Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army are two organizations designed to fight Voldemort. How do they differ?

Dumbledore’s Army is created by Harry, Ron, and Hermione after they become frustrated that the Order won’t allow underage wizards to join. While the Order is comprised of an older generation of witches and wizards—people who fought Voldemort the last time he was in power, and Ministry of Magic employees who are unhappy with how Fudge is running things—Dumbledore’s Army is made up of students who legally can’t join the Order, and who are fighting for the future of a world that they have to inherit.

Furthermore, the Order focuses most of its actions on underground work and work within the Ministry of Magic. It assigns members to watch over the Department of Mysteries and ensure that its contents don’t fall into the wrong hands, it recruits adults who fought against Voldemort the first time he was in power, and it operates without taking direct action against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. While Dumbledore’s Army is also covert, holding meetings within Hogwarts and hiding from faculty, its members are focused more on preparing for potential conflicts with the Death Eaters. They practice advanced spells and charms that they won’t learn in their classes at Hogwarts and prepare for combat, and are therefore more of a training group than an actual agency. Theirs is an organization made up of a younger generation that isn’t hardened by a previous war, and is focused on actually fighting the current war and winning, rather than focusing on covert operations and issues within the Ministry of Magic.

Why are so many members of the Wizarding World reluctant to admit that Voldemort is back? This includes prominent members of the wizard government, like Prime Minister Cornelius Fudge and wizards who were alive when Voldemort was in power the first time. Why do they refuse to believe Harry?

If the Wizarding World as a whole was to accept that Voldemort had returned, it would mean returning to an era of wartime after less than twenty years of peace. Voldemort killed thousands of wizards and Muggles when he was in power the first time, including Harry’s parents and several notable members of the Order of the Phoenix, and those he didn’t kill were forced into hiding to avoid death. After a decade and a half of peace, it’s understandable that the general Wizarding World doesn’t want to accept Voldemort’s return; they are traumatized from the last war, and are so terrified to go back to that era that they’ll instead deny Voldemort’s return altogether. Furthermore, following Voldemort’s first defeat, the Ministry of Magic took great care to convince the rest of the world that Voldemort was dead for good and permanently banished. If Fudge admits that he has come back, it will also mean admitting to the world that he was wrong the first time and went on ruling the Ministry while Voldemort was in hiding and regaining power. In an attempt to hide his failure, Fudge maintains that Harry is a liar and Voldemort isn’t back at all.

How does Dolores Umbridge act as a metaphor for larger institutional systems, both in the Wizarding World and our own?

As a teacher appointed directly by Fudge, Umbridge represents the Ministry of Magic’s decision to deny Voldemort’s return. She gives Harry detention when he tries to explain what happened to him the night that Voldemort came back, and refuses to teach her class any practical magic, concerned that doing so will give the impression that she believes that there’s a threat to their safety. Beyond her actions within the Wizarding World, her actions can be seen as a metaphor for restrictive educational policies in our world. She’s a teacher employed by the government to teach a version of the truth that the government has deemed acceptable and to also evaluate teachers so that she can dismiss ones she doesn’t agree with. She can be seen as an allegory for teachers who refuse to teach controversial content—whether that’s accurate sex education, evolutionary biology, or accurate accounts of history—and policies that restrict what teachers can teach, even if the content she’s refusing to teach is beneficial to her students.

How does Rowling continue the conversation about bigotry and prejudice in the Wizarding World from book four? Are Hermione's efforts to promote elfish welfare consistent?

In book four, Hermione starts an organization called Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare (S.P.E.W.). Rowling carries this development through to book five, The Order of the Phoenix. Rowling introduces new cultural conflicts between non-human magical beings and humans and pushes further into conflicts she introduced in book four. For example, Hagrid's heritage as a half-giant is exposed in book four, but in book five, he is actively persecuted for it by Dolores Umbridge, who makes it her mission at the Ministry to push through policy that deliberately discriminates against non-human members of magical society. Hagrid visits the giant settlement with Olympe and attempts to persuade them to join Dumbledore's cause, but Rowling makes it so that in-fighting among the giants prevents them from joining, thus showing how giants are divided as race. Rowling introduces centaurs in book five, portraying them as a magical race with separate customs, sovereign lands, and a mystical association with the land and the stars. At one point, Umbridge says to the centaurs, "I would remind you that you live here only because the Ministry of Magic permits you certain areas of land—” (354), which closely resembles the highly problematic reservation system of allocating lands to Indigenous Peoples in the United States. Once again, Rowling, in an attempt to indict bigotry, actually engages in it by drawing parallels between real races of human beings in the real world to magical races in her Wizarding World, othering people of color and suggesting that white is the "standard" or "norm."

As Dumbledore explains the prophecy to Harry, he also offers a bit of wisdom regarding how Sirius mistreated Kreacher. He says that Sirius "regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike... The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward” (391). Dumbledore refers to the Fountain of Magical Brethren, which depicts elves, goblins, and centaurs looking reverently up to a witch and wizard pair.