Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Themes

In Chamber of Secrets, Professor Dumbledore presents the all-important message of the Harry Potter series: "it is our choices [...] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities" (18.61)...

In Chamber of Secrets, we find a number of examples of people fearing others who are different from them. The Dursleys fear Harry's magical abilities, so they lock him in a room by himself to keep...

The friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione provides an emotional core to balance out what would otherwise be a really fast-paced and intense series of novels (after all, wars against evil do n...

Isolation works on two levels in Chamber of Secrets: first, there is the isolation of the wizarding world. Because wizards spend so much time avoiding Muggles, many of them have developed strongly...

Chamber of Secrets contains some pretty obvious examples of deceit. Lucius Malfoy tricks Ginny into taking Tom Riddle's diary. Harry tricks Lucius Malfoy into freeing his house-elf, Dobby, in turn....

By going down into the Chamber of Secrets, Harry proves that his principles include loyalty to his friends and courage in the face of terrible odds. By contrast, Lucius Malfoy, the book's most prom...

Hogwarts is a magical boarding school. The boarding school is a classic setting for British kid's fiction, but that's not the only reason why it's a good setting for the Harry Potter novels. As J.K...

Perseverance is a good thing: the ability to keep going when things seems difficult or even impossible. In Chamber of Secrets, Ginny's long-time resistance to Voldemort and Harry's willingness to k...