Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Themes

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix we're introduced to a new evil character: Dolores Umbridge. Professor Umbridge isn't in love with a particular belief system or an ideology. We mean, ye...

As Harry shouts to Professor Dumbledore after Sirius has died, "People don't like being locked up!" (37.131). In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, both Harry and Sirius spend long periods...

Harry Potter lost both his parents when he was a year old. He was raised by emotionally and sometimes physically abusive people who essentially used him as a servant until he was eleven. When he jo...

In the words of the great American novelist William Faulkner, "The past is not dead. It isn't even past." In other words, the past lives on in the present. It shapes every minute of our lives. And...

We've seen a lot of bigotry in the Harry Potter series before. Draco Malfoy calls Hermione a Mudblood, meaning that she's a magic-user with non-magical parents. Then there's the Death Eater "prank"...

If you've ever heard the expression "fair weather friend," you know that it's often easy to be friends with someone when things are going well (when the weather is fair, so to speak). Real friends...

Sirius has been thwarted for most of his life. He was accused of a murder he didn't commit and thrown into Azkaban for twelve years. When he finally broke out, he managed to track down the real mur...

Obviously, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a novel about a school. So 99.9% of the characters are very young. The thematic significance of youth in Book 5 isn't limited to the simple f...