I find myself wrestling with whether or not Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, or the whole series, is a coming-of-age novel, a bildungsroman. As discussed in class, Harry definitely changes, and since he is a young character, he is maturing into adulthood. However, this could be a hero legend, where a central character must undergo a difficult task in order to save someone or even an entire community; it could be this and no more, though it may contain elements of the bildungsroman.
However, I conclude that J.K. Rowling's story can rightly be classified as a contemporary bildungsroman. Yes, Harry is a hero, but I believe his process of growing up is central to the action and the message of the books. His changes are significant enough to constitute the kind of changes required in a bildungsroman character. He chooses his own death, for goodness sake! Throughout the series, Harry goes from a young and uneducated wizard to a skilled one, who carries the fate of his world on his shoulders. He is entrusted by Dumbledore with an incredible task, and though he makes mistakes and hesitates at times, in the end, Harry rises to the occasion. One aspect of a bildungsroman story is its ability to mediate between the individual and his community, as Tobias Boes states as he analyzes the early fiction of Joseph Conrad as bildungsroman material. Because Harry is ultimately the only one who can kill Lord Voldemort and restore all that the powers of dark magic have stolen from the world of wizardry, he must mediate between himself and his community, and he does this by offering himself to die for this cause.
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