A POSTCOLONIALIST ANALYSIS ON THE PORTRAYAL OF HOUSE-ELVES AS SLAVES IN J. K. ROWLING’S HARRY POTTER AND THE
GOBLET OF FIRE
Estiningtyas Retno Windarti
"You do realize that your sheets are changed, your fires lit, your classrooms cleaned,
and your food cooked by a group of magical creatures who are unpaid and
enslaved?" –Hermione Granger
Abstract
Harry Potter, one of the most popular literary works in its time, presents the adventurous experiments of a boy in the wizarding world with magical creatures. Apart from its popularity, there, also lays another issue behind its story: the House-Elves enslavement. Interestingly, in this magical-world novel, the magical creatures are shown inferior to humans, and are dehumanized by having no power against the unjust wizarding society with no one standing for their rights. Using Postcolonialism perspectives, this study aimed to analyze the enslavement of the House-Elves: how the novel portrays the elves as slaves, and how slavery had led them to live as a ‘contested culture’: Fanon’s idea to describe a culture which is frozen as the effect of slavery or colonialism. The findings show that the enslavement of the House-Elves was a product of force or oppression, rather than an act of free will, and that the enslavement of the House-Elves has made them live as a ‘contested culture’, where punishments and violence are used to wipe out their tradition, culture, identity, and education.
