“It is our choices Harry, that show what we truly are” : the archetypal journey, agency and choice in identity development in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series

• Main Author: Lim, Adela Li Ying
• Other Authors: Terence Richard Dawson
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/59286
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

By looking at the entire Harry Potter series as a whole, this essay will show that in the Harry Potter series, the young protagonist, Harry Potter, embarks on an archetypal journey that is used to emphasize the importance of choices in identity formation to the mostly pre-adolescent and adolescent readers. At each stage of the archetypal journey laid down by Joseph Campbell, Harry makes choices based on the three modes of agency described by psychologist Albert Bandura. With his choices, Harry moves through the different identity statuses developed by psychologist James Marcia and eventually develops his own identity in the last book of the series as he triumphantly finishes his quest and reaches adulthood.