Roll No: 13
Paper: New Literature
Subject: Harry potter and the purity of blood
Email No: binagohil1995@gmail.com
Submitted to: Department of English, M K Bhavnagar
University. Bhavanagr.
Introduction
There are three types of category of blood.
1.
Pure blood
2.
Half-pure blood
3.
Mud-blood
Ø
If mother and father both are witch and wizards
than the child is considered as pure blood.
Ø
If one of the parent is mugle and one of the
parent is wizard than the child is half-pure blood.
Ø
If both mother and father is not wizard but
mugle than the child is considered as mud-blood.
Ø
Blood status, also
called purity of blood, is a concept in the wizarding world that distinguishes
between family trees that have different levels of magically-endowed members. It often results in
prejudice towards those who have a large number of Muggles in their families. Wizarding society in
general considers itself apart from and superior to Muggle society, which is
not connected with magic. As Sirius Black informed Harry Potter, almost all wizards of
their time have Muggles in their family trees, though some claim not to. The
concept played a key role in both the First and Second Wizarding Wars. In truth, pure-blood
families have ceased to exist during the 1900s
Mud blood
Mud blood’s a really foul name for someone who is Muggle-born
— you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards — like Malfoy's family —
who think they're better than everyone else because they're what people call
pure-blood… I mean, the rest of us know it doesn't make any difference at
all."
—
Those born to Muggle families, but
who are skilled with and have the magic gene are referred to as Muggle-borns. A
child born with magic to two Muggle parents is considered a Muggle-born. In
wizarding Britain, they are allowed to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,
although some other schools, such as Durmstrang Institute, only admit
students with wizarding heritage. Salazar Slytherin fell out of
favour with the other Founders of Hogwarts because he wanted to limit
attendance on the same grounds.
Those with prejudice against Muggles and their families
often refer to such wizards as "Mudbloods," a highly offensive term implying that the individual has
dirty and inferior blood. Those who discriminate against Muggle-borns believe
that they do not deserve magic and should be excluded from the wizarding world,
in spite of the fact that Muggle-borns are just as magically talented as those
of other blood statuses.
When the Ministry
of Magic fell
under the indirect control of Lord Voldemort during
the Second
Wizarding War, it began distributing propaganda against
"Mudbloods" under the authorship of Dolores Umbridge. Muggle-borns were
also forced to register with the Ministry's Muggle-Born Registration Commission,
which accused Muggle-borns of having stolen their wands and sentenced them to Azkaban
.This ended once Voldemort was defeated and the Ministry was reformed.
Half-bloods
Wizards with families split
between Muggles and wizards are referred to as
half-bloods. Due to the dominance of the magic gene, children born to at least
one magical parent will usually be magical themselves, meaning that a
non-magical child born to a Muggle and a wizard is considered a Squib, not a Muggle. The term 'half-blood' is misleading in
that it does not necessarily imply a half-and-half split in wizarding/Muggle
ancestry, but rather any witch or wizard with both wizarding and Muggle heritage.
By the 1990s, most of the magical population were half-bloods.
Both Harry Potter and Tom Riddle (now Lord Voldemort) are half-bloods.
Harry taunted the Death Eaters with this in the Department of Mysteries to
stall for time
The children of Harry and Ginny
Potter are
considered half-bloods because although Ginny is pure-blood, Harry's parentage
is pure-blood father, Muggle-born
mother.
The term can be an insult, depending on the context in which
it is used. Walburga
Black, for instance, was a fervent believer in pure-blood supremacy and
her portrait at 12
Grimmauld Place often
screamed "filthy half-bloods" and other insults at passers-by
somewhat indiscriminately, which points to the mania surrounding blood purity. Bellatrix
Lestrange was
also known to have insulted Harry Potter and Severus
Snape on
the basis of their half-blood heritage.
Some half-bloods also express prejudice against those with
Muggle ancestry, despite having it themselves, often clinging to what wizarding
heritage they do have. Lord
Voldemort, the
son of a pure-blood witch, Merope
Gaunt and a Muggle Tom Riddle Snr, epitomises this. He
hated Muggles and Muggle-borns and held his status as the Heir
of Slytherin in
great esteem.
Pure-bloods
Pure-bloods are wizards and witches with
a family tree devoid of Muggle members, or at least, they have convinced
themselves of this by removing any non-pure-bloods from their family
trees. At the very least, one must have all magical grandparents to be
considered pure-blood, though extremists would require no known Muggle
ancestors. Thus, some would consider the children of Harry and Ginny Potter to be
pure-bloods because all four of their grandparents — James and Lily Potter, as well as Arthur and Molly Weasley — were
wizards and witches. Others, however, would consider them half-bloods
because their paternal grandmother was Muggle-born, thus they have known
Muggle ancestry.
Many
pure-bloods consider themselves to be akin to royalty in the wizarding world,
or at the very least the elite. They often disdain those of different blood
status and Muggles, some even arguing that Muggle-borns should not be
admitted into the wizarding world. The Death Eater organisation took this
philosophy to an extreme, striving to eliminate Muggle-borns altogether.
To
be pure-blood is an uncommon trait and their numbers continue to decline over
time. There appears to be a continuous stream of new families entering the
wizarding world as children from non-wizarding backgrounds with magical ability
and as a result, those with long pure-blood lines are relatively rare. To
maintain their "pure-blood pedigree", families such as the House of Black and the House of Gaunt have
practised inbreeding, accounting for the
mental instability of certain family members. Those same families tend to
disown members who accept Muggles or Muggle-born wizards into their lives.
These family members would be deemed "blood traitors". For instance,
the Blacks commonly blasted these relatives of the family
tree tapestry.
For Example : Malfoy is a pure blood and he believe in
supremacy.
pure-blood
families:
- Black family (now died out with the death of Sirius Black)
- Crouch family (now died out with the deaths of Barty Crouch Sr. and
Jr.)
- Gaunt family
- Lestrange family (married into by Bellatrix Black)
- Longbottom family (Neville)
- Malfoy family (Lucius - Draco)
- Weasley family
Conclusion
In every series of Harry potter
we find that there is a something about purity of blood. Harmonie is mud-blood
and so that Malfoy torches her every time about her muggle parents. Pure blood
considered themselves superior than mud-blood and half blood. The protagonist
Harry potter is also half blood. Whereas Ronald weasly is pure blood. Voldmort
hate mud blood and half boold. His hate becomes
so violent that he kills his parents also. He himself not pure blood. Voldmort kills one professior of Hogwart who
taught the subject of muggle and purity of blood and she believes that there is
nothing superior or inferior.
Harry potter’s mother is also mud-blood. And
she is very good in witchcrafts and wizardry. Hermonie is also example of that,
it is shows that witchcrafts and
wizardry is not genetic. In the book Ron says that witches are existing just
because they marry with mud or hafd blood.
