ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the examination of trauma themes in popular culture by considering how trauma is represented in some popular literature for children and young adults, and how those representations might be perceived by traumatized children. In the first section I look at some ways that magic functions in children’s stories as wish fulfillment and as a means of escape from threatening or dangerous situations. The worry I have is that for traumatized children, magical thinking may genuinely function as a survival mechanism, helping a child reconfigure her situation such that it is bearable, although perhaps only in some marginal way. When magic works in stories simply as an easy escape mechanism, it may simply reinforce an abused child’s sense of helplessness, since a real child’s magical thinking can never be so effective. In the second section I offer an interpretation of the Harry Potter stories that highlights Harry as a hero figure. My reading argues that Harry represents a relatively new paradigm of the hero, one which is disfigured through trauma, fear and alienation. These characteristics are necessary to represent the hero of contemporary Western culture to itself, legitimizing the dominant culture’s sense of entitlement and project of domination.
