Harry Potter and Making A Man
Reflections on The Goblet of Fire and growing up
Here's my hot take: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a crash course for boys in the audience on growing up, facing rejection, and learning what it means to be a man.
This is the Harry Potter analysis — and you’re reading Geeky Stoics.
Lego Hogwarts Castle & an Epiphany
Right now, I'm on what I'd describe as a government-funded little field trip (ok, deployment). And one of my best forms of stress relief in my precious downtime: building Lego.
So I was building the Lego Hogwarts Castle (like you do) while watching the Harry Potter movies. (also like you do) When I had an epiphany…
The Yule Ball: A Rite of Passage
I got to the scene where Professor McGonagall announces the Yule Ball. You know where she says, "It's first and foremost a dance." Professor McGonagall describes an event with cultural and social importance within Hogwarts. The scene is presented with a bit of humor—it’s kind of funny to hear the old professor talking about how "Every boy a lordly lion prepared to prance.”
Nonetheless, there is a kind of significance here.
There is a rite of passage at Hogwarts that the Yule Ball represents. McGonagall warns against embarrassing her house as “The house of Godric Gryffindor has commanded the respect of the Wizard World for nearly 10 centuries,” alluding to an important tradition.
“In our society, there’s nothing that tells a young man when he’s become an adult. So they look for their own rites of passage—fast cars, gangs, or drugs. These are attempts to prove themselves.”
- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
These traditions offer the norms of what it means to grow up as a young wizard attending Hogwarts.
I look at this scene very differently now as an adult than I did growing up because it represents a norm that has been dying - the school dance. Ron's social challenges seem like a relic of the past. Once upon a time, for any young kid, the idea of going to a social dance - having to ask a girl out is very relatable. It tells us something important about navigating awkward social situations—even within the world of Harry Potter. For someone like Harry or Ron, something as simple as asking a girl out to the Yule Ball takes courage and self-confidence.
Check out the video essay version of this article
That is the challenge of growing up: finding those first elements of courage, self-confidence, and self-worth. It is represented in this moment in The Goblet of Fire. Most importantly, it takes an element of vulnerability. You have to open yourself up to rejection—one of the most fundamental fears of any young man. It's something that both Ron and Harry, predictably, don't deal with very well.
The Cost of Insecurity
Ron lets his lack of self-confidence and pride get in the way of taking the risk. There's a deep, very normal insecurity within him that prevents him from taking that small step of courage to ask Hermione to the dance. So Hermione chooses to go with Victor Krum. Understandably, there's no reason why she would wait around hoping Ron would ask.
By the time we get to the ball, it's time for Harry and Ron to ask someone out, and they resort to asking out the Patel twins. Watching this now, many years later, shows how poorly Harry and Ron treat the Patel twins. Honestly, that's the greatest lack of character they demonstrate—particularly Ron—in the way they treat them.
A Constructive View of Masculinity
This is the challenge of positive, constructive masculinity. It is about respect, empathy, and taking responsibility. It involves being considerate and present in a social situation. This is a fundamental rule of what it means to be a gentleman. Ron chooses to be bitter and jealous when he sees Hermione with Victor, and he is rude and disengaged with the date who did go with him to the ball.
All of this may seem like a petty middle school interaction on the surface, but if you look deeper, there's something about this tradition—the Yule Ball—that represents why these kinds of traditions matter. The school dance embodies healthy norms that challenge young people to embrace their own rites of passage and the cultural values that have been in place in Western civilization for centuries. There's a reason why being a gentleman matters.
As a guy who was homeschooled, I absorbed many of these American traditions of the school dance or homecoming through fiction—through movies, through Harry Potter, and even through High School Musical Three.
Troy Bolton was a man's man. I said what I said.
The Yule Ball is a simple scene in The Goblet of Fire, but it means something really important about challenging ourselves and the next generation to take small steps of courage. Embracing vulnerability and the risk of rejection when asking someone out is a cultural norm that has all but disappeared in the age of social media and the brain rot of the TikTok generation. Now, even the idea of asking someone out on a date has vanished—it's just hanging out or talking, with no willingness to risk commitment or rejection.
Courage is Calling
Here’s the most important point: The small forms of courage and discomfort that young Harry and Ron had to experience—something as simple as asking a girl to the ball. Those are the beginnings of what it takes to be a hero. At the end of the film, when Harry Potter is willing to face Voldemort by himself, right after witnessing the death of Cedric Diggory.
The arc of his courage begins with the small things.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a fellow Harry Potter nerd! Listen, we love to overthink this stuff, it’s kinda our thing. That's the whole thesis here at Geeky Stoics.
Your favorite stories are telling you something. The question is, are you listening?