107 pages • 3 hours read
J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John TiffanyHarry Potter and the Cursed Child
Fiction | Play | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Time-Turner
The Time-Turner is a crucial object in the play, used to move events along in significant ways. It also serves as a symbol for time itself, an important concept for multiple reasons. Besides traveling through time—an essential aspect of the play’s story—time itself is also key to the play’s context. The play is set in the Harry Potter universe; although an independent story, it involves characters first introduced in the book series, many of whose backstories are linked to the play’s events and themes in significant ways. There is constant reference to past events, and the play is replete with callbacks to things from the original series. The Time-Turner, thus, carries out multiple functions within the play. At a basic level, it is an important object or prop that hurries along dramatic action; at a deeper level, it serves as a symbol for history; at a metalevel, it alludes to the history within the universe of the play that is encompassed in the books that came before it.
Dreams and Memories
Harry’s dreams and memories are a dramatic device and a recurring motif in the play. As a dramatic device, the dreams appear in the first three acts, replaying scenes from Harry’s childhood; however, the third and final dream shows events that never took place. The final act carries the reenactment of an actual event from Harry’s childhood in the place of a dream. Each dream ends with Voldemort’s voice whispering Harry’s name—each time, it heralds a significant event to follow that will further the prophecy. In the final act, Voldemort’s voice is heard whispering before he enters and kills Harry’s parents, an action related to an older, different prophecy.
The dreams and memories also serve as a motif for the role history and legacy have played in shaping Harry as a character and how this plays out in his relationship with his son. Harry’s abysmal childhood and the eventual freedom he felt upon discovering his true heritage shape him significantly—these past experiences play out in his dreams. Just as significant an event is the loss of his parents. Besides marking him as the one who will bring about Voldemort’s downfall, it also leaves him bereft of a support system and people to model how to raise a child. Significantly, the last dream—in which he visits his parents’ graves—is the one in which Albus emerges from Voldemort’s body, and Harry cannot see him.
Harry’s Blanket
Like the Time-Turner, Harry’s blanket plays an essential role as an object that influences events in the play. However, the blanket as a symbol cycles through a couple of different but related meanings in different contexts.
To Harry, it represents the love and protection of a parent. The blanket is the only thing Harry has left of his mother, but while he possesses the physical object, he has never enjoyed the warmth and security it represents: a mother’s love. Harry’s sentimental attachment to the blanket is understandable, as it is the only remaining symbol of his dead mother.
However, when he offers it as a gift to his son, the symbolism completely reverses. Albus has both parents alive and well, yet feels lonely and isolated; instead of the honesty, warmth, and connection he needs from his father—something that the blanket represents for Harry in the absence of his own parents—Albus receives an object instead. In Albus’s hands, the blanket only reminds him of the weight of his father’s legacy and the disconnect between the two.
In a full-circle moment, however, the blanket helps Albus communicate in a moment of crisis. Harry and the gang arrive at the right place in time thanks to the message Albus leaves on it, which sets into motion a series of climactic events. Thus, the blanket eventually reunites father and son, hearkening back to its original representation of love and parental protection.
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