In the Harry Potter series, Ronald Weasley is shown to be extremely afraid of spiders, and his fear of spiders is portrayed in many scenes.
Is any reason given in the series as to why he is so afraid of spiders?
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Sign up to join this communityIn the Harry Potter series, Ronald Weasley is shown to be extremely afraid of spiders, and his fear of spiders is portrayed in many scenes.
Is any reason given in the series as to why he is so afraid of spiders?
Ron mentions this during the Second Book. Fred (or George, one of the twins) transfigured his teddy bear into a giant spider, and the way it moved its legs mentally scarred him for life.
"I just don't like the way they move ....
Hermione giggled.
"It's not funny," said Ron, fiercely. "If you must know, when I was three, Fred turned my - my teddy bear into a great big fiIthy spider because I broke his toy broomstick .... You wouldn't like them either if you'd been holding your bear and suddenly it had too many legs and. . . "
He broke off, shuddering. Hermione was obviously still trying not to laugh.
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 12-year old Ron Weasley tells Harry and Hermione that his arachnophobia, or intense fear of spiders, is rooted in an event that happened when he was only three years old. He tells his friends that his brother turned his teddy bear into a spider, which terrified him to no end.
This passage can be analyzed in a psychoanalytic way because Ron’s anxieties over spiders stemmed from an uncanny experience. Although magic is uncanny to most people, magic is the norm for Ron’s family, so it’s not the magic that upset him. The younger version of Ron Weasley became upset because his teddy bear, which was obviously a source of comfort for him, became something that he feared. The traumatic event from his childhood resulted into his petrifying fear of spiders in his young adult life, which means that for Ron, the uncanny turned something that was once familiar into something that brought about feelings of fear and anxiety.
Ron's fear of spiders developed when Fred turned his teddy into a spider. Maybe there was no arachnophobia before that.