[HPforGrownups] On Meanness, Evil, and Bowling (was [HPFGU-OTChatter] Thanks, Wanda; something odd)

[Magda Grantwich]

No: HPFGUIDX 17872

> Amanda wrote:
> But Voldemort is >clearly more evil. 
> So does being mean have a lot to do with evil at >all? Or is the
> quality of being mean rather like the quality of being ambitious--
> not evil in and of itself, but more likely than other >traits to 
> lead you in that direction? Or does evil have to do with a 
> perception of real harm? 


Jodi Kantor had an article in Slate.com on-line mag on July 12, 2000,
that dealt in part with Voldemort's brand of evilness.  Until GoF,
she'd thought that V. was almost a little too "vaudevillian" in his
evilness to be taken seriously.  But then:

*******************************************
I agree that over the years Lord Voldemort has developed into a kind
of vaudevillian Beezlebub, snakes and all. But there's a hint at the
end of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire that Tom Riddle
(Voldemort's boyhood name) is modeled not on Satan or even his
latter-day equivalent, Darth Vader, but on a more troubling figure.
Riddle is shaping up to be a version of King Lear's Edmund, a nasty
piece of work who ranks with Iago and Macbeth as one of the great
hero-villains of Shakespearean drama. Edmund, you may recall, is
Gloucester's bitter illegitimate son. He betrays his brother and
destroys his father, among other dastardly deeds, because, he says,
the world has seized on his bastardy to deny him his due. No matter
how eloquent Edmund's speeches may be, Shakespeare's audience would
not have perceived Edmund's horribleness as a legitimate protest
against his fate--against the arbitrariness of having your social
status determined by your parents' marital relations, or lack
thereof. Rather, the Elizabethans would have seen Edmund as a man at
war with the universe since birth. Voldemort, the product of a
similar background, has a similarly willful urge to punish the world
for his misfortune:

"You see that house upon the hillside...? My father lived there. My
mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with
him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was ... He
didn't like magic, my father ...

"He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even
born ... and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in
a Muggle orphanage ... but I vowed to find him ... I revenged myself
upon him, that fool who gave me his name ... Tom Riddle ..." (GoF)

Comparing Voldemort to Edmund also offers us a different way to view
what you object to as the dark wizard's "fire-breathing kitsch."
Consider what Edmund does when the object of his designs, his
brother, first walks on stage: He transforms himself into a stock
melodramatic figure, all but rubbing his hands and twirling his evil
mustache:

"And pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy: my cue is
villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o'Bedlam." (King Lear)

In other words, Edmund may overplay his evilness, but that doesn't
mean he isn't actually evil. He's both image and substance, hype and
reality. He's a bad fake and a bad human being. He's bad through and
through. Likewise, Voldemort goes over the top, but he's still
malevolent. There isn't a sympathetic bone in his body. He's the dark
force, pure and simple, his heart hardened against goodness because
that's the way he is: nihilism in all its foul glory.

****************************************************

I thought it an interesting article.  Ms Kantor has been following
the series in her regular Book Club space for two years.


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