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

[Zarleycat at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 17892

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Magda Grantwich <mgrantwich at y...> wrote:
> > 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.
 
Very interesting.  I've read some Shakespeare, but I'm not enough of 
a scholar to have thought about Edmund.  This certainly sounds like a 
great parallel to Tom Riddle.  I've been thinking about the concept 
of "evil" and I always tend to equate it with massive, almost global-
scale evil like Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.  And that always makes me 
think about how these people viewed themselves.  Did they get up in 
the morning and say, "Oh thank Satan! Today I'm going to continue my 
evilness and kill ten thousand people just because I can, or because 
I don't like their religion/color/sexual orientation/gender/hair 
color/clothing/fill-in-the-blank?" 

 Or is evil truly evil not just because of the thoughts and actions 
of one person, but because they can make others follow their twisted 
path?  It seems to me that evil has become elevated to something that 
is no longer an individual trait, but something more far-reaching 
that sucks in like-minded people.  These people individually may be 
mean and nasty but you can ignore them with no harm done. However,  
give them a cause and a persuasive leader, and you've got real 
trouble on your hands. (Read Hannah Arendt's "The Banality of Evil" 
for an analysis of Nazism.)  It seems to me that Voldemort fits this 
picture.  He can be as nasty as he wants, but he needs followers to 
help him out.  He provides the focus for like-minded people to use as 
their guide and thus evil takes hold in wizard society.
 
Marianne, who'd rather have a root canal than keep thinking about 
evil...