Chesterton on Voldemort?

[Caius Marcius]

No: HPFGUIDX 20319

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Horst or Rebecca J. Bohner" 
<bohners at p...> wrote:
> I just came across a fascinating quote by G.K. Chesterton in the 
middle of
> an essay on Charles Dickens, and was immediately reminded of 
Voldemort.
> Given that JKR is a known GKC fan (she's even a member of the GKC 
society in
> the UK, I'm told

Thanks for letting us know that - as a long-time Chesterton fan, I 
didn't know we could number JKR in our company.  Did the essay Which 
included this quote identify which GKC book it sprang from?


> This approach to villainy may seem old-fashioned, but I think that 
there is
> something to it

Voldemort reflects - in Henry Fielding's phrase - "the perfection of 
the diabolic as opposed to the imperfections of humanity." I do not 
see Voldemort as a "camp" or quasi-comic "Evil Overlord" character, 
as some seem to regard him. Having just ended a century in which 
forces of political and social evil held an unprecedented sway (yes, 
even if the practitioners of it were an imperfect admixture of good 
and evil), we know that many millions of people have lived - or not 
lived - through regimes not unlike the one so well described by 
Sirius Black (GOF, Ch. 27)

"You don't know who his supporters are, you don't know who's working 
for him and who isn't; you know he can control people so that they do 
terrible things without being able to stop themselves.  You're scared 
for yourself, and your family, and your friends.  Every week, news 
comes of more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing . . . the 
Ministry of Magic's in disarray, they don't know what to do, they're 
trying to keep everything hidden from the Muggles, but meanwhile, 
Muggles are dying too.  Terror everywhere . . . panic . . . 
confusion . . . that's how it used to be."

Compare Isaac Babel (quoted by Robert Conquest) during the Stalinist 
purges of the 1930s: "Today a man only talks freely with his wife - 
at night, with the blankets pulled over his head."  Conquest goes on 
to add, "Only the very closest of friends could hint to each other of 
their disbelief of official views (and often not even then). The 
ordinary Russian had no means of discovering how far official lies 
were accepted....Every man became in a sense what Donne says he is 
not, "an island." (The Great Terror, Chap. 9)

Voldemort exists as a touchstone of magical world's moral character. 
How does one react to the powers of evil and oppression? Some with 
enthusiastic allegience (Barty Crouch, Jr., Draco Malfoy), some with 
craven submission (Wormtail), some with denial (Cornelius Fudge). 
Some - ignoring Nietzsche's admonition that those who fight dragons 
must guard against becoming dragons themselves - descend to the same 
tactics employed by the forces of evil (Barty Crouch, Sr., perhaps to 
a lesser extent the real Mad-Eye Moody).  But others will oppose it 
with a clear-minded resolution (Dumbledore), with stoic patience 
(Black, perhaps Hagrid), or with valor and heroism (Harry). 

    - CMC