Voldy's mum

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 37405


Dave asked:
> Is there anyone besides me who wants to know more about this elusive
> figure who died in childbirth but apparently held out long enough to
> name her son after the bum who deserted her?
> 

Also:
> And will we ever get any clues as to how Tom got so evil so fast?
> He seems to have left Annakin Skywalker in the dust in the "get
> evil at an early age" race.  And would mum be proud of what her son
> has become or (as I'm curently imagining) appalled?

I think that a reasonable solution to both questions (how the child 
got his name and how he got so evil), is that the mother left a 
letter, prepared against the possiblity of her death. This kind of 
letter would of course include directions as to naming the child 
(what name would she have picked if it were a girl? Marvola?). 
I also imagine that enclosed in it would be another letter to be kept 
for her child. In this letter she would reveal child's magic origin, 
it's illustrious ancestry and, most importantly, it's abandonment by 
a Muggle father. I think that Tom Riddle knew at quite an early age 
(because of such a letter) of his family history. As a neglected and 
unloved child at the orphanage, the narcissitic fantasy of hidden 
greatness (which such children often develop) would be nourished by 
knowing himslef to be Slytherin's only direct heir. At the same time, 
the fantastic anger and hatred of an unloved child would find it's 
focus in the image of the abandoning father. That obsessive and 
absolute hatred would find it's expression later, in killing the 
father and paternal grandparents. This killing (in my mind) 
functioned, for Tom, as a very dark rite of passage: destroying the 
father, who, by abandoning him, acquired complete power over his 
childhood. Empowerment as an adult would mean, therefore, overcoming 
the father (very Freudian, isn't it?). I see him as heading straight 
to the Riddle manor immediately after graduation. That would make 
killing his father the first act he has ever done as an adult (and a 
fully qualified wizard). If so, it might very well have been the 
first time that he had used Avada Kedavra on a human being. He had 
probably experimented on animals, but would save it up, so to speak, 
to use for the first time on his filth of a father (truly 
a "mudblood"). 
This first murder, by the way, not only symbolizes liberation and 
victory over the father but also rebellion against ALL authority. By 
performing AK as the very first act in adulthood, he puts himself (in 
fact and symbolically) in absolute and inherent opposition to the 
ruling norms that he had seemingly complied with until then.

Thoughts, anybody?


Naama