Who's the baddest of them all?

[Caius Marcius <coriolan_cmc@hotmail.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 47989

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z <lupinesque at y...>" 
<lupinesque at y...> wrote:
> Actually, it's just who's the badder of the two, but that doesn't 
> sound right.
> 
> I was in a class yesterday where one of the kids was explaining to 
> the rest that Sauron is even worse than Voldemort.  She said that 
her 
> father (who has read her HP and is reading her LoTR) said so, and 
> seemed to think that settled it.  What do you all think?  I promise 
I 
> won't spoil her illusions of paternal infallibility if the 
consensus 
> here is that Voldemort gets the Most Evil prize.
> 
Sauron remains off-stage throughout LOTR, so both characters and 
readers are compelled to fill in the blanks, which thereby paints the 
middle-earth DL in hues even blacker than he might actually merit. 
The on-stage Voldemort has to earn his "bad" reputation the old-
fashioned way (for the reader at least) - Voldemort has to actually 
do the heavy lifting of being a heavy: though we first meet him only 
through hearsay, he soon comes before us as an actual on-page 
villain: he has to act before us his treacherousness, sliminess, 
maliciousness, destructiveness, etc. 

And nobody in Middle-Earth seems afraid to say Sauron's name.

    - CMC