Harry sparing V'mort

[ericoppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 46436

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Richard Thorp <obby at b...> wrote:
> Sunday, November 10, 2002, 6:50:36 AM, Eric, wrote:
> 
> EO> In the first place, I do _not_ think for one second that for 
Harry to kill
> EO> Voldemort would make him as bad as Voldemort!  Just think about 
it for a
> EO> second.  Voldemort killed and harmed many, many people, a large 
number of
> EO> whom he had nothing rational against, no real reason to hate, 
and could have
> EO> spared perfectly easily.  Harry, on the other hand, has 
excellent reasons to
> EO> hate and fear Lord Voldemort---or doesn't killing Harry's 
parents and
> EO> dooming him to growing up chez Dursley qualify?  (If not, I'd 
honestly
> EO> appreciate hearing about just what _would!_)  Unlike Voldemort, 
Harry is
> EO> quite gentle and compassionate (his behavior, again and again, 
whether to
> EO> the other kidnappees in the second Triwizard task, Buckbeak, 
Hagrid, or
> EO> others, shows this clearly) and, were it not for Voldemort, 
would certainly
> EO> never kill anyone.
> 
> All a case of stooping to the level of the killers... Would it be
> right for us to torture and kill prisoners purely because that was
> what the enemy did to us? I say no...

Now, just a second here.  I said nothing above about torturing V'mort 
(although making him live, _sans_ power, at the Dursleys' could 
easily qualify, at least in psychological terms).  As far as we know 
in the Potterverse, death itself is not painful.  Otherwise, Moaning 
Myrtle would have mentioned it...at length, knowing her.  

I am in favor of killing Voldemort mainly because he has repeatedly 
demonstrated that he is much too dangerous to be allowed to live, and 
that, given a choice, he will always choose the evil side.  Frank 
Bryce had done nothing wrong (he was the caretaker and it was his 
_job_ to investigate break-ins at The Riddle House) and neither had 
Cedric Diggory, save to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  



> 
> Also, to use a Star Wars stance (and Im sure, some other 
series/worlds
> with concepts similar to the force-duality sorta thing), taking up 
the
> weapons of the evil people will taint yourself with evil, leading 
you
> to a path of evil.

Which is where I and Star Wars part company, frankly.  I _don't_ want 
to go into tons o' philosophy here, but IMNSHO resorting to violence 
to destroy a known danger does not, in and of itself, make those who 
have had to defend themselves as evil as the aggressors.  There is a 
big difference between _initiating_ aggression (as V'mort did, again 
and again and again) and taking whatever steps are necessary to stop 
the aggression, even including violence and the DP.

Even if Harry _does_ have a taint of evil around him, that only makes 
him human.  "Too-good-to-be-true" heroes died with the Victorian Age, 
and good riddance to them, says I.  


 > EO> Harry killing V'mort would be more along the lines of killing 
a mad dog than
> EO> an actual murder.  V'mort has demonstrated, again and again, 
that when given
> EO> a choice to be or not be evil, that he will always choose 
evil.  Like Alex,
> EO> the "hero" of _A Clockwork Orange,_ he "goes to the other 
shop."  He didn't
> EO> _need_ to kill Cedric Diggory---or Frank Bryce, the old Muggle 
caretaker of
> EO> the Riddle House, or a lot of the other people he's killed.  A 
wizard of his
> EO> skill and talent could have Memory Charmed Frank Bryce, and 
Imperiused or
> EO> Petrified Cedric perfectly easily.  Even "talentless" Wormtail 
could have
> EO> handled those jobs easily enough, had he been allowed to by 
V'mort.
> 
> Hrm, making a good argument, but Voldie is still a human being 
(well,
> part of him is) and killing him by his own means (Harry performing 
an
> AK on him for instance) would still be wrong, morally.. I don't know
> of many people who could live with themselves if they killed 
someone,
> even if they *really* deserved it.

I do :}  It's quite different from, say, killing an acquaintance over 
some stupid argument.  As I've said, V'mort has repeatedly 
demonstrated that _nothing else will work to stop him._  After his 
big defeat at Harry Potter's hands (when the kid was _one?_)had I 
been in his shoes I'd've done some _very_ hard re-thinking about my 
goals, my methods, and my behavior.  He seems only to have been sorry 
that he had been balked in attaining Ultimate Power.  

Even most "real" murderers (case in point: Lizzy Borden) seem to get 
along with themselves just fine.  It's more in bad fiction and TV 
that you see someone so haunted by "oh, I _killed_ someone!  I 
murdered another human being!" that they go off the deep end.  

> EO> And, in the second place, it _isn't_ the worst thing they could 
do.  If they
> EO> _could_ strip V'mort of his powers, they could give him to 
Filch as an
> EO> assistant and understudy.  Or send him to live with the 
Dursleys...
> 
> Hehe, a punishment of making him into the thing he most hates could 
be
> described as needlessly cruel, or poetically ironic.. Hum :)
> 
> -Rich

In fact, if V'mort _had_ attained immortality, and couldn't be 
killed, it would be possible to send him to a literal eternity of 
punishment without even the merciful release of death.  I do think 
that a virtual-reality program called "Submissive Love Slave To 
Dudley Dursley" is going a _tad_ overboard...*evil giggle* but I read 
a story once where a vampire reflected that one bad side to his 
condition was that if he fell into the wrong people's hands, they 
would be able to torture him for centuries if they wanted to, and he 
couldn't even die.