My shocking idea

[Arya]

No: HPFGUIDX 72871

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Wanda Sherratt" 
<wsherratt3338 at r...> wrote:
> The two threads, "The Emotion" and the one about Harry dying, are 
> moving on similar lines right now, discussing a theory about Harry 
> giving his life out of love, and so defeating Voldemort.  I think 
> that this is going to be the final outcome of Book 7, but I have my 
> own rather jarring theory about how it will all come together.
> 
> I've noticed that Rowling tends to patiently build up themes, 
making 
> them more and more complex as the stories go along.  She's moved 
the 
> racism theme from the initial ugly name-calling in CoS all the way 
> up to revolt and civil war in the magical world, with the giants, 
> centaurs and house elfs in varying stages of war against the 
> wizards.  Another theme which is getting bigger, but I think still 
> has some way to go, is what I think of as the "Golden Rule" theme - 
> treating others as you would be treated, and what happens if you 
> don't.  This theme is causing us to re-evaluate characters that we 
> thought we understood:  Snape started out in PS as a typical 
baddie, 
> but by now we know there's more to him.  In OotP, we saw glimpses 
of 
> the bad treatment he endured in the past.  Rowling didn't use his 
> case as an example, but instead, she had Dumbledore talk about a 
> minor character, Kreacher, in order to teach the lesson to Harry.  
> Kreacher, we're told, has been made what he is by the bad treatment 
> he has gone through.  Bad treatment has been meted out to other 
> magical beings, too, and eventually there are consequences, as we 
> are now beginning to see.
> 
> Well, though Kreacher is the immediate example, my mind naturally 
> went to Snape when I read this part.  How much of his badness was a 
> result of the treatment he went through?  There will always be a 
> question of choice and free will, but there seems no doubt that 
> those who tormented him made it easier for him to choose the bad 
> road.  A Christian would say that James and his friends put a 
> stumbling-block in his path, and that is generally reckoned to be a 
> sin.  What I think Rowling is trying to get across is that badness 
> seldom comes out of the blue; few people are bad just because they 
> have logically decided that it's better than goodness.  I think 
> we're even starting to see a bit of shading in the character of 
> Dudley, who for the first time shows that he has vulnerabilities.  
> If this is the case for Dudley, I think it will also have to be the 
> case for Draco.  There's always been lots of speculation about what 
> his home life is like; I think that soon we're going to find out, 
> and we'll discover that he also is partly the product of the way he 
> has been treated by others.
> 
> This brings me to my most controversial guess: that the deepening 
of 
> character is going to extend all the way to Voldemort himself.  
When 
> Dumbledore called him "Tom", I don't think he was doing it in a 
> sneering way; I think he was addressing himself to the human being 
> he once knew.  If all these other characters went bad because they 
> were mistreated, in the end we will learn that Tom Riddle was the 
> same.  That he was not always pure evil, that he had a chance for 
> good, but that he chose evil partly because of the way he was 
> treated.  I have my own ideas about what pushed him to the dark 
> side, which I won't go into.  But I think Harry is going to learn 
> that compassion, which he was already starting to feel for Snape, 
> (and that is one of Harry's most admirable moments, when he 
realizes 
> that he feels bad for his most hated teacher) must extend all the 
> way to the Dark Lord himself.  I think Harry's sacrifice will be 
> even bigger than Lily's was; he won't be dying just to save his 
> friends, but to save his worst enemy.  I think Harry's death is 
> going to be *truly* Christ-like, and he'll be able to look at 
> Voldemort and see not the all-powerful dark wizard, but the ruined, 
> destroyed human being he once was, and respond with love and 
> compassion.  Any ideas about this, or am I just raving?
> 
> Wanda

You're not raving at all.  I have been thinking somewhat along these 
lines as well.  As soon as we saw Legilimency/Occlumency enabling 
people to glimpse life-shaping events, I thought, that *empathy* was 
going to play a key role.  And as Harry fights his own internal 
struggle to keep his own darkness at bay (resentment, anger, guilt, 
etc) I think we see what may have been at one time, a young Tom 
Riddle.  Both Harry and Tom had to grow up as neglected children in a 
muggle world where no one wanted them and then were shown this 
wonderous, empowering world of being a wizard.  Both have reasons to 
resent their upbringing by muggles and both feel the power of being a 
wizard.  Throught maturity, Tom aims to increase power and then to 
seek revenge. Harry is just maturing now and will have to make his 
own choices about what he wants to seek.  It is the choices that 
Harry will make that will diverge his path from Tom Riddle's.  But 
the ability to understand *why* Tom made the choices he did (empathy) 
may enable Harry to offer him compassion and therefore, even *love* 
of a sort he never had.  And love, may be just the thing to make 
Voldemort mortal and to stop fearing death enough to allow himself to 
go beyond the veil.  

Arya