The Unpopular Second Book

[joanne0012]

No: HPFGUIDX 60823

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, yellows at a... wrote:
>> 
> The big let-down of CoS, I find, is the "cheat" at the end, with Tom Riddle 
ending up to be Voldemort. Throughout CoS, to the best of my memory (still 
have the first three loaned out), we work with just the name Tom Riddle. We 
never get the middle name. Now, no matter how many ways you arrange the 
letters in T-O-M-R-I-D-D-L-E, you'll never, ever, ever get Lord Voldemort. 
> 
> When you're writing a mystery or planting a mystery into your fantasy novel, 
you're signing a contract with your reader that the all the necessary clues are 
given. Your reader *won't* figure out the answer by the end if you disguise the 
clues well enough, but you've given your reader at least the opportunity. 
> 
> This is how I see it: JKR wanted to change the letters in Lord Voldemort to 
come up with a common name. She saw Tom in there and decided to go with 
that. She wanted Riddle for obvious reasons and realized she couldn't get 
that with what she had to work with. Then she had to add a middle name.
> 
> All of this would have been fine *if* the reader had known the middle name 
all along. But when Harry's in the final scene and Tom Riddle reveals the 
mystery to him, we look at the page with our eyebrows screwed up and say, 
"Marvolo? Where in the world did *that* name come from?"
> 
> Many readers feel cheated by what seems like a deliberatly hidden clue, 
and it significantly lessens the enthusiasm in the book as a whole.


Tom's middle name is revealed in Chapter 13 (page 244 of the US HC), 
during Harry's first encounter with the diary, when he's watching past-Tom 
discuss his summer plans with Dippet: "They told me at the orphanage she 
lived just long enough to name me - Tom after my father, Marvolo after my 
grandfather"

So . . .  not only has Rowling preserved the fine tradition of providing all the 
clues, she has also preserved the fine tradition of presenting them in a way 
that most readers will pass right over!