Dobby/ Betrayal/ Evil!Voldemort/ Harry as 'resilient' child abuse survivor

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 53844

Seventh Squeal wrote:

<< Very nice. You suggest that we take Dobby at face value. He's the 
house elf equivalent of a misfit social visionary. O.K. This still 
bothers me, though, because this makes him such a behavioral mutant. 
His own house elf comrades treat him like a St. Mungoloid and social 
pariah for seeking fulfilment outside of the traditional house elf 
status quo. What makes Dobby so anomalous, such a social freak? Can 
he be Polyjuice!Dobby? If so who is he? >>

I always thought that it was the quite excessive cruelty with which 
the Malfoys are described as treating Dobby which caused him to get 
into this free-will stuff. It seems to me that the Malfoys (Dobby 
mentioned that they were always happy to remind him to punish 
himself) were torturing Dobby for roughly the same sort of pleasure 
that they got from torturing Muggles. It seems to me that that a 
reasonable owner of a House Elf wouldn't torture their House Elf, 
because the torture causes physical injuries that could interfere 
with the House Elf doing its work, and a reasonable person would 
value the competent, efficient work more than the pleasure of 
torturing someone helpless to resist. 

Tom Wall wrote:

<<Arguably, Pettigrew's one of the most vile villains we have in the 
series, IMHO. Thus far, we don't know that Riddle betrayed any 
friends. Sure, he's a killer, but has he actually pulled a Judas or a 
Lucifer?  >>

Karkaroff betrayed his friends by ratting them out to the Pensieve 
court in hope of lightening his own sentence. For that matter, Snape 
betrayed *his* friends by ratting them out to the Light Side.

Richard GulPlum wrote:

<< It is only the context which drives the reader to the unambiguous 
conclusion that Voldemort's desires and choices are ultimately evil; 
there is no indication that he *is* evil, it is his actions (and the 
beliefs which fuel them) which are evil. >>

Having seen the 16-year-old Tom Riddle raging about his hatred of his 
father, and yearning for the day when he is feared by all wizards, I 
don't think we need context to know that his desires are evil ... 
bitterness, rage, hatred, vengeance, and general desire to harm 
people ... 

Brittany wrote:

<< The amazing thing to me about Harry has always been his ability 
to keep going, survive, if you will, and not let doubt or low 
self-esteem (I hate that term) get in the way of what he feels he has 
to do. Most children in his situation would have come out a lot more 
traumatized, their character destroyed in many ways. >>

Here is my oft-repeated theory: I think Lily was able, with her 
magic, to put an image of herself in her baby's mind, that would be 
like an 'imaginary mum' (by analogy with 'imaginary friend') who 
would cuddle Harry and tell him that he's a good kid who doesn't 
deserve Dursley abuse and tell him about how decent people behave, 
thus being that one caring adult ("example of goodness" in previous 
paragraph) said to be necessary to even a 'resilient' child's 
survival of serious abuse... I kind of think Lily used her last magic 
to put this image in his head intentionally, instead of using her 
last magic in one last attempt to escape Voldemort. That is the 
heroic self-sacrifce that canon credits her, accepting her own death 
because it was more important to her to give this protection (from 
abusive Dursleys) of her love. I don't know why she would do that if 
she really believed that he would be dead seconds after she was, so I 
am left sympathetic to the theories that Harry survived AK because of 
some magic that had been done on him (presumably by Lily) or that he 
had been born with. 

When Harry resisted the Imperius Curse, the Curse's Moody-voice in 
his head told him to jump up on the desk, and "another voice had 
awoken in the back of his brain. Stupid to do, really, said the 
voice." I believe that that other voice is what's left of the 
image-Lily after all these years; she doesn't appear often, she 
appears as Harry's voice instead of her own, but she still is caring 
for Harry -- and still has free will.

In addition, so far we've always seen Harry wondering and trying to 
find out about his father, and not about his mother. Some say that's 
a plot device because JKR is saving some big surprise about Lily, and 
some say it's normal because Harry is 11 to 14 so far, puberty and 
adolescence, and much more concerned about a male image to identify 
with. But *I* say that he doesn't search so much for Lily because, 
unknown to himself, he already has her with him.