Voldemort's name

[Jen Reese]

No: HPFGUIDX 82011

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Geoff Bannister" 
<gbannister10 at a...> wrote:
> 
> Re Dumbledore calling him "Tom". I often have contact with old 
> pupils; some folk I taught are now into their fifties. I still tend 
> to address them by their first names. It's what I was used to doing 
> in years past.
> 
> Is Dumbledore more likely to want to make LV feel small or to try 
to 
> reach something reachable? I shall duck, don a tin hat, duck behind 
> the battlements and wait for the theories to fly over me.


Jen:

I viewed the scene where Dumbledore calls Voldemort 'Tom' as being a 
very tactical, but not vindictive, move on Dumbledore's part.

We know from the graveyard scene in GOF that Voldemort was "willing 
to embrace mortal life again, before chasing immortality. I set my 
sights lower....I would settle for my old body back again, and my old 
strength."  (GOF, US, chap. 33, p. 656).

Dumbledore knows Voldemort is "back in his old body again" as well, 
when Harry relates the events of the Graveyard scene.

So in this interaction, I believe Dumbledore is working on two 
levels: 1) To remind Voldemort he is no longer immortal, and that 
Dumbledore knows this and 2) to appeal to any tiny *sliver* of 
humanity that may exist in that "old body" i.e. some echo of a memory 
of Tom Riddle.