Tom Riddle's Birth (Re: JKR Chat "The Crucial ...")

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 92724

Naama wrote:

> JKR is clearly portraying Harry and Tom as very similar in their 
> basic nature and temperament (outward appearance, talented, brave, 
> ambitious, charismatic). However, who they become is (or will be) 
the 
> opposite poles of good and evil. I'm wondering whether we 
shouldn't 
> apply this basic opposition to their very beginning as babies. If 
> Harry received the gift of love from his mother, maybe Tom 
received a 
> gift of hate? 
> What if his mother, before she died, did indeed cast some kind of 
> protective charm on him, but it was based not on her love for him, 
> but on her hatred of his father? 
> If we see the magical as a metaphor for the psychological (this is 
> clearly the case with the protection that a mother's love 
provides), 
> it does happen in real life - parents raising their child to hate, 
> almost base their whole personality, on a hatred of a betraying 
> spouse. I think this fits better with the Good/Evil and Love as 
the 
> Greatest Force scheme than with Tom's mother protecting him with 
her 
> love.

I have some difficulty with this, because it doesn't in my opinion 
fit very well with the theme of choice.  If Riddle was cursed at 
birth then, technically he may not have been born evil, but in the 
wider context, it's as good as.  In the HP-verse, if Riddle followed 
the path from good (or at least not-evil) to evil, then I think the 
dominant influence would have been his own choices, not the actions 
of others.

If he was protected, or otherwise charmed, by his mother's love, 
then the magnitude of his subsequent exploits fits the magnitude of 
the choices he must have made to depart from that love.

David, who is staggered to learn that Lexicon Steve doesn't have his 
own copies of the UK editions