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

[naamagatus]

No: HPFGUIDX 92965

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "davewitley" 
<dfrankiswork at n...> wrote:
> 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.

I agree that the choice theme in itself would be better served if 
Harry and Voldemort had identical beginnings. But, as Dharma pointed 
out, their babyhood was very different, anyway. Harry was marked with 
love psychologically, just by being raised for a year by loving 
parents. Tom didn't get that - his father rejected him, and his 
mother died at birth. He was raised at an orphanage which we know he 
absolutely hated. I don't think that it's going too far to say that 
he was psychologically marked with rejection/hatred. So, it seems 
fitting to me that, in negative parallel to Harry, he would also be 
*magically* marked with hatred. By this, I don't mean that he was 
cursed. I see it as a *protective* charm his mother laid on him, 
using the one source of power she had - hatred of his father. Like 
Harry's love charm, it doesn't negate free will and choice on his 
part.

I don't know exactly where JKR is going in this, but the choice theme 
is not a simple matter in her books. We see that people's upbringing 
has great influence on who they become (e.g., Draco and Ron), 
although it's not a final cause. I mean, people can and do make 
choices that are not predetermined by their upringing. We see this 
with Percy, with Pettigrew and with Snape. I think that in this, she 
is being much more realistic than a simplistic (dare I say, Bush-
like?) you-are-who-you-choose-to-be approach. People aren't remade at 
every new choice they make. They are not a clean slate, on which they 
can freely write whatever they choose, at any given time. Each choice 
has to made with with and against the full load of their personality 
and past experiences. So, some options are facilitated, and some are 
impeded by inner inclinations. This certainly complicates free 
choice, but isn't it the way it is in real life?

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

That was exactly my reaction!

Naama