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

[onnanokata]

No: HPFGUIDX 93054

I'm still working on getting the posting conventions right here, so 
please be patient with me. 

>  Jen Reese:
>  JKR's comment on the chat indicates there are additional 
>  circumstances about Tom Riddle's birth that we haven't heard. 
>  Perhaps even *Tom* wasn't privvy to this information either? Diary!
>  Tom in COS and LV at the graveyard are the two instances where we 
>  get information about Tom's past. Assuming Tom was told much of 
his 
>  history at the Muggle orphanage, then pieced together his own 
>  version of events from digging around once he got to Hogwarts 
(where 
>  he discovered he was Heir of Slytherin), I'd say there's a lot of 
>  room for unintentional error and omission in his self-reported 
>  history. 
>  
>  Could there have been events around his birth that led to Memory 
>  charms on the Muggle orphanage personnel? Did the mid-wife exclude 
>  certain pertinent facts? Were there inexplicable events that the 
>  Muggles chose to overlook, much like the Dursleys with Harry?
>  
>  It's not that I reject the psychological model when examining 
>  Harry's and Tom's childhoods, I'm just curious if what we know 
about Tom is accurate.

Jen,

I agree with you. There is quite a bit of room for misunderstanding 
in the history of Tom Riddle, and I would characterize 
misunderstanding as part of the human/HP experience.  

In my opinion, making choices and being marked by past events, does 
not invalidate anything that either of us has said up to this point.  
Riddle may misunderstand quite a bit about his young life, but what 
he thought to be true cannot be separated from his actions for better 
or worse.  The information we have about his knowledge not only 
implicates him in hateful behavior, but also a very large part of 
Wizarding society.

  My idea goes back to the larger story of a society that allows 
Voldemort to exist.  If the WW is similar to the Muggle World, and 
Tom Riddle was not born evil, then what information is JKR asking the 
reader to consider in order to really understand the evolution of the 
character from Tom Riddle to Lord Voldemort?  Harry's similarities to 
Voldemort don't really give us much more than a hero vs. villain 
comparison and black vs. white morality.  In my opinion, there is 
more happening with the characters than simple binarism.  Which may 
or may not fit well with what you are considering.

I'm a firm believer in letting JKR tell her story in her time, and if 
indeed there is something more to the youth of Tom Riddle that we 
need to know, she will let us in on it through the next two books.

Carol wrote:
> I really, really hope that his mother (or the midwife) didn't cast 
any
> sort of charm. It's one thing to have Harry owe his life to his
> mother's love. He grew up essentially good and decent without 
knowing
> that. (He doesn't know about the charm, if there was one, even now;
> only about the "ancient magic" involving his mother's self-
sacrifice.)
> It's a completely different thing for Tom/Voldemort's evil nature to
> be in any way traceable to his mother, who also in a sense died for
> him, since if it weren't for his birth, she'd be alive.
> 
> Nor does his father's behavior, however harsh and irresponsible and
> generally reprehensible, excuse Tom's choice to murder Myrtle, 
taking
> out his hatred of his Muggle father on an innocent girl because her
> parents, too, were Muggles. The murder of his father and 
grandparents,
> though he had a motive for one of the three killings, was also an 
act
> of pure choice and pure evil. Even if his father had murdered his
> mother and left him in a field to die he would not be justified in
> taking the law into his own hands and murdering him. And the
> grandparents, so far as we know, had done nothing worse than having
> Tom's father as a son.
> 
> Yes, Tom had a difficult life, but many children throughout history
> have been abandoned by their fathers (or mothers). Many children 
have
> been rejected and placed in orphanages. But the majority of those
> children don't become murderers. Nor do they make the conscious 
choice
> to carry out the "noble work" of some dead predecessor whose goal 
was
> genocide.
> 
> Whatever the circumstances of Tom's birth (which I also will find
> interesting), they can't take away his responsibility for the deaths
> he caused as a boy or as a man. He knew good from evil and 
consciously
> chose evil. And that, not the details of his birth and childhood, is
> what distinguishes him from Harry, who will not, I think we can 
safely
> state, be murdering Vernon or Petunia in Book 6 or 7.
> 
> Carol

Carol,

I don't think that anyone involved in the conversation believes that 
Voldemort is not responsible for the numerous murders under his 
reign.  Clearly he is guilty of hatred beyond prejudice and a few bad 
deeds.  He's a vicious killer. That is very clear.  Without a 
background, however, he would also be a one demesional character that 
others hae no reason to follow.

I'm also not clear that anyone argued for Tom Riddle's ignorance of 
good and evil either.  My point was simply that neither Harry nor 
Voldemort can be separated from his history, or the history of the 
WW.  We as readers do not have to like, or for that matter agree 
with, any of the characters motivations for making their choices. 

I think that we can all agree that resisting prejudice and hate is 
quite a bit harder than falling into its trappings.  I accept that 
Tom Riddle was exposed to this from a young age and then came of age 
in WW that was still quite prejudice.  I don't like, but I accept it 
as part what is truly happening in world of the character. I also 
accept that Harry is exposed to love and came of age 50 years later 
after a "civil" war.  If time and circumstance are not considered as 
part of the character development, then how much of a story are we 
left with? 

Dharma