Do you think there is more to Voldie's story?

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 97894

Kneasy wrote:
> I'm still of the opinion that Voldy is more than Tom Riddle gone
bad. Voldy is Tom plus something else, the most likely source of which
is the Chamber.
 
Before his excursions to the nether regions he'd probably been a not
very nice, bitter and resentful teenager, but still a brilliant
scholar. After entering the Chamber things change. Why change his name?

Why this lust for power? Why this determination to eliminate
 mudbloods from Hogwarts when he was one himself?

Carol:
Both as Diary!Tom and as Voldemort, he makes what to me (and evidently
to you, as well) is a rather odd distinction between "mudbloods," who
deserve nothing better than to be victims of a Basilisk, and
"halfbloods" like himself and Harry, whose Muggleborn mother Tom
refers to as "your Muggle mother." That view of Lily may help to
explain why he didn't consider her a threat at Godric's Hollow. Harry,
on the other hand, is, as DD puts it, "a halfblood like himself." He
chooses him over the pureblood Neville as the more likely threat and
evidently considers him worthy enough as an adversary to pretend to
follow the conventions of a duel.

Maybe a halfblood is, in Tom/Voldemort's view, the best of both
worlds, neither a Muggle like his hated father nor a pureblood like
the mother who deserted him through death. He senses, maybe, that his
own power is greater than hers must have been if she were so weak as
to die in childbirth. Or maybe in his view halfbloods are wizards but
Muggleborns are Muggles. To think otherwise is to include himself on
the list of those who are unworthy and must die.

Why change his name? Because he hates his Muggle father. The murders,
IMO, came before the lust for power, spurred in part by a desire for
revenge that spread from his father to all Muggles and Muggleborns
(but not to halfbloods like himself)--killing them off as Salazar
Slytherin apparently desired became a kind of quest and
self-justification. But I'm not sure that we see the lust for power in
young Tom--only a desire for revenge and self-aggrandizement (the new
name hiding his Muggle origins and the "Lord" suggesting noble
blood--cf. the Noble and Ancient House of Black). He may already have
been hoping for followers at that point, but it was more important to
get away from Britain in case he was suspected of those murders and
search for immortality. Maybe the immortality motif ties in with
opening the Chamber of Secrets, or maybe he came across the idea in
his research on Dark Magic while he was trying to open the Chamber and
became obsessed with the idea of defeating death. In any case, it was
not power but immortality that he was seeking while he consorted with
"the worst of our kind" and exposed himself to so many transformations
that he lost any resemblance to the handsome boy he had once been.

Where does lust for power come in? We don't see it (IMO) until his
return to England after wandering all over Europe (and maybe
elsewhere) for some fifteen years. He comes back, so changed that
almost no one recognizes him, and recruits followers based on his
pureblood doctrines, but then starts converting his followers to
"Knights of Walpurgis" (Death Eaters) who perform the Unforgiveables
(and who knows what else) in the name of that warped ideal. Maybe the
desire for power grew as he realized what terrible things he could
make them do. But I don't think it has anything to do with the Chamber
of Secrets, at least not directly.

IMO, Voldemort is an outgrowth of Tom Riddle, a natural (or unnatural)
extension of his hatred of his father, his contempt for Muggles and
Muggleborns, his view of himself as the heir of Slytherin, his early
propensity for murder, and his lust for immortality. Through his own
choices and actions, he has become a distorted, evil caricature of
himself who is no longer fully human. And as far as I can see, there's
no going back.

Carol