Spy novel? maybe (was Lupin's secrets )

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 118669


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "justcarol67" 
<justcarol67 at y...> wrote:

> Carol responds:
> I think you're on the right track here. I would go even farther and
> say that JKR thinks that *no one*, including Voldermort, is born 
> evil (or at least, no human being is born evil). The idea that any 
> child could be born evil contradicts the persistent theme that it's 
> our choices, not our talents, that determine who we are.

A short post to address one issue, because this is not quite what 
Dumbledore actually says--if we're taking that as our basis for 
argument.  It's pretty frequently misquoted.

Dumbledore says, near the end of CoS, "It is our choices that show 
what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Show.  Not determine.  

Which is not to wholly invalidate the point made above and the 
subject being discussed, but to point out that, perhaps, JKR's 
cosmology is a little more essentialist than one might like.  Showing 
what we are speaks to there being something there that we actually 
*are*, deep down inside (an essence, if you will), and that this 
fundamental aspect of our being is revealed more through our choices 
than our abilities.  The focus here on revelation rather than self-
shaping seems to point to there being something fixed within people--
which, like it or not, seems to fit with her statements that Tom 
Riddle never loved anyone.

-Nora is more of an existential type herself, but isn't going to try 
to fight the prevailing cosmology of a series in analysis