Villains in potterverse

[frugalarugala]

No: HPFGUIDX 116119


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "dumbledore11214" 
<dumbledore11214 at y...> wrote:
> 
> Do you guys find that JKR's villains or I should qualify, Death 
> Eaters are scary?

DEs yeah, Voldemort, no. However, I think Tom Riddle was scary. Very 
scary. And here, IMHO, is why:

No one thinks that they're evil. Evil is too nebulous a trait to 
yourself in a serious way. It's a trait that we apply to 
Others, 'Others' with a capital 'O', as in not us, not connected with 
us, not of us... Insiders and Outsiders. We fear the unknown and, 
since we know and understand ourselves, we fear "Outside". 

But when we're given a character with traits you can relate to, we 
start to understand them and they stop being "Other". We understand. 
It doesn't mean we like or empathizing, just that we can't discount 
their humanity anymore. And we really want to de-humanize what we 
hate, evil, what isn't Us. De-humanizing something makes it "safer", 
since it means it couldn't apply to Us. But by linking it so 
something we can understand, it sneaks it under our defensive radar.  

I'm not sure I'm making a damn bit of sense--we're out of coffee, so 
my brain is decaffeinated. But I think JKR is drawing a line between 
in-group/out-group mentality, de-humanizing and bigotry. 

--Frugalarugala, who truly hopes that the series ends with something 
to do with finding the Tom Riddle in the self-de-humanizing 
Voldemort.