Timelines & a troubling passage

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 116897


Beatnik wrote: 
> > I was re-reading PoA... and, well... "...Lily and James Potter had
not died in a car crash.  They had been murdered, murdered by the most 
> > feared Dark wizard *for a hundred years*, Lord Voldemort" (pg10, 
emphasis mine).  "for a  hundred years"...what's going on? 
>
> bboyminn:
> 
> Well, I'm sure you were looking for something grander and more
> elborate than I am going to give you, but I think it is merely a
> figure of speech; the turn of a phrase, and not a literal statement of
> time.
> 
Steve (bboy):
> For example- I just started reading CoS (US Hb pg 4) and Voldemort
is referred to as "...the greatest Dark sorcerer of all time".
> 
> I'm sure that the books refer to Voldemort using various phrases of
> time; 'in a century', 'of the age', 'for a hundred years', 'who ever
> lived', 'of all time', etc.... I'm not exactly sure how I would
search them all out since Voldemort is referred to by an assortment of
names, but I'm confident that there are a variety of references and
they simply attempt to express /a long time/ and are not meant to be
taken as precise measurements of time. <snip>

Carol responds:
Also note that "greatest" is a value judgment and as such somewhat
subjective. If you and I were talking about great English kings or
great U.S. presidents, we would probably disagree about which was
"greatest." Or, if we agreed on, say, the "greatest" living author of
children's books, we might disagree as to how long it's been since the
previous "greatest" children's author. Is JKR the "greatest" in a
century or only in the last fifty, or evne twenty, years?

So whether LV is the "greatest Dark wizard" who ever lived or the
"greatest" in a century or the "greatest" in the last fifty years
depends on who is talking. Voldemort and Hagrid are not going to have
the same opinion on the matter, and neither is a reliable judge of the
matter, anyway. And IIRC, we haven't heard from Dumbledore, who would
be better informed than Hagrid and less subjective than Voldemort on
the matter.

The "most feared wizard in a hundred years" (not quite the same as
"greatest Dark wizard," if we're going to nitpick), is the narrator
writing from Harry's perspective. Harry's essential ignorance of
Grindelwald (which matches ours) makes the reliability of this
assertion rather questionable. (In a similar statement in SS/PS, we
were *unreliably* informed that his parents died in a car crash,
reflecting the state of Harry's "knowledge" at the time.) "The
greatest Dark Wizard of all time" is a similar statement, reflecting
the state of Harry's knowledge when he's even younger and even less
informed.

Diart!Tom's opinion of his future self is even less reliable--"the
greatest sorceror in the world"--an assertion that Harry vehemently
disputes by giving that honor to Dumbledore (CoS Am. ed. 314).
(Interestingly, Harry repeats Tom's wording and then repeats it
substituting "wizard" for "sorceror"--a distinction I'm not sure what
to make of, especially since *Harry* makes it.) Earlier, Tom has
expressed something like reverence for Salazar Slytherin, whose "blood
runs in [his] veins" (314) and whose "noble work" he is carrying on
(312), yet he refers to Lord Voldemort, defeated at Godric's Hollow,
as "the greatest wizard of all time" (313), an opinion Harry doesn't
dispute because he wants to know how Tom could know about
Voldemort.(He doesn't yet know that Voldemort is Tom's "past, present,
and future.") 

I'm not sure who else chimes in on the subject of greatest (Dark)
wizard of all time, but if we were given Dumbledore's view, it could
well be Salazar Slytherin rather than Voldemort *or* Grindelwald.
Granted, it would still be a value judgment, but it would be an
informed opinion and more likely to represent JKR's own view than
anything spoken by another character or presented by the narrator from
Harry's POV.

Carol