Levels and contradictions in JKR's writing ( was Re: It's over, Snape is evil )

[ceridwennight]

No: HPFGUIDX 138377

Rachel wrote:
>> One has to wonder why Harry turned out to be such a decent person,
>>while Tom turned out to be truly evil, if their personalities are
>>not grounded in nature. LV also seems to me, so far, to be a
>>shallow fairly uncomplicated character, whereas Harry has some depth
>>to his character and struggles with his emotions.

Deb wrote:
>Rachel there are several very, very important differences between
>Harry's childhood and TR's! And these differences are IMO the key to
>why they make such radically different choices in how they live
>their lives

Ceridwen:
First, no one's mentioned that children have no choice about their 
lives.  At least, not their physical existence, and not their 
upbringing.  This is most clearly illustrated in the birth situation 
of both boys.  Tom didn't choose for his mother to die, any more than 
Harry chose to be cared for, for fifteen months.  Neither had a frame 
of reference for a 'correct' upbringing.  They had no knowledge.

My mother was raised in an orphanage around the same time as TR was 
raised in one.  If my mother was a HP character, she would have been 
Hogwarts class of 1942.  His orphanage sounds smaller than hers, 
though I doubt if the staff per number of children was much 
different.  The staff at the orphanage relied on the older children 
to help with the younger ones.  Even so, there were some staff 
mistakes.  Such as the night my mother fell out of bed, broke her 
collarbone, cried about it all night, and they attributed it to her 
just having been brought in.  No one checked until morning, since a 
new arrival often did cry all night.

The 'kids' my mother still sees at the every-three-years reunions 
came in a variety of types.  There were several cruel children who 
terrorized the others.  There were several needy children who, like 
my mother, are still hopefully searching for love and taking a great 
deal of abuse of all sorts in order to be liked.  There were several 
who grew up just fine, as if they had been raised in a (very large!) 
family.  My aunt is one of those.  The 'kids' in the last two groups 
all, or most, seem to be thankful they didn't have the depridations 
of the Great Depression to live through like their friends at school 
did.  An orphanage is a charity case, and there are donations which 
make certain unpleasantries less of an issue.

I don't know about TR's orphanage.  The matron seemed to be a bit of 
a boozer, which may have had an impact not only on the children, but 
on the staff.  And at that time, many illegitimate kids were sent to 
orphanages, and illigitimacy carried a heavy stigma with it as well.  
Did they think Tom was illegitimate?  Could this have colored the way 
they thought of him?

Still, with a variety of caregivers at the home, Tom was exposed to 
many different types of people who react in different ways.  He was 
able to see good, bad, irresponsible, and so on.  And orphans are not 
isolated from the general public.  They attend school in the 
community, and after a certain age, can get jobs.  As for church, my 
mother's orphanage brought in ministers from various denominations, 
and had a rabbi once a year.  If Tom's orphanage is run by a charity 
organization, they probably were under a specific denomination, and 
the kids would have attended services.  So he would have been 
instructed in right from wrong, at least on Saturdays/Sundays.

As a child gets older, and is exposed to different people and ideas, 
they become more able to choose.  I do think nature plays a part in 
things, and in the case of mental disorders (as well as physical 
handicaps) can override upbringing, *to an extent*.  However, a 
person with some sort of inborn need to hurt others, can learn to 
redirect.  Tom chose not to.  Maybe because the older kids who 
mentored him were cruel themselves (a failure of the staff to rescue 
him).  Still, he saw different people, and knew there were other 
ways.  As an adult, he became culpable for his own actions, and could 
have consciously chosen to reform himself, or at least remove himself 
from negative stimuli.

Still, maybe this whole line of thought is meant to show the one 
exception to the rule of choice.  It's possible, as there are things, 
handicaps, that make it impossible for someone to fulfill certain 
expectations.  And, as has been pointed out here before, Tom was a 
budding wizard with apparently great powers, something the orphanage 
staff had no knowledge of, and no way to counter his use of magic.  
Which gave Tom an early and stunning taste of such power over 
others.  And here is the lack of choice on the part of a child, in 
that the WW should have taken Tom to a Wizarding orphanage or placed 
him with a Wizarding family who would be able to counter, guide and 
mentor his magic.  Tom couldn't have done that.  He was a child and 
didn't have the choice to leave the orphanage.

In all, my mother is more like Harry in her situation.  She was two 
when she went to the orphanage, and does remember her mother's 
death.  She also on some level remembered being loved and adored as 
someone special as opposed to just being part of 'one big family'.  
And she has spent the rest of her life looking for that particular 
sort of love.  Which I can see in Harry when he takes so strongly to 
Molly Weasley, for instance, and builds sudden hopes of living with 
Sirius.  His quest for information beyond what he (may 
subconsciously) remember of his parents rings true, too.  He could 
give in to jealousy that his friends have families and he does not, 
but his need to find place and love will, I think, naturally be much 
stronger.  As it has been for others in the same situation.  Most 
people do want what they are unable to attain.

And, the Dursleys.  Harry is exposed to a family where Tom was not.  
His cousin is loved and doted over, to his detriment as Dumbledore so 
aptly mentioned.  But, Harry sees a family through the window of his 
rejection, not a bunch of identically dressed kids lining up for 
meals.  Despite their treatment of Harry, I do think the Dursleys, 
left to the three of them, are a loving, if misguided and even 
dysfunctional, family.  Harry can see it.  And, Harry has the luxury 
of visiting outside the Dursley household.  He visits the Weasleys, 
who are a loving family.  Tom never had the chance to see family in 
an orphanage.

IMO, Tom's inborn nature from the Gaunts (can't say what he got from 
the Riddles, all we know is they were rich) could have been channeled 
by a competent upbringing.  He did have another lineage which could 
have been tapped.  Harry's early loving upbringing could have been 
quelched by cruelty.  It would have been easy for him to become 
jealous, then bitter.  They both began to make choices as they were 
exposed to people and ideas.  Tom consistently made the 'easy' 
choices, to terrorize and browbeat; Harry searched for love.

JMO,
Ceridwen.