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

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 138396

Lupinlore: 
> Personally I have a tendency to try and "correct" plot holes and 
> thematic inconsistency, or at least criticize them.  I am beginning 
> to believe, however, that the second position is the one that will
be 
> proven correct.  Sienna makes a marvelous and telling point in her 
> early comments about Voldemort.  We have had an emphasis on the 
> importance of choice and JKR's statements about how no one is born 
> evil.  But in Voldemort we have a character who seems, from all 
> evidence and appearances, to be genetically evil, a corrupt product 
> of a degenerate and inbred family.  Furthermore Dumbledore, the
very  character who is associated with statements about the power of
choice and the importance of trust, seems to relate to him from the
very first as a dangerous and deeply flawed child, a child who is in
some  way corrupt in his very essence.  In other words, we have a
powerful  and glaring contradiction woven into the basic fabric of
the narrative, in which choice and trust is emphasized but the main 
villain is a monster from birth, the son of a poisoned bloodline.


Pippin:
The contradiction is not in the narrative, but in the interpretation
people have put on it. People have taken Dumbledore's words to
mean, "we are what we choose to be."

I guess it bears repeating that Dumbledore never said "Our choices
make us what we are." He said, speaking of  Harry's choice not to be
in Slytherin, that it   "makes you *very different* from Tom Riddle.
It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than
our abilities." (emphasis in the text)

 Harry's choice   makes him "very different" from Riddle
in Dumbledore's eyes  -- but it is never stated anywhere that
Dumbledore or JKR thinks  choice is the *cause* of the differences.

Harry is worried, at this point in the narrative, about whether he
can trust himself -- everyone seemed so willing to believe that he was
the Heir of Slytherin, and Riddle noted the likenesses between them.
Harry wants to know whether the similarities between him and Riddle 
mean that he is tainted. Dumbledore assures him that his choices
show that he is not. 

The emphasis is on examining people's choices 
in order to determine who can be trusted, not on the idea that we are
solely what we choose to be. Indeed, if the latter were true, then 
looking at the choices people have made in the past  would be a very 
poor way to decide whether to trust them,  because they could easily 
choose differently next time.

How people become evil is a separate issue. To say that Voldemort was 
not born evil does not say that his miserable heritage and upbringing
did nothing to influence the choices he made. Obviously they did,
but it is by the choices Riddle made that we are to know this, not by
his heritage and upbringing alone.

Merope and Morfin had the same degenerate bloodline, even more
desperate poverty and lovelessness to contend with, but by their
choices, we know they were not murderers.

Pippin