Voldemort good/bad. Was: Twisted Irony

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 138667

> > Del: 
> > > 2) You say that his entering the WW was some kind of chance to
> > > change his life. But I don't think Tom saw things that way *at
> > > all*. The very concept of changing one's life depends entirely 
> > > on someone realising that there has been something wrong with 
> > > the way they've lived their life up to now. As far as Tom was 
> > > concerned, the things that were wrong in his life were the world
> > > he was living in, the people he was forced to live around, but 
> > > it was definitely *not* himself. He was special, he was better,
> > > it's the others that were wrong.

> Rebecca:
> I think that Del's observation is central to the argument of whether 
> or not Tom Riddle had any chance of living a normal life when he 
> had 'never known love'.

I think this part of Del's argument leaves out the question of how
capable Tom was of seeing things any other way than how he did. If you
go back to message #137644, by "docmara1," a psychologist, you'll see
she talked about child development:

> Mara:
> From a psychological perspective, attachment is a complex concept,
> but it develops in part from a child's experience of being loved --
> seeing the proverbial "gleam" in the other's eye (wonder if
> DD's "gleam" is connected somehow..hmm.). Attachment is resilient
> and evolving, and forms the bedrock of a person's personality
> development.  

> Rebecca:
> It was not what had happened to Tom that made him the person he was, 
> it was the way that he saw what had happened to him, and the way 
> that he reacted to it. "he was special" , "better", it was the 
> "others who were wrong". He was essentially arrogant and, basically,
> not-a-nice-person.

When you say "the way that he saw what had happened to him, and the
way that he reacted to it" you imply choice. I think his choices were
already severely constrained by the time he got old enough to make
any; he had not had the nature (genetics) and nurture (caregiver bond)
necessary to enable normal infant/child development. For him to even
have a chance of learning that he was *human* (something he never did
on the most basic level because he never bonded to one), by the time
Dumbledore found him, would have taken intense, qualified attention he
just didn't get.

Rebecca:
> I believe that, had Harry and Tom traded places at birth, Harry 
> would still have been 'good', and Tom would still have been 'bad'.

I believe that JKR will not leave us with this conclusion. I think
those fifteen months Harry had a loving mother and Tom didn't are
going to turn out to be very important in terms of "culpability". I
keep thinking that word or concept is going to come up again; I think
we may see some philosophy on crime and punishment play a part in
certain characters' fates, considering JKR's past and current ties to
Amnesty International.

Sandy aka msbeadsley