Voldemort good/bad. Was: Twisted Irony

[Rebecca Hoskins]

No: HPFGUIDX 138814

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "msbeadsley" <msbeadsley at y...>  
> > 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.


But we don't know that, Sandy. We don't know that he was never 
cuddled, or pampered or played with. We know that he was raised in an 
orphanage and that the staff would have been over-worked and without 
much time to spend with any particular child. But we don't know that 
he 'never' received any 'nice' treatment.

I can only conclude that some of it must have been nice, simply 
because I cannot comprehend how anyone could spend time with a small 
baby and not be tender with them.

However, neither could I comprehend how the Dursley's could fail to 
be tender with a toddler - and JKR writes that they did fail.

But, despite having already contradicted myself, I still maintain 
that we don't know that TR's treatment was any worse than harry's; 
for all we know it may have been substantially better. OK, Harry got 
14 months of pure love, but then nothing. TR likely did get (albeit 
smaller amounts) of positive treatment over a much longer period of 
time.

Rebecca