Voldemort the Cartoon and Cliches? (was Re: Draco = Evil?)

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 124836


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "northsouth17" 
<northsouth17 at y...> wrote:

> I've got a feeling I'm missing something though. Are the 
charachters  cliched and my reading experience is not letting me 
see it? <

IMO, they all start out as cliches because that's the way Harry 
sees people. He didn't have much direct contact with the adult 
world before Hogwarts. I suppose he was a bit like Plato's 
cave-dweller except that instead of watching shadows on the 
wall, he was watching Dudley's cartoon shows. He sees people 
as cartoons because, well, that's been his experience.


Harry pigeonholes relentlessly, and then is startled when his 
pigeons fly the coop. Rowling encourages the reader to do the 
same. For instance in CoS, Harry thinks Lockhart is a vain and 
pompous hero, the reader thinks he's a harmless fraud and it 
turns out that everyone's wrong.

The Dursleys are just as cartoonish as Voldemort for the first 
four books. You could say that Rowling changed her style or you 
could say that Harry finally got far enough away from them to 
develop some perspective. But I can see why, if the Dursleys 
scare you, and Voldemort does not, then Dumbledore's decision 
to leave Harry with them to protect him would ring false.

You could make an evil parent list (When I am an evil 
parent, I will not lean over to check the oven) and just like the 
evil overlord list, it would be a caricature of a caricature of a
real, serious problem. There are no real evil overlords, but there  
are real paranoid bloodthirsty dictators, and guess what...they 
gloat, they get sidetracked by their obsessions, and they're totally 
without pity, love or remorse. That part of their brain is broken, 
just like some people can't see or speak.

Voldemort is hard to take seriously, and that's one of the scary 
things about him. People couldn't take Hitler seriously either, 
once. Why, they said, that rabble rouser and his beer hall 
buddies couldn't possibly take over a modern state, and if they 
did, does anyone really think they're  going to go to war with all 
Europe and kill every single Jew? It was laughable right up until 
it happened.

Voldemort's monstrous appearance may reveal what he is to 
human beings. But does he look like a monster to goblins or 
giants? His non human appearance might be a plus with them. I 
wouldn't be so quick to say that he'd sacrificed  his ability to 
charm.

Pippin