Tom, evil, choices, and CapsLock!Harry in OoP (was The House of Gaunt)

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 134445

Wanda wrote:
"The orphanage isn't nice by any means, but I get the feeling that
Harry wouldn't have found it so bad, if he'd had to live there.  There
was a sense that somebody there cared about children, even if the
place was threadbare and poor.  Mrs. Cole wasn't a monster - she was
actually quite a smart woman, and she was gracious enough to offer
Dumbledore a drink, which was more than the Dursleys have ever done. 
Altogether, it changed my mind for the worse about Tom Riddle.  I'd
previously imagined him living in a filthy, abusive hellhole, and
thought that that might have warped him.  Now I don't think that that
is an excuse - he wasn't a good boy who was twisted by abuse and
suffering, and couldn't help himself.  He had no excuse for being
cruel and evil - it was something he chose for himself."

Del replies:
Quite the contrary IMO. Tom did not choose to be evil: he was BORN
with a distinct evil (or at least severely screwed-up) nature, and his
childhood circumstances prevented him from finding another way when it
was still time.

Mrs Cole commented about how Tom was *always* a weird kid. She pointed
out that even as a *baby* he wasn't normal, mainly he didn't cry much.

This is something that bothers me much. Before HBP, I had lots of
questions about what kind of kid Tom was, and how he came to be what
he became. I was hoping that HBP would show us that he indeed *chose*
to become weird. But that's pointedly NOT what JKR tells us.
Completely the opposite in fact: she openly tells us that Tom was
NEVER normal.

But if he was never normal, then how could he be expected to make
normal choices? See, that's the thing that bothers me. JKR says that
she doesn't believe that anyone is born evil, but on the other hand,
she gives us that kid who was never normal to start with, and who grew
up in circumstances that sure didn't help (mainly, no magical parents
to identify his bad acts and deal with them). 

Tom was:
- screwed up right from birth
- extremely powerful
- raised in circumstances that fostered his cruelty and prevented his
being controlled

We also know, from an interview that JKR gave, that he never loved.
That's an extremely strong statement.

No matter how much we are supposed to make our own choices, I just
don't see how Tom could have chosen another path. He was born with a
psychopathic disposition, he never received any structuring love, he
had the power to make his cruel fantasies come true, and nobody could
control him. Being just a kid, neither born nor raised with a strong
moral compass, he made the only choice that any kid in his situation
would have made: he did NOT choose, he stayed on the easy path, he did
NOTHING to fight his natural disposition, he gave in to his nature.

He was truly the embodiment of evil: the boy who was born without a
good disposition, and who never had any incentive to develop one. But
this was a "by default" evil: it was evil that grew because no love
fought against it.  I guess that's why JKR said that Snape is more
culpable: because Snape had to choose to do evil when he knew better,
while LV simply never chose, and let himself be driven by his nature.

While I'm at it, I'd like to point out that I've come to the
conclusion that CapsLock!Harry in OoP was NOT due to Harry himself at
all. It wasn't grief, it wasn't hormones, it wasn't teenage angst. It
was LV. CapsLock!Harry started right after LV was reborn, and it ended
just after LV chose to close his mind to Harry. So it seems obvious to
me that Harry's bad temper, his slight cruel streak, his disregard for
others' feelings, all those things that I disliked so much in OoP,
they were simply due to Harry being in contact with LV. It's LV who
has a bad temper, who is cruel, who has no compassion, and so on.
Harry was simply being contaminated by those emotions.

Now the freaky part is when I start thinking about how AWFUL it must
be to be LV, what kind of living hell he's putting himself through! If
Harry was only lightly reflecting LV's usual mood, then the real thing
is pure evil and pure hell indeed... Much worse than death itself...

Del