That darn Prophecy again.. Re: Thin air/Choices

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 140060


> Valky:
> Are you agreeing with my interpretation here a_svirn? I am not 
sure I
> understand what you mean by that.
> 
Yes, I am. (No hidden sarcasm, honest.) I meant to say that it's 
exactly what JKR said when she brought in Macbeth analogy. She 
borrows rather heavily from all Shakespeare, but since she decided 
to show her hand with this parallel I think we can take her at her 
word, as it were. Oracles are notoriously "imperfect speakers", as 
Macbeth put, it and their equivocations disguise rather more than 
they disclose. In itself "supernatural solicitation cannot be ill, 
cannot be good" but there is still a question how to react to the 
disclosure. By trying to kill Harry Voldemort naturally tried to 
gain a measure of control over the forces that are beyond his reach. 
He "spurned fate" and "scorned death" in hope to become "more than a 
man", but the result, of course, was that he's become rather less. 
And that's where the horcruces come in, the way I see it.

I kind of agree with your overall interpretation of "multiple 
wills", even though I arrive at it from the opposite end so to 
speak. I don't quite like the idea of Horcruces (and I feel uneasy 
about the word itself) so my point of departure is the Prophesy. 
There has been quite a discussion on-list about free will,  
Kiekegaard and Calvinism, but I think that JKR's approach to the 
problem of Will and etiology of Evil is more in the line with old 
good Clement and Tertullian. I think it may be summed as follows: it 
is through our free will that Evil enters this world. But Evil is 
also Non-being. By turning to the absolute Evil Voldemort tried to 
achieve Immortality, but, without realizing it, he ceased to be a 
person he was: in other words, ceased to be. He is not a person 
anymore, rather a personification of Evil. And the same is true for 
his followers, Quirrel "opened his soul to Lord Voldemort" e.g. to 
Evil with the result that he gradually ceased to be the person he 
was and continued his existence only as a "vessel" for Voldemort. 
When Voldemort shed his body there wasn't anything left in him to 
live on. 

In the end we have a paradox of sorts: it takes one's free will to 
set the whole "depersonification" process in motion, but once it 
started it is outside one's control. That's how the ideas of 
prophecy and horcruces are connected, I think. I see horcruces, "a 
mutilation of one's soul" as JKR's metaphor for 
this "depersonification". The less human Voldemort becomes the more 
confident he grows of his powers. But as we know from 
Hecate "security / Is mortals' chiefest enemy".  The Prophesy acted 
as bait that Voldemort took thus loosing last vestiges of control 
over his own destiny. From that moment on indeed everything he did 
would ultimately lead to his undoing. And I think you are right, 
these separate shreds of his soul each with their separate maimed 
wills will prove his weakest point. I don't think that it will 
necessarily turn out to be a battle of double-hangers, though. 
Although it's a possibility, of course. 

Sorry for the long answer,
a_svirn