The effects of the Dursleys on Harry/Dumbledore the Parselmouth

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 151145


> Jen  (me, lol!):
> Therein lies the meat of what DD keeps saying.  Do our inherent 
> traits and abilities have an effect on us?  Absolutely, but we 
> *still* have the CHOICE not to let those things control our lives!
> 
> Voldemort and Harry's lives closely parallel each other 
> obviously...the difference is merely in the choices they make.
> 
> Voldemort was abandoned and unloved...so was Harry (though not by 
> his parents' choice).  I would venture to say that Harry's 
childhood 
> was actually worse than Voldemort's.
> 
> But Harry's anger towards Voldemort at the loss of his parents 
> drives him to overcome his abuses, to *choose* to be a stronger, 
> better person in order to accomplish what he feels needs to be 
> done.  Voldemort, despite being unloved, could certainly have 
chosen 
> to use his talents for good, but he did not.  He let his anger 
> overcome him, BECOME him.  Does Harry have that liability?  Yes, 
and 
> I wonder where JK will go with it.


Magpie:
But while I agree, I think it's also important to note that 
different people are usually making different choices because each 
person has his/her own personality and situation.  I say this 
because I think sometimes people get simplistic--for instance, I 
notice this with Sirius, where the fact that he was from a bad 
wizard family and chose to be good is used as proof that a bad 
wizard family can't excuse a bad wizard.  Which no, it doesn't, 
since in the end we're all responsible for our own actions.  But 
sometimes I think it avoids looking at the real decisions being made 
and the unique characters involved.  When talking about Sirius JKR 
always describes him as a rebel, which is significant.  She doesn't 
just make him a kid who happened to not go the way of his family, 
she made him a rebel by nature, which is going to influence the way 
he responded to his family.  Regulus had a different personality, 
and may have come to similar decision as Sirius did in a different 
way under different circumstances for different reasons.  Ultimately 
the two characters are different and it's not just a case of Sirius 
choosing right (to join the Order) and Regulus choosing wrong (to 
join the DEs).  Choosing evil is probably rarely if ever choosing 
evil.  It's choosing something different for each person, in 
response to a unique set of circumstances.

If Tom Riddle is a sociopath, for instance, that immediately makes 
him very different from Harry (and probably also means he might have 
been Lord Voldemort even if his mother had lived and raised him).  
He's never been loved, but can love change a person who can't 
understand or feel love himself?  Can he really make decisions based 
on love, like Harry can?  It's not like Tom wouldn't ever be offered 
love, I'd think, given his beauty etc.  He seems loved by Bellatrix 
now.  But still he reminds me a bit of Cathy in East of Eden 
(usually it's Sirius and Regulus that remind me of that book!) who I 
believe is described as a monster for whom people are just as 
strange to her as she is to them.  He's making his choices based on 
things that he can feel and understand.

Harry's background is different again. It's funny when people say he 
could have been like the Dursleys because yeah, he could have, but 
at the same time he was also in a situation where he was liable to 
define himself against the Dursleys just as he did, holding on to 
the idea of perfect parents who did love him.  The Dursleys aren't 
really his family and he has no love for them that we see. He'd 
probably be far more conflicted if James and Lily had treated him 
the way the Dursleys do. What seems to be the worst combination in 
canon and in life are the parents who are inconsistent, or for 
whom "love" is mixed up with anything negative. The only really 
happy families in HP, ones without real pain within them, are dead.

Not that I think you're arguing for a simplistic reading, it just 
makes me go off on this tangent.:-)


Peggy:
I don't think it's really that important a point, except in the 
impact on one's characterization of Dumbedore; and I really don't 
like the squeaky-clean version of Dumbledore, I find it too 
unrealistic to accept.

Magpie:
For me I tend to think he's not a Parselmouth because of the 
emphasis put on it in CoS. It loses something for me if Harry isn't 
marked as "like Voldemort" by being a Parselmouth. It doesn't seem 
like an evil or dark thing to me, despite its history, but it seems 
like if Dumbledore was one what's the big deal that Harry is?  
There's too many of them, and Harry doesn't have to be the Heir of 
Slytherin.  He could be equally the Heir of Dumbledore and 
Gryffindor.  I've got no problem with Dumbledore studying it or 
anything, but it seems like a Parselmouth is supposed to be 
something you are rather than something you do, in which case it 
seems like this is something I'd think Harry shares with Voldemort 
and his family and not with Dumbledore.  It's not a squeaky-clean 
issue for me, it just seems to mess with the Harry/Voldemort 
connection, of which Parselmouth seems to be a symbol.  It's not, 
for me, like, say, Occlumency where Dumbledore does it, as does 
Snape, Draco, Bellatrix and Voldemort.

-m