Will there be an ESE!character in Book 7?

[Renee]

No: HPFGUIDX 147498

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "mmmwintersteiger"
<mmmwintersteiger at ...> wrote:
>
> > Renee:
> >If this is not a story about a scapegoat (and like you, I
> > tend to think it isn't), will even he be redeemed? 
> 
Michelle:
> If JKR redeemed LV then I would lose all respect for her and it would 
> ruin the entire series for me.  

<snip>
> 
> LV is unredeemable.  There is nothing he could do to make up for all 
> the damage he has caused, there just isn't.  Besides, throughout this 
> series JKR has multiple times reminded us that he cares for no one, he 
> has no friends and no desire to have friends.  IMO he is without 
> humanity and therefore unredeemable.

Renee:
Actually, I was addressing Sydney's assumption (in the post I reacted
to) that literary books - books with substance, so to speak - avoid
the scapegoat mechanism as a central drive: projecting evil onto a
villain, who is then cast out to cleanse the community and restore
everyone else's good conscience. So far, Voldemort looks suspiciously
like such a scapegoat to me. But as I don't like the idea that the HP
series lacks substance, I found myself wondering whether casting out
the villain would really turn out to be the solution of the riddle.
(Pun intended. Sorry.) 

For Voldemort is a riddle. You say he is without humanity. As he's not
literally the devil and was definitely born human, the question is why
he lost this humanity. We know how: by murdering and thereby splitting
his soul. But that doesn't explain what led to it. JKR tells us he was
never loved by anyone (Mugglenet & Leaky Caudron interview). Are we to
make a connection between his being unloved, his inabilty to love and
his loss of humanity? In that case it would be very unsatisfactory to
me if Voldemort would just be done in/cast out/whatever at the end,
with no more explanation than: well, what do you want, he was inhuman
and irredeemable and the world is better off without him. 

It's obvious the world *is* better off without Voldemort, and I admit
that in his case redemption isn't likely. So far, though, he makes
more sense to me as a symbol than as a person, yet HBP goes to great
lengths to show him as a person, so we're apparently meant to see him
as such. But if his evil boils down to a combination of bad genetics
and being unloved as a baby - and that's all the explanation we're
given - he remains a caricature, an easy scapegoat whose mere removal
won't solve the riddle of evil. It would be too simple. And that would
be harmful to my perception of the HP series as books of substance. So
I hope there will be more to it.

Renee
who hopes she's managed to make herself marginally clear