[HPforGrownups] Yo-Yo, Thimble, Mouth-organ

[ClareWashbrook at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 152721

In a message dated 23/05/2006 07:11:54 GMT Standard Time,  tonks_op at yahoo.com writes:

Does anyone have any ideas what these objects might mean?  Why did Tom take these particular objects? Do you think that they have any special  significance to the plot?  Thoughts anyone? Let's go into the depth  of LV mind and of Tom Riddle's mind as a child. What will we find there?  



A yo-yo is the simplest of childhood toys.  A thimble is something  which women used and collected, my great-grandmother (who would have lived in  the same time as LV's grandmother collected them - it was a time when mothers made many of their children's clothes.  A mouth-organ - father's teach their sons - my son has received one from his Welsh grandfather and another from his Scottish great-grandfather. Music was only available to those who made it themselves.
 
They could be symbols of missing experiences and missing  relationships.  Nobody gave him toys, his mother never made his clothes, his father never passed on a musical tradition. 
 
There is also the fact that children from disfunctional backgrounds often resort to cleptomania as a way to both seek attention and gain the items that they think they lack.  I have a student who is beaten by his father (mother absent) and he steals books and other children's trinkets.
 
I think it is illustrative of character but not necessarily of plot.   It is difficult to get such children to talk; once they have been warped into a disfunctional adult there is little that can be done.  The horcrux issue has been raised and will undoubtedly be followed in book 7 as they track down the horcruxes.  Unless we're going to get a shot of Voldy playing the harmonica in his mouldy cellar, I think we're done with the trinkets.  I'd  quite like to 
see that though!
 
smiles,
Clare xx