Said creature under the bench..

[Annemehr]

No: HPFGUIDX 176181

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Ken Hutchinson" <klhutch at ...> 
wrote:
>
> > 
> > Annemehr:
> > 
> > It seems to me you are trying to have it both ways.  What *was* 
Harry 
> > trying to do in the Great Hall, goad Voldemort or rescue him?
> > 
> 
> Ken:
> 
> I, or Harry actually, am trying to have it both ways. He was trying 
to
> do both. [...] In
> order to save his life he has to be able to know when Voldemort will
> strike. And yet he also knows what that baby/creature was and he
> understands that he has been shown it to give Voldemort a last
> warning. [...] The offer
> Harry makes is a more dangerous and therefore a braver and nobler
> gesture than it appears on the surface.
>

Annemehr:

Okay, fair enough -- from Harry's point of view (but with 
reservations regarding JKR's PoV, which will be the balance of my 
post).


 
> 
> > Annemehr:
> 
> > When I read Harry's words in that scene from Voldemort's point of 
> > view, there is no way I can see that LV could possibly understand 
> > what Harry is talking about, let alone consider it as the better 
> > option. <snip> 
> 
> Ken:
> 
> I believe that Hermione read the same reference book on horcruxes as
> Voldemort. That reference told her that only remorse can heal a
> damaged soul. Voldemort would already have known this. Voldemort
> apparently had the same kind of blackout after his attack on Harry 
in
> the forest as Harry experienced. We cannot know if he too had a 
vision
> of the afterlife or what it might have been. In any event Voldemort
> had seen that he was on the cusp of something very serious.


Annemehr:

It is true, we cannot know if LV had a vision of the afterlife, or 
whether he experienced anything like the flayed child existence that 
Harry saw.  Since he and Harry both blacked out, you might expect 
them to have had congruent visions as well, but there are two 
arguments against it.  

First of all, LV can not have had the same "near death experience" 
that Harry had in which he would have had a chance to "go on," 
because LV was still tied to Earth by the Nagini Horcrux.  

Secondly, he did not act as though he had just had any kind of 
shattering experience as that.  He seemed to wake up in a bit of 
confusion perhaps, but his only concern seemed to have been whether 
or not Harry was dead.  And with Harry supposedly dead, at this point 
there was no reason not to take a breather if he thought he might 
have anything important to consider.  We see nothing of the sort; no 
hesitation at all.


Ken:

> Harry
> obviously knows something about what may happen to him. Harry's 
offer
> was one of evident value which Voldemort had the ability to 
recognize.
> Whether he understood it fully or not is immaterial. He was in a
> position to understand its potential value and he could have learned
> all he needed to know by surrendering his wand and asking questions.


Annemehr:

I have to disagree.  These things are externals: a book that mentions 
remorse, Harry's warning, even a possible vision of a flayed baby 
(which I maintain would indeed have come "from without" i.e. from the 
same source Harry had it from).  Whether he understood it fully or 
not is crucial: he can't have understood it *at all.*  Internally, 
*of himself,* he knows *nothing* of love, and therefore, remorse.

Hell, even if he had been somehow persuaded that it would be in his 
best interests to stop killing and hurting people, it still wouldn't 
have helped him.  He may have been left alone and lived many more 
years, but because of his complete inability to have remorse, his 
soul would never have healed.  His fate would only have been 
delayed.  So, a discussion about the fate of his soul, even if he'd 
been willing to have one, would not have helped him after all.


Ken: 
> 
> It isn't easy to reconcile with someone who is armed and intent on
> killing you. I don't see what more Harry could have done in this
> situation. [...] This was a
> real offer of reconciliation and salvation.
>


Annemehr:

Again, I'm not blaming Harry for this at all.  He did show some 
compassion after all, though it was useless as DD said it would be.  
My beef -- with the author -- is that it was an offer that was both 
impossible for LV to accept and his only hope.

 
> 
> > Annemehr:
> 
> > 
> > The Tom Riddle I saw was no more capable of feeling empathy and 
> > remorse than of conceiving of the fifth dimension, and it seems 
> > awfully hard to say he'd *earned* eternal misery for himself for 
> > failing to.
> > 
> 
> Ken:
> 
> That is the Calvinist position and I reject it personally although
> many hold it. 


Annemehr:

Yep.  So do I.  But, do you see it in the books, or not?  Because 
it's screaming out at me, and it's one of my biggest problems with 
the story.


Ken:

<snip>
>  Tom Riddle had no
> worse a deal from life than Harry. Tom chose one path, Harry chose
> another. Tom was in an excellent position to prosper as a decent
> wizard when he graduated from Hogwarts. Even as a murderer with one 
or
> two horcurxes he was far from being unredeemable at that point. 
Merely
> by stepping back from the brink he could have prospered materially 
and
> spiritually. He was no more incapable of that than you or I. But he
> chose to go on to greater and greater depths of evil. He chose to be
> what he was. He earned what he got.


Annemehr:

Then you have to be saying either of two things: LV was not a 
psychopath, or LV *chose* to be a psychopath.  To me, neither one is 
a viable option.  He looks like a psychopath, walks like a 
psychopath, and quacks like a psychopath -- the only way he could be 
not-a-psychopath is if JKR put something else in the text to indicate 
that.  She didn't.  Therefore, he was absolutely more incapable of 
healing himself *by remorse* than you or I, and as I pointed out, 
merely stopping murdering would not have helped him.

In Kings Cross, the myopia Harry had lived with through no choice of 
his own had fallen from him -- he was healed.  I would wish that the 
psychopathy Tom Riddle had been saddled with, also through no choice 
of his own, would be similarly healed.  Who knows how he would have 
appeared then? 

By the way, in case anyone is thinking of that post-DH interview 
where JKR said that LV did indeed have the chance to repent, because 
of "-- this drop of hope or love--" -- because of Harry's blood in 
his veins, I must demur.  

[ http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2007/0729-dateline-vieira.html 
scroll down near the end]

Firstly, I must demur because, though the interviews were fun 
and "fair game" for theorising, now that the series is complete they 
are no substitute for what is actually in the text, in fact they are 
often contradictory.  (I'm not asserting, in general, that the author 
is *absolutely* "dead" -- that'd be a whole other discussion -- just 
that in this case they're not helpful.)

Secondly, and more importantly, this assertion is one of those things 
that is indeed contradicted in the text.  If LV, for the first time 
ever, is suddenly experiencing within himself the true ability to 
*love* that night in the graveyard, you'd have to expect it to have 
*some* effect.  You'd have to; the sudden presence of love within 
ought to be huge.  Instead, we see quite the opposite: not only does 
he think and act just the same as ever, but at the end of OoP, he is 
tortured by the presence of love within Harry while he is possessing 
him.  This is a flat-out contradiction of the interview comment.  If 
LV carried love in his veins via Harry's blood, either 1) he would 
experience constant pain in his body from it, or 2) he ought to have 
been able to withstand the same emotion in Harry that he carried in 
his veins.  One or the other.


It's that vision of the 11-year-old-child Tom in the orphanage that 
gets to me -- so young, and so obviously *put* (by fate) onto a 
tragic path.  And here comes the twinkly, but cold and distant 
Dumbledore, and what does he do?  He takes one look, and goes for 
intimidation tactics -- just the thing for reaching out to a poor 
young psychopath, eh?  Sheesh.

Annemehr

P.S. Understand that I am not disputing JKR's right to write this, or 
anyone else's to see value in it, I'm only explaining the depth of my 
own distaste and disappointment.