Dumbledore's Plan/Deaths in DH/Catharsis

[muscatel1988]

No: HPFGUIDX 177522

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> 
wrote:

> How can he have been born in that prison? What's imprisoning
> Voldemort is his choice to divide his soul with murder, and then
> to make the division irreparable by constructing horcruxes.
> 
> We get right inside Voldemort's mind to see that he's not an
> instinctive killer, unlike the basilisk. He doesn't kill because of
> an uncontrollable hunger or a voice in his head. He does it 
> because it feels good. 

Mus responds (for hirself and not, obviously, for lizzyben04):

Most of HBP was devoted to Riddle's backstory.  What we were shown 
there (and shown, not told) was that he was the product of the ill-
conceived, disastrous love for a callous Muggle on the part of a 
witch who was the descendent of Slytherin and herself brought up in 
horribly abusive circumstances.  When he was orphaned (because unlike 
the saintly Lily, Merope, far from loving him enough to die for him, 
couldn't bring herself to stay alive for him), having been born in 
the orphanage, he was a strange child, who hardly ever cried, who 
killed other kids' rabbits, who terrified the other children and 
subjected two of them to unspeakable and unspoken horrors in the 
cave - and we're told this by the woman who runs the place, and who's 
clearly an alcoholic. " 'I don't think many people will be sorry to 
see the back of him.'" [HBP, UK hb: 251]

Riddle is presented to us as either bred-in-the-bone evil or 
irredeemably damaged before he even gets to Hogwarts, the perfect 
storm of dreadful nature and awful nurture.  There is nothing in 
canon to indicate at what point he *chose* to take the dark path.  He 
was well launched on it as a tiny child (and if that touch about the 
rabbit wasn't in there because it's well known that 
psychopathic/sociopathic killers often start out on pets, I'll eat 
the Sorting Hat).  He didn't get bad when he decided to change his 
name, nor when he started to make horcruxes.  

Yes, killing makes him feel good.  But that by itself is just a 
fact.  What led him to derive pleasure from it?  Why, in short, did 
JKR make the decision to give him such a terribly stereotypical 
backstory?  Why did she take such pains to give us a child who *was* 
born in a prison (and literally, born in an orphanage)?  It's not 
really an interesting backstory at all, for this reader.  

It would have been much more interesting if he'd been born into a 
family like Harry's - one that is loving and kind, where he was 
wanted - and then gone bad (although that would have been a radically 
different story).  But he wasn't - the poor kid never had a choice, 
and ends as he began, "a small, naked child, curled on the ground, 
its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, [...] shuddering under a seat 
where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling 
for breath." [DH, UK pb:566]  I wish that I could see where he 
chose.  I really don't think it's there.

Mus, whoe heart breaks for Merope.