[HPforGrownups] Re: Forgiveness

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 188702

Geoff wrote:
> Indeed yes.. This is the famous and oft-quoted (certainly by 
> me!) canon:
>
> '..."Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why 
> that was. Think."
>
> "It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, 
> "because I asked not to go in Slytherin..."
>
> "Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes 
> you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that 
> show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."'
>   

Bart:
    Here is the problem. The question is whether or not Voldemort was 
capable of making a choice. JKR wrote him as a sociopath/psychopath, 
who, at least in the real world, does not have a choice, at least not 
one to repent. It's sort of like a blind person, who may have all sorts 
of information about the color "red", but can never truly experience it. 
A sociopath/psychopath sees other people not as people like him or 
herself, but like pieces in a game. Can you truly feel repentance for a 
character in a videogame that you "kill"?

    Now, JKR has said that, in the new body, Morty DOES have the 
capability to repent, due to a drop of Harry's blood being in the body. 
Even if that were possible without a lot of other effects showing up on 
Morty, let's go back to the blind person again. Someone who is born 
blind, if they suddenly got the ability to see, would not have the 
pathways in their brain to be able to interpret signals. So, even if 
Morty was given the ability to interact with his soul, after a lifetime 
of being cut off, he almost certainly could not even interpret the new 
signals he was getting.

    One of the key elements of writing fantasy is that, outside of the 
fantastic elements, everything else needs to be realistic. If you put 
someone in front of a firing squad, and say that if everybody misses, 
then they can go free, then they have a chance of going free. So, I 
guess since JKR says that Morty had a choice, he DID have a choice. But 
it wasn't a realistic one, and it certainly was not made clear to the 
reader that he had one.

    Bart