Voldemort and Sauron and Others

[sigurd at eclipse.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 191474

Dear List

As I believe I said, I am re-reading the whole series start to finish a second time and now doing critical analysis on it. I also notices some interesting tropes. One of them is the nature of the villain.

Has anyone noticed that both Voldemort from HP and Sauron, the villain in Lord of the Rings, both secrete their power into various material artifacts. Sauron into the rings (and yes, most of him is in the one ring, but there's a little bit of them in the other rings as well) and Voldemort into the horcruxes. Similarly in the Elric of Melnibone series the anti-hero, Elric's sword Stormbringer secrets much of Elric's personality, and even in Conan, Thulsa Doom, the arch villain feels compelled to use these physical artifacts and often animals, which do none of them any good at all. In the first two cases it is the destruction of these material artifacts that destroy them.

Also interesting is the constant recurrence of the snake as the symbol for evil.

Otto