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| My various Harry Potter editions:some UK, some US, some Spanish, some audios |
Chapter Nine: Rayna has already pointed this out, but it's one of my favorite Neville moments in the book, when Minerva recognizes Neville's worth: "It's high time your grandmother of the grandson she's got..." We've been on the Neville Appreciation Bandwagon all along; it's nice to see some textual support for that finally happening.
Parvati has a crush on Firenze, which must have inspired some truly raunchy fan fiction. Hmmm...best not to think on that too long.
Snape's introduction to DADA: The man was poetically passionate about potions, but now that he's teaching DADA, he's poetically passionate AND insinuating danger with every syllable. Makes me wonder all sorts of things, but mostly makes me wonder how the world would collectively feel about Severus Snape if this story had been told from a non-Gryffindor's POV.
Oy, clearly I'm spending too much time with this. That's three points for the first chapter we read, and I'm not even through...must move faster.
Chapter Ten: Poor, poor Merope.
Chapter Twelve: I'm glad to see that Minerva isn't ready to jump on the anti-Draco bandwagon because of the flimsy testimony Harry gives her; however the irony kills me because this time Draco actually is up to something terrible. I'm so conflicted. Well done, JKR.
Chapter Thirteen: Speaking of conflicted, I'm generally pretty conflicted about young Tom Riddle. I think it's rather unfair for JKR to harp on that whole "it's not what we are, but our choices, that define us" angle when Tom is clearly born a sociopath. I'm not an expert on the subject, but it's my impression that the true sociopath is incapable of working within the strictures of a normal, moral society, so in this case, young Tom never had a choice, per se. How much more powerful a villain would he be, then, if Tom had not been born that way, but had chosen to become that? I don't mean to make light of the terrible things that Tom has already done in his young life, or what he will grow up to do, but I think JRK's authorial intent is a little bit misguided here.
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| Tom Riddle, Jr: Born This Way |
"The mouth organ was only ever a mouth organ." SO much homo-erotic subtext to that statement, no?
Chapter Fifteen: Unbreakable vows. Luna's general awesomeness. Taking down the ministry via unexpected channels like gum disease. That's like defeating the Mayor of Sunnydale with hummus.
I'm out of time now. Can't look up more gifs, cannot respond to Ron's being poisoned. Or talk about cauldrons full of hot, strong love that need to be stirred. But it's funny that Harry remembers the bezoar from his first potions class, isn't it? Oh, and Wilkie Twycross, whose name I inevitably end up saying as either Twycwoss or Trycross. But enough for now...
I do get the very strong impression Tom Jr. is a sociopath and thus isn't quite the direct comparison to young Harry's life that the book wants to suggest. But I do think there was the possibility for TJ to not become Voldy. It would just have taken the wizarding world to have any sort of therapy, which apparently they do not cos they are FINE with letting Harry go through all sorts of trauma and nary a mention of visiting a therapist.
ReplyDeleteI think we're supposed to draw comparisons about the orphans (both literal and figurative) in this series on a sliding scale: Harry, Hagrid, Snape, Voldemort. How, with the right or wrong influence, they each could have ended up somewhere else on that scale.
DeleteThe WW needs therapy in the worst way.
Also, perhaps Neville could be somewhere on the figurative orphan spectrum. i'll have to think on it. But clearly JKR has a thing for motherless boys in her magical world.
DeleteAnd though not an orphan, Malfoy could also be on that spectrum, since who he is so heavily influenced by his dear old dad. What chance did he have?
DeleteOoh, Kayleigh, that is such an interesting idea. The Malfoy family dynamics interest me perhaps more than is strictly healthy.
DeleteGood point about Tom being born a sociopath. Hm. And we don't really have other characters we can point to and say "But what about this guy? He didn't go murdering and maiming." Maybe JKR wanted a no-question-about-it, 100% villain to play off? But you think we'd have a 100% hero on the other end of the spectrum then, and we do not. I am no where near answering this question.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Kayleigh. 100% good/evil characters are unreal and certainly un-interesting. That's where JKR goes so wrong with Voldemort and why Umbridge is a better villain, or Bellatrix. She does better with the good guys 'cause none of them is perfect.
DeleteSNAPE! So hot right now. Seriously, I am just like, ROWR.
ReplyDeleteRe: V-mort, I think you're right that he'd be more interesting if he'd CHOSEN to be a villain. JK's point seems to be that, since he and Harry had such similar upbringings, that they are each a product of their choices (BOLSTERED BY THAT COMMENT DUMBLEDORE MAKES TO THIS EXACT EFFECT) but Tom seems like he's evil from the get-go. Like, he can't help it. Like you say.
And no one, not even Dbles, steps in to be like, What the shit, kid. You can't be like this, this is not how ordinary moral people operate, you need to learn some compassion. I mean, D-dore is all, This sort of behavior will not be tolerated, but maybe someone (A TRAINED COUNSELOR PERHAPS? Does the wizarding world even HAVE those? Because it clearly needs them) should have helped teach Young Tom some coping skills.
Yeah, Dumbledore wants to play the wait and see game with Tom. When clearly what Tom needed was a parent and a therapist. And THEN if he still developed his evil ways, well, fine. THAT would be a choice. Sort of. But I still think he was born that way, and not just because it was the perfect chance to use a Lady Gaga gift that looked like Death Eaters.
DeleteFirst of all, that Born This Way gif is BRILLIANT and I salute you, madam.
DeleteSecond, I think you're totally spot-on about Vmort being a sociopath. Which makes the "try to feel remorse" bit in Deathly Hallows feel a little silly... Isn't being unable to feel empathy the key characteristic of sociopaths? IDK, not my expertise, but I think JKR sets him up in a way that he has zero capacity for remorse, so that big dramatic bit is just kind of stupid.
"mostly makes me wonder how the world would collectively feel about Severus Snape if this story had been told from a non-Gryffindor's POV." Yeah, but it's not just ANY Gryffindor's POV, is it? It's not like Snape hasn't done things to earn Harry's contempt, so it's kind of fair enough that that's the way he sees Snape (I mean... I know how you feel about the 'Harry filter'. But still.)
ReplyDeleteALSO- I feel like JK shouldn't have made baby Voldy really odd, but made him, you know, vaguely normal but with some bad blood and also with choosing the evil, cause that surely would have been more effective for that whole you-choose-what-you-become thing. So, I'm just choosing to not believe that baby Voldy was a sociopath! DONE.
Except that the Slytherin/Gryffindor rivalry is so strong that having either one tell it makes the reader miss out on a lot. I'd love a Hufflepuff's POV, for example. They wouldn't cut any slack to Harry OR Draco, Dumbledore OR Snape. And a Ravenclaw probably wouldn't care enough to tell the story. That's it. I want Harry Potter from the Hufflepuffian POV.
DeleteAs a social worker, I very much shy away from the whole born a _____ thing, but that is generally the consensus about sociopaths/psychopaths. But just because you have that predilection doesn't actually make you incapable of making positive choices. Psychopaths aren't always serial killers.
ReplyDeleteTrue, sociopaths/psychopaths aren't always serial killers. But I think of Voldemort as more of a mass murdering megalomaniac. Which is not to say that all socio-/psychopaths become those, either.
DeleteWell, I do think that Voldy was born a sociopath, which means that all the therapy in the world wouldn't have really helped. But what he CHOSE was to attempt to become the most powerful wizard ever who could never die. He didn't necessarily have to choose that path - he could've become your normal run-of-the-mill serial killer like normal sociopaths. Not that that's BETTER, but he wouldn't have been such a powerful and manipulative being, striking fear into wizarding families everywhere.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like how this does kind of show that Dumbledore's "everyone has good in them" attitude kind of majorly backfires. Cause he really should have recognized that kid for what he was and banned him from Hogwarts, or attempted some sort of "power-binding" spell or curse on him. If such a thing exists in this world.
True--all the therapy in the world probably wouldn't have helped. BUT if the WW had tried to help Tom AT ALL, then at least it would have been more of a choice on Tom's part to become Lord Voldemort.
DeleteThat kid in the orphanage was already super-scary. If you ask me, the WW has a lot to answer for unleashing Tom on its world without closer supervision. I actually think it was the right thing for Tom to go to Hogwarts, but he should have been given a magical mentor and a briefing on ethics at the very least.
"How much more powerful a villain would he be, then, if Tom had not been born that way, but had chosen to become that?"
ReplyDeleteYep. I think JKR needed to either go all the way, or the opposite way. So either Harry and V were super-dooper alike and different responses to a single choice sends them down different paths, OR V is bad from birth and Harry is good *regardless* of all the shit he went through/100% good. As it is it's a little bit of both, and it weakens it *just* a touch.
How fun that you have all of those different editions! My best friend has the complete set from the US and then got the complete UK set when she studied abroad.
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