The Many Faces Of - Tumblr Posts

Sam Winchester somehow gives every vibe simultaneously. He’s a beautiful woman. He’s a 6’5” man with a broad chest and shoulders to match. He’s a sweet little dappled fawn. He hunches so much that he looks small. He towers over everyone else in the room. He’s the toughest son-of-a-bitch around, who survived literal lifetimes of torture at the hands of Lucifer. He flinches, he’s skittish. He could knock someone flat on their ass with one hit. He stands behind Dean like he’s his mother at a parent-teacher conference. He successfully used barbed wire as a garrote. He has a terminal case little-brother-disease. He’s sensitive and caring. He has the bitchiest pout in the world that he uses indiscriminately. He’s so so tightly controlled. He was a crazed, blood-addicted lunatic.

Can’t stop thinking about this. He’s my little princess 💖

the many faces of tom riddle

-i’m going to be doing five posts, discussing the four portrayals (and most popular fancast) of tom riddle/lord voldemort, and why, based on my interpretation of the character as someone who has spent entirely too many waking hours on re-reading the books, watching important scenes over-and-over again, child psych, moral theory, and free will to piece apart his characterization, they capture or fail to capture the most important aspects of the character-

I love the fact that he was played by so many people; there’s something interesting in that which kind of speaks to the character (as in he split his soul so he’s different people... sort of). There will be vastly unpopular opinions involved; be warned.

Part 1 (Monday)

Part 2 (Tuesday)

Part 3 (Wednesday)

Part 4 (Thursday)

Part 5 (Friday)

the many faces of tom riddle, part 1

-no hate (this is merely my humble opinion) but i strongly dislike tom hughes as tom riddle, and here’s why-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

Just personally, this fancast induces a lot of cognitive dissonance for me, but this is the first time I’ve been able to sit down and articulate properly why it always throws me for a loop.

Now, does he fit the visual/aesthetic archetype?

Yes. I understand completely why people like this fancast. We know that he is studious, intellectual, and (at the time people generally fancast him for) involved in the criminal underground, and he more-or-less fits the physical description.

And, to be clear, it’s not that I don’t think Tom Hughes could play Tom Riddle, it’s that I don’t think the character he plays in the fancasts is a close enough approximation of Tom Riddle.

For me, herein lies the issue.

Tom Riddle’s character is all about the emotions bubbling under the surface. He’s a disaster waiting to happen -- he’s angry, he’s lonely, he wants revenge, he feels empty and hopeless and desperate, he’s irrational...

Not sure what movie/show the Tom Hughes clips come from, but the character he plays isn’t that at all. the character he plays is very self-possessed, poised, self-aware. Reflective. Remorseful (there are clips of him crying when/after he shoots someone). Introspective. 

That, to me, is not Tom Riddle at all. 

Yes, he does deal with moral conflict, but it’s never at the forefront of his mind. It’s not something he’s constantly grappling with. He doesn’t really... brood in this Hamlet-esque way.

Tom doesn’t think. Sure, he plans, he ruminates, he rationalizes a posteriori. But he’s very unaware of himself (in fact, it’s one of his fatal flaws). It’s not that he doesn’t have emotions; just that his internal state is a mystery most of the time.

He doesn’t connect with his own emotions; he is completely estranged from them. Tom cannot tell you whether he is happy or sad (not just because of his pride). He keeps his emotions and moral compass (which are highly uncomfortable things), in a locked little box, swallows the key, and disregards them. And yet, this character connects so deeply with his emotions that even the audience can see exactly what he’s going through. 

(There’s an openness -- an ease of vulnerability -- that Tom Riddle doesn’t have)

The thing about Tom, is that he hates himself just as much as he hates everyone around him. Creating Horcruxes to save himself from death is not an act of self-love, or even narcissism to the extreme; instead, forcibly ripping your own soul seven times is the most literally and metaphorically self-destructive thing a person could possibly do.

"Of the Horcrux, wickedest of magical inventions, we shall not speak nor give direction —"

If we go all the way back to Book 1, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, you’ll remember that the eponymous material (first described in the Epic of Gilgamesh) is capable of producing the Elixir of Life, a magical substance that makes its drinker immortal, as long as you have a steady supply. Not only that, but according to the beliefs of historical alchemists (such as Nicholas Flamel), it was capable of curing any disease. In the alchemical tradition, it symbolized perfection, enlightenment, and heavenly bliss.

If all Tom Riddle was concerned about was prolonging his life, this is the obvious (and better) option.

Here’s the alchemical symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone. Looks kind of like the Deathly Hallows symbol, right? It represents the interplay of the (at the time, believed) four elements of matter -- a sort of periodic table, if you will.

The mature Philosopher’s Stone was believed to be a red stone (for making gold), and the immature one a white stone (for making silver). Rubeus Hagrid and Albus Dumbledore, anyone??

"So he's made himself impossible to kill by murdering other people?" said Harry. "Why couldn't he make a Sorcerer's Stone, or steal one, if he was so interested in immortality?"

And Dumbledore responds:

"But there are several reasons why, I think, a Sorcerer's Stone would appeal less than Horcruxes to Lord Voldemort.”

"While the Elixir of Life does indeed extend life, it must be drunk regularly, for all eternity, if the drinker is to maintain the immortality. Therefore, Voldemort would be entirely dependent on the Elixir, and if it ran out, or was contaminated, or if the Stone was stolen, he would die just like any other man. Voldemort likes to operate alone, remember. I believe that he would have found the thought of being dependent, even on the Elixir, intolerable...”

And while, yes, he did try to steal it rather than make it, I am sure that in the time it took Tom to make all of his Horcruxes, he could have learned enough alchemy to produce it for himself (or wheedled the information out of Nicholas Flamel). While Dumbledore hypothesizes that it’s because Tom hates feeling dependent, this must be irony, because he spends the first book as a literal parasite, the next three as a virtually helpless creature, and the remainder still reliant on his Horcruxes.

"Well, you must understand that the soul is supposed to remain intact and whole. Splitting it is an act of violation, it is against nature."

But, like me, Dumbledore is making guesses at Tom Riddle’s internal state, and in this case, I think, he’s made an oversight. Horcruxes make him equally as dependent as the Philosopher’s Stone would have. It’s been established in canon that you cannot make yourself immortal without help; either you rely on the continued existence of your Horcruxes or your supply of the Elixir.

And while the Elixir represents the positive aspects of eternal life, like renewal, rebirth, and the cyclical nature of the universe (see above the ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist, one of the four women who knew how to make the philosopher's stone), a Horcrux is antithetical to life. It represents disorder, and once the creator of Horcruxes dies, they are unable to move on from Limbo -- shut out of the cycle. Harry describes Tom’s mangled soul as looking like a flayed and mutilated baby -- permanently immature and stagnant.

This theme of destruction is furthered by the Golden Trio’s discussion on how to reverse the process:

Ron: "Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?"

Hermione: "Yes, but it would be excruciatingly painful."

Harry: "Why? How do you do it?"

Hermione: "Remorse. You've got to really feel what you've done. There’s a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can’t see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?"

With this in mind, we can surmise that Tom is either (a) impatient, which we know he is not (b) there was some deeper reason for favouring Horcruxes -- so, yes, I believe that either metaphorically or literally, this was self-harming behaviour.

He takes on the name of Lord Voldemort because he hates himself, Tom Marvolo Riddle. He hates the Muggle part of himself so much that he’s willing to tear apart his entire being. 

"Voldemort, is my past, present, and future, Harry Potter..."

If that isn’t renouncement of himself, I don’t know what is. He was clearly not born Voldemort.

While of course, this does NOT excuse ANY of his actions, I find it vastly implausible that the likes of Malfoy, Mulciber, Carrow, etc... would have been welcoming in any way, shape or form to an assumed ‘Mudblood’ in scruffy secondhand robes from a London orphanage, and as such, indoctrinated him into his fanatic belief in blood-purity via antagonizing him. 

(Imagine Hermione, but poor and without parents, in the 1930s/40s. She would not have been treated well in Slytherin, either.)

Children are more vicious than you think. And while Tom probably gave as good as he got at Wool’s Orphanage (and was possibly an active aggressor himself), Hogwarts wouldn’t have been a level playing-field. (I’ll talk a bit about this and the significance of the Gaunt Ring in Part 2).

In other terms, I think Tom was bullied for having dubious origins. That’s often the swiftest way to radicalize someone, and would have left Tom with a crippling sense of self-hatred that I don’t think he would have even picked up from the orphanage.

(And it’s possibly this early experience with relational aggression that results in his constant need to be on the offensive/defensive, distrust of others, and fear of vulnerability. To me, this is an archetypal response of someone who was a past victim of bullying.)

Why else would an extremely powerful half-blood subscribe so strongly to those beliefs? (Rather than discriminating via amount of raw power or something -- because what Tom is immensely proud of when Dumbledore meets him is his ability, not his parentage). But I digress.

Now, Tom Riddle is never, ever quietly menacing like this. The mask is either completely on or completely off. We never see this character angry. Tom Riddle, when the mask slips off, is fury incarnate. Anger is the one emotion he doesn’t find weak; the one emotion he’s completely and utterly honest with.

Besides, that brings me to my next point. Tom’s not quite so austere. In fact, he’s quite witty, and often quite pleased with himself.

Just look at the difference in their body language. Tom has much more fluidity (he’s circling Harry, the head-tilt, the eyebrows move and he smiles a bit) than the other character, who has so much tension. Yes, they’re both menacing, but in completely different ways. Tom is comfortable with his actions, no matter how shitty they are. This other guy doesn’t like doing what he’s doing, but he’s going to do it, anyway.

Contrasted with the above, Tom’s unawareness of himself is such that we end up with a character who has a bizarre mix of extreme self-hatred and high self-esteem -- he always believes he is in the right -- in this case, doing Salazar Slytherin’s noble work -- while going to extreme, self-destructive lengths, such as tearing himself in half at the mere age of sixteen.

So, sorry... I kind of get the appeal, but... I don’t like the fancast. 

(More unpopular opinions coming at 5:30 PM EDT tomorrow!)

the many faces of tom riddle, part 2

 -you dislike frank dillane’s portrayal of tom riddle only because you don’t think he’s attractive-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION (and this time, featuring a bit of armchair child psych from a student).

Wait, don’t clutch your pearls just yet. Compose yourself.

I am about to explain why it’s not actually that bad, and Dillane’s portrayal is vastly underappreciated.

I definitely agree that his portrayal comes off as ‘creepier’. It’s not helped by the stylistic decisions in the scene -- the smeary, green filter gives the scene a sinister quality. 

Even Slughorn looks suspect here, which is somewhat appropriate, given that he is complicit in this crime. 

Again, this scene is very much intended to be slightly off.

You’ll notice (and I’ll discuss this again when I talk about Coulson’s portrayal) that Dillane is almost always shot from at least slightly below, which makes the lower third of his face look bigger (and thus more menacing). The lighting also makes his eyes glow in a really unnatural way. There’s an echo-y effect to make his voice (and not Slughorn’s) sound unnerving.

People talk about how Coulson would have looked in this scene, and if he was filmed in the same way (monotone, smeary/shadowy filter, and always from below), he’d look a bit creepy, too.

But all of this, imo, is for a pretty good reason. Slughorn isn’t the POV character. Harry is. Harry is learning about how a young Lord Voldemort wheedled the secret of Horcruxes out of an unsuspecting teacher. Unlike in COS, he expects Riddle to be evil. And, so, Harry’s new perception of Tom Riddle literally colors how we perceive him.

Take this shot, for example: he does that head-tilt thing that Coulson does, and it’s actually... kind of... cute???

Imagine Dillane filmed from slightly above, like Coulson usually is, and it looks even more innocent. (I mean, come on, he does not look like he’s killed four people, does he?) It’s not hard to imagine teachers being taken in by this kind of act.

Even that little smirk he does when the camera (aka, Harry’s gaze) pans in, is for Harry’s benefit. No one else noticed that. 

However, I still fail to find this creepy, like, at all. Yes, it’s a fake smile, but he’s portraying a different side of Tom Riddle to Coulson. Whereas, in COS, he’s in his vindictive, murderous element, where he’s free to express himself, in this scene, Tom Riddle is doing what he does best -- manipulating and managing appearances. 

This entire scene is an act. And because Harry knows it’s an act, it should look a bit stilted. 

From the Hepzibah Smith scene in the books: Voldemort smiled mechanically and Hepzibah simpered.

So, Harry is pretty adept at parsing Tom’s fake expressions.

But just look at the expressiveness in his face: he goes from brooding, he blinks, and his entire face changes to this charming (fake) smile. 

At the risk of sounding elitist, I’m a bit tired of seeing the word ‘psychopath’, which is not an actual medical diagnosis recognised by any psychological or psychiatric institution, being tossed about, especially with reference to Tom Riddle (and from a neuroscience perspective, it’s doubly annoying). There’s no such thing as ‘insanity’ or ‘psychopathy’ or being ‘crazy.’

-although I use it too a shorthand in conversation to distinguish ‘canon’ Tom from his ‘softer’ OOC counterparts, I really shouldn’t-

Unfortunately, I’ve seen the ‘psychopath’ comment used time-and-time again as an excuse or a full explanation of ‘why Tom Riddle went evil’ (JKR in fact, has made a weird comment in an interview, basically saying that ‘psychopaths can’t be redeemed or learn adaptive coping skills’ or whatever), which really just goes to show the lack of understanding and compassion when personality disorders, especially, are concerned.

But what I like most about the opening of this scene, actually, is that first, listless expression. And this is where we get slightly into headcanon, but Tom Riddle is the opposite of a happy, mentally healthy teenager. By Dumbledore’s own admission, he has no real friends. He has no parental figures, no real attachments. Yes, he might derive some pride or enjoyment from being good at magic and top of his class and all that, but I really don’t think even Tom finds that truly fulfilling. There is nothing that makes him happy. 

In fact, although some might perceive it as ‘creepy’, I think that listless expression is an accurate window into Tom’s psyche. 

I know people aren’t big on Freud, but I think that he does make some interesting points (also, cut the guy some slack for being relatively open-minded for the Victorian Era, and inventing psychoanalysis and while yes he did say some sexist stuff, good luck finding a field of science that isn’t male-focused and makes crazy generalizations about women, especially back in the day) about the possible origins of thanatophobia, the fear of death.

According to Freud, thanatophobia is a disguise for a deeper source of concern -- he did not believe that people were capable of conceptualizing their own death to that extent. Instead, he believed that this phobia was caused by unresolved childhood conflicts that the sufferer cannot come to terms with or express emotion towards.

Now, I know Freud almost always attributes mental distress to childhood experiences, but I think in this case, it really has some merit.

According to attachment theory, the basis of how we form attachments in adulthood is dictated by learning it from experiences with caregivers in the first two years of life. We know Tom was born in an orphanage, and that he didn’t cry much as a baby, and subsequently, probably received very little attention. Compounded with possible genetic factors and his caregivers being afraid or wary of his magical abilities, he later struggled to form attachments because of this -- I would actually go so far as to say that by the time Dumbledore meets him, Tom Riddle is severely depressed. 

And that flat affect and anhedonia, I think, comes over very well in Dillane’s portrayal. There’s kind of this resignation -- a very deep sadness and loneliness to his character.

Of course, he doesn’t derive any comfort or fulfillment from human interaction, because (to borrow the description from the Wikipedia article on ‘Reactive attachment disorder’, which Tom meets all the criteria for) he has a “grossly disturbed internal working model of relationships.” In other words, he is unresponsive to all offers of attachment because of this unacknowledged trauma.

(You could arguably class Tom as having an avoidant attachment style, but I think in his case the trauma and its effect on him are severe enough to call it disordered.)

RAD isn’t particularly well-characterized (especially neurologically) and quite new in the literature, but here are some links if anyone is interested in doing a bit of digging: Link 1 | Link 2 | Paper 1 | Paper 2

And, instead of trying to resolve this conflict in a healthy way, or at least recognize that this is why he can’t be happy and try to learn how to cope from there, he (a) represses the desire for human attachment and (b) funnels that negative emotion into being the fault of Death, the Grim Reaper (again, to borrow Freudian terms). 

And we all know how that turned out...

(And now, this should go without saying, but psychoanalyzing fictional characters has nothing to do with assigning a morality to mental disorders. Mental illness is neither a cause nor an excuse for criminal behavior -- in the same way that the cycle of violence is a phenomenon, not an excuse. Tom Riddle did not become a genocidal murderer because, in common parlance, he was a ‘psychopath’ -- he was not necessarily ‘predisposed’ to evil and could just as easily chosen to not follow the path that he did -- instead, he willingly made poor choices. This is a descriptive analysis, not a justification -- a ‘how’, not a ‘why’)

Here’s a Carl Jung quote that articulates it better:

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

Yes, he’s a bit stiff (and a lot more formal than in COS during his *conversation* with Harry). But, and here comes the controversial bit, this is appropriate for a portrayal of a schoolboy in the 1940s. The upright posture is accurate -- respectful, polite -- everything Tom Riddle would have been expected to be (and even Coulson, in that scene with Dumbledore in COS, is quite stiff). Even the way he looks at Slughorn and maintains eye contact is very *respectful.*

And, Dillane (I think he’s seventeen or eighteen here) actually looks like a believable sixteen-year-old. I’m sorry, I love Coulson’s portrayal as well, but he looks around nineteen in COS; so in HBP, he probably would have looked at least twenty-two or so. (Sorry, not sorry).

This may be influenced by my own interpretation of the character (because I imagine Tom always looks young for his age, and Dillane fits that archetype, but I don’t think that’s very popular), but I think young Tom Riddle is supposed to be *cute* and a bit stiff/shy/awkward (being charming and awkward is very much possible), if you consider the way Dippet and Slughorn treat him. 

To support this, he says very few words to Hepzibah Smith (in the book, that scene’s not in the movie), and is very... bashful and coy during the whole interaction? I think yes, he’s charismatic, but he’s not loud, suave, openly flirtatious or particularly verbose. Tom Riddle should have a quiet magnetism, and to me, that came across in Dillane’s portrayal.

"I'd be glad to see anything Miss Hepzibah shows me," said Voldemort quietly, and Hepzibah gave another girlish giggle.

...

"Are you all right, dear?"

"Oh yes," said Voldemort quietly. "Yes, I'm very well. ..."

Even the ‘ugly, greedy look’ described in the books, when Slughorn starts spilling his secrets, is there. This is how he’s supposed to look! Slughorn glimpses it, but doesn’t understand its significance. Harry does. 

“Slughorn looked deeply troubled now: He was gazing at Riddle as though he had never seen him plainly before, and Harry could tell that he was regretting entering into the conversation at all.”

Remember the context of this moment, as well: He’s just discovered how to create multiple Horcruxes. Excuse him for looking a bit creepy (if not now, then when?).

Here’s two direct quotes of Harry’s impression of Tom Riddle in that scene: 

“But Riddle's hunger was now apparent; his expression was greedy, he could no longer hide his longing.”

“Harry had glimpsed his face, which was full of that same wild happiness it had worn when he had first found out that he was a wizard, the sort of happiness that did not enhance his handsome features, but made them, somehow, less human. . . .”

Tom Riddle’s Horcruxes are a direct metaphor for his refusal to allow himself to heal from his trauma -- instead, he continues to inflict destruction on himself and others.

His desire to continue creating more Horcruxes sort of resounds with the fact that self-harm can also become a compulsion.

I’d also like to digress a bit to discuss the Gaunt Ring, while we’re at it. While we’ve talked about his attachment issues in general, this discussion is particularly pertinent to father figures. And while Tom’s attachment issues are extensive, I think there’s ample evidence that as a child, he craved acknowledgement and acceptance from a father figure -- the man who gave him the only thing Tom truly owned -- his name. He would have had a vaguely defined mother figure in Mrs. Cole, perhaps.

"You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was.... He didn’t like magic, my father ... He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage ... but I vowed to find him ... I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name ... Tom Riddle. ..."

We know that by June of 1943 (COS flashback) Tom has already uncovered the truth of his parentage; he knows he is the Heir of Slytherin via the Gaunt line, and he describes himself to Dippet as ‘Half-blood, sir. Witch mother, Muggle father.’

In Part 1, I discussed the high probability that as a presumed ‘Mudblood’, Tom Riddle was treated rather poorly in Slytherin House. But by this scene in the fall of 1943, he is surrounded by a group of adoring hangers-on. Why?

In my opinion; the Gaunt Ring. We know that Tom stopped wearing it after school, so its sentimental value couldn’t have been that great. We know he likes to collect objects (which I believe stems from his attachment issues -- he seeks comfort in things instead of other people).

Signet rings (such as the one belonging to Tutankhamun seen above) were used to stamp legal documents and such, in order to certify someone’s identify -- like an e-certificate, if you will. Like Tutankhamun’s ring, the Gaunt Ring bears an identifying symbol -- Marvolo Gaunt tells us proudly that it bears the Peverell family crest.

By the Middle Ages, anyone of influence, including the nobility, wore a signet ring. Rings in antiquity were auspicious -- they signified power, legitimacy, and authority. And so, I believe that all the Sacred Twenty-Eight families would have worn these, too.

And so, bearing the Gaunt Ring would have established Tom Riddle, symbolically and in the eyes of the Sacred Twenty-Eight (his future supporters and followers), as the legitimate heir to the House of Gaunt. This is why, I believe, Tom coveted the ring as soon as he saw it -- not just because it was a family heirloom, and not just because he thought it was a pretty toy for his collection.

(He curses it so that no one else but him can wear the Gaunt Ring safely.)

This is why, to make the legitimization literal as well as symbolic, Tom murders his father and grandparents. It’s not just an act of vindictive, murderous rage due to his perception of being rejected by his father (although it is that, too). And so, Tom, abandoning his search for a father figure (and possibly also giving up on the possibility to allow himself to heal from his own personal trauma rather than continue to inflict it on others), ‘cleanses’ his bloodline, to make himself truly legitimate. It’s rather telling that instead of affirming his legitimacy as a Riddle, which would have put him in line for a nice inheritance, and hey -- money is money -- (thus accepting his half-blood status), he simply kills them all. He has done all the murdering he needs to become immortal (and he hasn’t had the discussion about multiple Horcruxes yet); but yet, he does it again. Frightening stuff. 

(Just look how the others look at Tom. All but the one to his left -- possibly Nott, Rosier, or Mulciber -- have their torsos turned towards him. Their attention is on him, while he knowingly regards the viewer/Harry. Tom seems a little uncomfortable with the attention.).

“And there were the half-dozen teenage boys sitting around Slughorn with Tom Riddle in the midst of them, Marvolo's gold-and-black ring gleaming on his finger.”

...

“Riddle smiled; the other boys laughed and cast him admiring looks.”

...

“Tom Riddle merely smiled as the others laughed again. Harry noticed that he was by no means the eldest of the group of boys, but that they all seemed to look to him as their leader.”

The ‘gang’ are true hangers-on; Tom doesn’t seem to pay them much attention. 

So, if not via careful flattery or charisma, the attraction must be status.

And perhaps yet more telling...

"I don't know that politics would suit me, sir," he said when the laughter had died away. "I don't have the right kind of background, for one thing." “A couple of the boys around him smirked at each other. Harry was sure they were enjoying a private joke, undoubtedly about what they knew, or suspected, regarding their gang leader's famous ancestor.”

That, in my opinion, is as good as we’re going to get as proof that Tom’s shiny new signet ring (and by extension, his new status) made a big impression on his fellow students.

So, when he returns to Hogwarts, he is ‘pureblood’. He is cleansed of his Muggle roots, and becomes the legitimate heir of the House of Gaunt, now well on his way to becoming Lord Voldemort...

Watch the scene again, with a critical eye, and imagine Slughorn’s perspective, instead of Harry’s. There’s nothing creepy about Tom Riddle... unless you know what he is...

Strip away all the effects of Harry’s gaze (and notice, here he’s still looking at Harry), and he’s quite the charmer, actually.

(I will concede that I don’t like the promotional images where they have him looking like he’s up to no good. And I do wish he blinked once in a while.)

My challenge to you: Rewatch the scene with an open mind, and let me know if you agree that Dillane’s portrayal comes off as depressive rather than ‘creepy.’ And if not, why do you dislike his portrayal?

the many faces of tom riddle, part 3

-everyone’s favorite, for a reason: motive, means, and opportunity-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I didn’t have to introduce him in the first line, because you all know i’m talking about Christian Coulson, aka the fandom’s darling.

Just to get this out of the way, I’m going to come out and say it. His portrayal was brilliant; exactly how i imagined it when reading the books. He captured the way Tom slips from charming and innocent to vicious and vindictive in an instant. In fact, I don’t think I can find much to complain about. Coulson is Tom Riddle.

Tom Riddle's 'mask'

Here's Slughorn's impression of Tom Riddle as a student (it's only in the movies, but I like it):

I... of course, it's only natural you should want to know more. But I'm afraid I must disappoint you, Harry. When I first met young Mr. Riddle, he was a quiet, albeit brilliant boy committed to becoming a first-rate wizard. Not unlike others I've known. Not unlike yourself, in fact. If the monster existed, it was buried deep within.

The very first time we meet Tom Riddle in the diary, again, it’s from Harry’s perspective. Everything is in this soft, old-timey sepia tone, which tells us it’s a long time ago, but also softens Tom Riddle. So, when Harry (who, again, is the POV character) sees him framing Hagrid, we think, yes, we should trust Tom Riddle.

This mask of good behaviour is what keeps Tom safe, and when it starts to slip, he becomes vulnerable.

Just look at how sincere Coulson looks while he’s framing Hagrid. The concerned (drawn in) eyebrows, the sad head-tilt... I don’t think there’s much I can say, because that scene just pretty much speaks for itself.

How can Harry (and the audience) not fall for it? And in the same way, everyone but Dumbledore (who met him before Hogwarts) is completely taken in.

And while I could wax poetic about the brilliant filmography all through this scene, I want to talk about something else. To drag up that Jung quote from Part 2 -- “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become...”

How did Tom Riddle choose to become Lord Voldemort?

In Philosopher’s Stone, we get a particularly insightful quote from the character himself, which is as much as we get in terms of a moral code:

“There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.”

Some quick definitions on the distinction between right/good and wrong/evil: Right things are obligatory; good things are worth doing. Wrong things must be avoided, evil things are of negative value. (Okay, evil is a hand-wave-y topic and some people think wrong is the same as evil, or perhaps we should do away with the concept of evil, more on it here. But I don’t think Tom’s claim here is him trying to make a point or engage in a philosophical debate with Harry about the difficulty of distinguishing evil versus good or evil versus wrong in a hypothetical sense, and rather that he wants to liberate himself from moral responsibility altogether.) Everything Tom Riddle has done up to the events of June 13, 1943, is, well... eh. He hung Billy’s rabbit -- yes, pretty vindictive and worrying behaviour, but it’s a rabbit and Tom was eleven years old at most at the time. We also hear from Mrs. Cole that he might have traumatized Dennis and Amy in the infamous Cave, and the possibility of something nefarious going on there is supported by the fact that he later chose it as a hiding place for one of his Horcruxes.

However, none of this is confirmed, Mrs. Cole is possibly an unreliable narrator, we can go back-and-forth on this, we don’t know what exactly went on, and even if both of these incidents occurred, I don’t think that’s enough to put Tom firmly on the Path To Evil (TM)... What’s interesting about Diary Tom Riddle, is that he does believe in good. In fact, if I had to come up with one word to describe his attitude in this scene, Coulson comes across as righteous. This doesn't feel like an indulgent, Joker-esque revel in evil.

Adult Tom doesn't really act this way towards Harry; he just thinks he's smart and all-powerful, and Harry is beneath him.

His entire purpose for existing is to "lead another to finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

He speaks to Harry almost with contempt, because he's obviously in the right. And this is pretty funny, because adult Tom really doesn't care about right and wrong or good and evil in the first place, while his teenage self struts around the Chamber, pretending to have the moral high ground. I think Coulson did a really great job on portraying the sheer hubris of a Tom Riddle who has just dipped his toes into true evil, and perhaps doesn't even realise it.

Emphasis on the noble. A noble thing is worth doing; a thing worth doing is good. Ergo, Diary Tom believes in the concept of good (and perhaps, by extension, evil). In fact, this is the last time we will hear ‘moral duty’ reasoning out of Tom for reasons that will be discussed below. And what I find really interesting about this, is what it suggests about Tom's internal state: he either doesn't believe in right and wrong (because murder is wrong), or he does, and just doesn't adhere to it. The latter is more likely than you think: Here's a conclusion from the linked paper (about young children, but still interesting) that I think could apply here: "In summary, a concern for relative advantage may prevent children from enacting their knowledge of fairness when actual resources are at stake."

In short, the appeal of making a Horcrux and avoiding death is so great that he could be willing to kill for it.

Tom is incredibly self-serving, and that goes without saying. When Dippet said that Hogwarts would shut down if the monster wasn't found and dealt with, he made the snap decision to rat out 'that brainless oaf' Hagrid and Aragog (okay, not Hagrid's best idea and it could have killed people, but Tom wasn't doing it out of the goodness of his heart, or else he would have done it sooner). Since here, I think it's fairly plausible that Tom Riddle is fully aware of right and wrong, then what exactly drives him to murder?

"Anyway, what really got me was that it was a boy speaking. So I unlocked the door, to tell him to go and use his own toilet, and then — I died."

I’ve heard a few competing theories about Myrtle Warren’s death:

1. Myrtle’s death was an accident: Tom was messing around with the basilisk, and didn’t realise he had an audience. Myrtle opened the stall door and her death was an honest mistake. Tom decided to capitalize on this and use the incident to make his first Horcrux. 2. Myrtle’s death was an accident: Tom was messing around with the basilisk, and didn’t realise he had an audience. Fearing being caught, Tom set the basilisk on Myrtle to keep his secret safe. Tom decided to capitalize on this and use the incident to make his first Horcrux. 3. Myrtle’s death was planned: Tom was intending to make a Horcrux, and decided to kill Myrtle because she was an easy target and no one liked her, so it would take a long time to find her body, minimizing the risk to him. 4. Myrtle’s death was kind of planned: Tom was intending to kill Muggle-borns, and poor Myrtle just happened to be there. 5. There was no real reason; Tom just likes killing people.

Out of the options, I think in terms of canon (of course fanon is whatever you like), we can rule out (1) immediately. Why? Because, although we don’t know all the sordid details, we do know that the act of murder is necessary to create a Horcrux. Perhaps, you can argue what constitutes a murder, but in my opinion, (1) is at best a tragic accident, at worst criminal negligence. So not, in my opinion, soul-splitting evil. (2), while it might be considered second-degree (I am not a legal expert by any means) still counts as murder, I think. But it does beg the question: why play around with what is in essence a weapon of mass destruction if you don’t intend to cause harm? And Diary Tom does talk about his intention to ‘kill Mudbloods.’ So, I think we can say (2) is unlikely. (3) and (4), I think, are equally probable, and both motives could in theory coexist. Something like this, perhaps?

Salazar Slytherin is revered by my housemates, who I look up to -> Salazar Slytherin is good -> His ideals are good -> purging the school of Muggle-borns is good, plus it benefits me in that I get to make a Horcrux -> killing Myrtle Warren is good.

(5) is by far the most extreme, and I think this is also improbable; because Tom seems to have decent impulse control, at least. If we look at the rest of his criminal profile around this time -- he attempts to kill Harry, and killed his Muggle family, both of which are personal -- and it's unlikely Myrtle and Tom would have known each other well enough from Tom to have enough of a vendetta to kill her. It also doesn't look like a crime of passion. Also, (5) is a boring option. Making Tom Riddle a mindless killer would suck all the fun out of my ramblings...

So, what now?

Assuming that we're going with (3) and (4) as most probable, I don't think it's likely that Tom thinks murder is right. You can make the case that given what we discussed in Part 2, as a child, at least, he might have had impaired moral reasoning, but I'm wary about saying that he flat-out doesn't know right from wrong, especially when it comes to something like murder, and we've seen him use moral duty reasoning (to justify something inherently wrong, but it still proves he can think about morals in an abstract way). But he has to rationalize it, somehow...

Further evidence against (1) -- Tom seems rather blasé about the whole idea of 'killing mudbloods.'

Meanwhile, it's also not a top priority, but I can't tell if it's a throwaway villain line or not.

Unlike in HBP, here, Tom is in control of the situation. And appropriately, from the moment he enters, Coulson is an intense, dominating presence, even in the towering architecture of the Chamber; first reassuring, then threatening as he allows more and more of his true intentions to become visible to Harry (who goads him into revealing them).

He almost seems... obsessive, but almost without direction or hope (soulless, perhaps), as he circles Harry -- and there's that desperation that drives Tom Riddle to the extremes of moral depravity. And what comes across well in Coulson's portrayal, is that Harry and Tom still, even given the high stakes, seem like two schoolboys having an argument.

Introducing cognitive dissonance:

1. He believes murder is wrong 2. He's murdered someone 3. We know that in order to successfully make a Horcrux, you can't feel the guilt or remorse associated with your actions (or else you'll end up healing your soul). 4. Tom has to rationalize his actions in order to not feel guilty. From Bem (1967),

If a person holds two cognitions that are inconsistent with one another, he will experience the pressure of an aversive motivational state called cognitive dissonance, a pressure which he will seek to remove, among other ways, by altering one of the two "dissonant" cognitions

Here's a link to Festinger (1957)'s work introducing the concept.

1. The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance. 2. When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.

So, Tom will want to resolve the thoughts that he thinks murder is wrong, with the fact that he has murdered. And he can't take back what he's done. He can, however, change his moral code (this is referred to as forced compliance). The deed has been done. He's killed Myrtle. Tom can't change that -- but he can change his attitude.

Specifically, Tom can decide to believe that murder, if not right, is at least not wrong.

And this is a real danger. This causes him to repeat the behaviour, and enforce this belief, until, yeah, sure, there is no good and evil.

Here's the graveyard quote again, because I'm going to reference it:

“You see that house upon the hillside, Potter? My father lived there. My mother, a witch who lived here in this village, fell in love with him. But he abandoned her when she told him what she was…. He didn’t like magic, my father … He left her and returned to his Muggle parents before I was even born, Potter, and she died giving birth to me, leaving me to be raised in a Muggle orphanage … but I vowed to find him … I revenged myself upon him, that fool who gave me his name … Tom Riddle. …”

A few months later, Tom goes to the Gaunt Shack, and hears Morfin’s version of events — that Riddle Senior left Merope because he found out that she was a witch. Tom (probably) flies into a blind rage, furious that his precious pureblood relatives are just a crazy man living in a filthy shack, believing that his ‘dirty Muggle father’ betrayed him and his mother, and didn’t love him or Merope, storms up the hill and murders Tom, Thomas, and Mary — then returns to the Gaunt shack, and takes the family ring, which becomes his second Horcrux.

And the fact that he made a Horcrux means that, again, he can't feel guilty, so this serves to really solidify his belief in pureblood supremacy and the rightness of murder into his allowable acts.

If killing Myrtle was dipping his toes into true evil, then slaughtering the Riddles is an entire left turn. Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, and three times is a habit.

And I discussed this briefly in Part 2, but the fact that it's patricide, is especially poignant from a character perspective.

In the Roman Republic, patricide was the only crime for which a civilian could be sentenced to death.

But, I did do a quick look at the literature (which I'm not going to link because gory images) relating to patricide (there's not much, and not a lot that's recent -- the FBI agent watching my Google searches must think I'm a real weirdo). Incidents are rare and it seems to correlate with psychotic disorders and paranoia (which doesn't really fit Tom's psychological profile), and it's usually quite a violent crime (as in blunt trauma, stabbing, etc).

Whereas it's implied that Tom used the Killing Curse (there wasn't a single mark on the Riddles' bodies), which though 'unforgivable' is a rather humane way to kill. Also, there's usually a history of family violence/child abuse, and Tom didn't even know his father.

"The murder in most cases is committed in the house where perpetrators reside with the victim. It has been observed that sons/daughters who kill their parents frequently use painful methods and excessive violence, sometimes employing multiple fatal methods, thus resulting in overkill."

In fact, the only thing that seems to match up is Tom's age and the fact that sons are more commonly perpetrators than daughters.

Point being, I think the patricide bit was just put in to make Tom sound more evil. It just doesn't make sense for his character (I mean, you could make the case that he's a sadist, but... eh... a discussion for another time -- sadistic personality disorder was taken out of the DSM, anyway so I don't think there's much point in discussing it at all... and 'sadism' is a lot more common than you think.)

Anyway, the logically simplest thing to do now is to throw out the ideals of good and evil — no more pesky behavioral-cognitive dissonance. And this is when Tom becomes completely lost — everything and anything goes. He doesn’t need justification anymore.

I know I said I wasn't going to wax poetic about filmography, but everything about this shot is brilliant. Perhaps the light/dark duality is a bit obvious, but Hero Fiennes-Tiffin (who plays eleven-year-old Tom) is shown exactly the same way in HBP and yes, I will talk about that, too.

Sorry, another Jung quote incoming:

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.”

I'm going to take a brief digression into the esoterics of Jung's theories, but this is where MBTI comes from (he was the first to talk about extroversion/introversion), anyway... again, not current theory, but early twentieth-century psychology is interesting when it comes to interpreting characters.

Jung believed that there were four parts of our personality, two of which I'm going to mention briefly:

The Persona: Basically our 'mask' -- the self we present to the outside world, represents conformity.

The Shadow: The chaotic, animalistic part of your personality, represents creative and destructive energy.

And, for the first time, after Tom reveals his identity to Harry, he turns with this look of utter confidence, and not incidentally, we see his face partially shadowed for the first time. Whereas before, he was presenting the 'persona', here, we finally get to see the 'shadow' as well. The shadow does not represent a clarity or completeness anymore than the persona does; it's just a different way of being not whole. Instead of taking responsibility for his own actions, Tom's "perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else." -- in this case, 'Mudbloods.' It's not a coincidence that this is when Coulson turns around and finally mentions his 'filthy Muggle father', the thing he's most ashamed of.

(Again, the theme of not being whole, and immaturity).

But why does he choose to murder in the first place? Why did Tom Riddle open the Chamber of Secrets?

I think Tom assumes that his Muggle father most likely died before he was born, which is why Merope named him after him. Tom hates his father because he’s learned pureblood supremacy from his fellow Slytherins, and covets the respect and power that would come with being pureblood himself as he’s sick of being mistaken for a Muggle-born (we’ve seen Dippet do it) and feels that he has to prove himself as the Heir of Slytherin by opening the CoS, having no proof of magical heritage. I don't think he's that stupid to go around flashing his Parseltongue, especially given Dumbledore's response to it, and it doesn't prove that he's the Heir of Slytherin, anyway.

Dumbledore mentions off-hand that he thinks Tom Riddle's gang helped him, but by his own admission, Tom's not fond of relying on others and I think opening the Chamber without help is well within his capabilities.

Seeing as the public doesn't know that Lord Voldemort opened the Chamber of Secrets (and thus don't know that he's the Heir of Slytherin, either), I think Tom did it all for the good of his own ego, insecurity, and of course that self-harming behaviour turned outwards that we discussed before.

In Part 1, we discussed the underlying themes of self-harm inherent in the concept of a Horcrux; especially compared to the less destructive process of making the Elixir of Life/the Philosopher's Stone. But I don't think Tom is aware of that subtext.

Now, I doubt that it's a case of oversight. If Tom looked hard enough for ways to become immortal to find Horcruxes, he must have known about the Philosopher's Stone (even I knew what that was before I read the HP books, and I'm a Muggle!).

But here's a weird thing Tom says in HBP:

"Yes, sir," said Riddle. "What I don't understand, though -- just out of curiosity -- I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn't it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn't seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn't seven -- ?"

Although we think that such a destructive process must weaken Tom, even Dumbledore doesn't seem to think that's the case:

"Yes, I think so," said Dumbledore. "Without his Horcruxes, Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes."

Dumbledore also seems to think that Tom intended to make even more than seven Horcruxes:

Harry: "But I thought he meant Lucius Malfoy to smuggle it [the diary] into Hogwarts?" Dumbledore: "Yes, he did, years ago, when he was sure he would be able to create more Horcruxes..."

And again:

"Yes, I think the idea of a seven-part soul would greatly appeal to Lord Voldemort."

So, it seems that Horcruxes either don't affect your abilities, or even make you more powerful.

Since we don't get much canon information other than this, I decided to turn to other sources.

What instantly springs to mind (for me, at least) with the whole soul container concept is Koschei the Immortal/Koschei the Deathless, (okay I didn't have a lot of friends as a kid and I quite possibly have too much random mythology stuff floating around in my brain) an evil sorcerer from Russian folklore. Like Tom Riddle, he's afraid of death, and usually becomes immortal by hiding his soul in a needle that is hidden inside an egg, which is carried by a duck that flies away from anyone who tries to catch it. Sounds like a Horcrux, right?

(He's also fond of stealing your girl.)

But once you, the strapping young hero Y/N, manage to beat the odds and retrieve the egg, you've got two options.

You can break the egg, get to the needle and destroy Koschei's soul, killing him and allowing you to go rescue the damsel(s) in distress and save the kingdom. Eh, close enough.

Tom is unable to resist the temptation to gloat about Lord Voldemort returning 'very much alive.'

"You'll be with your dear Mudblood mother soon, Harry."

And this is one of my favourite things about Coulson's portrayal; he doesn't come off as Cartoon Evil -- while obviously being capable, dangerous, and having an extremely twisted moral code, he does feel like a teenage Voldemort. Highly skilled, yes -- but unpolished, prideful, and arrogant to a fault -- like the darker version of a Hermione-esque know-it-all. And there's that deeply-unfulfilled emptiness that we talked about in Part 2.

And given what we know about Tom's 'relationship' with Merope from HBP, there's almost a sense of jealousy here, and that fits so well with the character.

When Tom Riddle allows the extent of his true viciousness to show, he cements his downfall by basically handing Harry the tools to destroy him. As he taunts Harry, who is literally at his feet and dying from the basilisk's poison (Diary Tom gets the distinction of being the only incarnation of Voldemort who actually had a decent go at killing Harry -- if not for Fawkes, he would have been done for), he mentions the diary, which of course gives Harry (whose quick thinking is pretty incredible, might I add) the information he needs to destroy Tom.

There's another option. I mentioned that Koschei is a sorcerer -- that means that he's got all sorts of OP power-ups, like flying, shape-shifting, spellcasting, etc.

And once you, Y/N, are in possession of the egg, you have Koschei under your control, and he'll start to weaken. He'll get sick and lose his magic powers.

However, we don't really see this with Horcruxes. In the books, Tom has no idea when they've been destroyed, and it doesn't seem to weaken him.

And so, I can't help but wonder if the opposite is true... if Tom Riddle creates Horcruxes, would that grant him additional magic powers?

Seems plausible, and we'll discuss this more in Part 5.

And if so, for a sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle at the major turning point that will define his character trajectory, is that sufficient motive... to murder?

[Next time: more child psych, Wool's Orphanage, and the long-debated Dumbledore Problem]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 4

-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.

First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.

This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.

We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.

The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)

Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.

Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.

As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.

Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...

Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.

Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.

I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.

And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.

We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.

In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.

I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.

But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.

“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."

Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."

Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.

More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):

Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?” Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”

Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'

It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.

Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?

"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"

"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!

Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.

I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.

There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.

'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!

So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!

Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).

It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).

And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities. 

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.

Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.

So... uh...

Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'

To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick. The wardrobe burst into flames. Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.

This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.

I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.

Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.

And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.

"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."

"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."

And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.

But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.

Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.

If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.

Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!

I will put more red writing when the section is over.

This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.

Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).

To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.

"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."

I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.

Dependency when frightened

The full experiment

The TL;DW:

This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.

Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:

(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).

(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.

So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.

What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.

In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?

The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.

Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:

That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward

All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.

Over.

Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.

His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.

Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.

But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.

And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.

Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."

Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.

The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.

The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.

Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link

Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).

We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.

Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).

Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link

Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.

Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.

Furthermore...

...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.

This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.

So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.

In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.

But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.

Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.

Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.

Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.

And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.

"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."

the many faces of tom riddle, part 5

 - more myth than man... or not? the mortality of tom riddle and the anatomy of a villain-

That leaves us with Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal of adult Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort in movies 4-8.

I generally find adult Tom Riddle disappointing, even in the books, in terms of character depth. Instead of delving into his motivations and the inner psychology of a villain, we get... slight body horror? And in the movies, it’s even more egregious. 

If a story is as good as its villain, adult Tom Riddle is a bit of a let-down, especially on-screen.

“I was ripped from my body, I was less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost . . . but still, I was alive.”

Perhaps the very first time I watched it, I found this scary, but I must confess that nowadays, Voldemort’s resurrection is more funny to me than anything else. The forked tongue and the nose slits, yes, are supposed to allude to Tom Riddle’s loss of humanity, but I don’t think it...worked out that way in practice.

I know that’s how it is in the books, but ugly equals evil (and vice versa) is a tired trope. not only that, but under the CGI, Lord Voldemort is so difficult to relate to, so inhuman, that it’s hard to (1) see his true depravity (2) connect with him emotionally (3) at least for me, not laugh at him flapping around the graveyard in GOF like an oversized crow. 

Now, the reason I’m going on about this is not (just) me being petty. Lord Voldemort is the Boggart for most of the characters in the HP universe, meaning their greatest fear is Lord Voldemort. He represents Fear; as such, he should be utterly terrifying. Now, I don’t mean horrifying in that sense, but Voldemort’s grand entrance should at least feel somewhat unsettling, have some sort of a Gothic atmosphere...

"But then, through the mist in front of him, he saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a man, tall and skeletally thin, rising slowly from inside the cauldron."

Visually, this looks great. But it’s not scary. And I’m not a purist by any means, but the words are scarier than the book. Darkness induces fear. 

“The lack of any kind of visual stimuli increases anxiety, uncertainty, and tension.”

So, having Voldemort’s pale body materialize isn’t as scary as it could be.

Furthermore, I think Fiennes’ overexaggerated expressions would actually come across as properly horrifying/threatening rather than funny if they just left his face alone. Yes, Fiennes does manage to emote the fear and the anger through the CGI, but it’s like he’s too alien to be scary, at least to me. The amount of memes with Voldemort suggest I’m not the only one this way inclined.

I think there’s probably a problem going on with the uncanny valley. (Images from the Mori essay linked).

[When things are still]

[Creepy things are creepier when moving]

Now, I assume Voldemort is meant to be zombie-creepy, or at least that how Harry describes him in the books.

"The thin man stepped out of the cauldron, staring at Harry...and Harry stared back into the face that had haunted his nightmares for three years. Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's but with slits for nostrils...."

Now, we can’t get Harry’s experience of being haunted by Voldemort in his dreams, because what I think makes Voldemort’s countenance so truly frightening to the other characters isn’t his snake-like nose or his red eyes, but the potential. Voldemort is, in essence, the Grim Reaper. You are at his mercy, and you’re probably going to be dead. 

“This time, I shall enter the fray myself, Harry Potter, and I shall find you, and I shall punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me. One hour.“

And yes, Voldemort can be quite funny and witty, but..

“I will allow you to perform an essential task for me, one that many of my followers will give their right hands to perform.” (To Peter Pettigrew)

...it’s still incredibly dark, sadistic humour. Whereas the teenage Tom Riddle we’ve been discussing has just barely dipped his toes into evil, Voldemort is, well... swimming in it. At this point, he think he undeniably enjoys causing pain.

And much of what makes Voldemort scary is subtle. 

For example, what I personally consider haunting is the fact that he’s got a cave full of Inferi. A cave full of reanimated dead bodies. 

Either he dug them up, which is unlikely... or perhaps, a twenty-seven-or-so-year-old Tom Riddle would lie in wait like a bird of prey, very quietly and patiently, perhaps reading a book, waiting for an unsuspecting Muggle to wander past. Maybe killing is a game to him at this point, when it’s not so personal as killing Harry Potter. Maybe it’s a whispered Avada Kedavra, and then he carries the dead body away to his cave. Maybe he Imperiuses them to walk off the cliff. Maybe he tortures them first.

Shudder.

And I don’t think you can show that kind of horror through any CGI or make-up, so...

You know what is terrifying? Revolting? True crime; real-life people who do unspeakably horrible things. And I think a lot was missed out on, in stripping Tom Riddle physically of his humanity. Yes, Riddle is a monster...

But, as we’ve seen, he’s a human monster, not some eldritch horror from the seventh level of hell or something.

I just think it would be interesting to have this perfectly normal-looking human do all the horrific things Voldemort does. I want to see that sick joy in a human face and feel disgusted. I want to see fear make his bottom lip tremble, and feel a misplaced sense of empathy. (Think President Snow from the Hunger Games -- now, that’s a sick, twisted villain who we can relate to as a human being, but still love to hate -- or what about The Joker?).

And out of everything they chose to CGI, why on earth did they not make his eyes scarlet? That might have made him look at least somewhat menacing, rather than a failed lab experiment.

(Don’t even get me started on his and Bellatrix’s death scenes in the movies-)

Here’s President Snow. He’s got a cute little granddaughter, he sends kiddies to kill each other Battle Royale-style every year, and he poisons all his political opponents. He’s also a master manipulator and has a penchant for white roses. They cover up the smell of the sores in his mouth from eating the poison too, to conceal his treachery.

Heath Ledger as the Joker in Dark Knight (2008), who is, according to NYT (which I totally agree with), the best Joker. Now this is a villain done right, with many Voldemort-like traits. On a scale of one-to-ten, he’s absolutely terrifying. Why? He’s (unlike Voldemort in the movies) incredibly intelligent, shows young-Tom-Riddle-like skills for charm and manipulation, plays with humans like they’re his own personal psychology experiment (and to hell with the Institutional Review Board), and has one, single, very clear goal -- chaos. Like Voldemort, he wears an inhuman mask that’s not horrifying in its own right; but unlike Voldemort, the human is all there -- terrifying, real, and with a bottomless, obsessive desire to destroy. His disordered thinking is all out there for the audience to see. The Joker’s motivation is to enjoy himself; whereas Voldemort seems to lack drive. Why does he want to take over the world -- who knows, with Voldemort? The Joker wants to see it burn.

Let’s try to do the same with Lord Voldemort:

[SLIGHT FLASH WARNING]

I had to go with this because Voldemort isn’t legitimately terrifying in many scenes. And yes, this unrefined anger somewhat speaks to Tom’s immaturity

By this point, seventy-one year old Tom Riddle is a hollowed-out shell of a human being. After decades of building his power, he was defeated by a one-year-old, and ended up slumming it as a spirit for a decade, got defeated again, was a shrivelled-up baby for a year, then finally got his body back.

He’s angry, okay! And Fiennes does a great job of portraying the sheer, destructive, unbridled rage of this character.

The body language. again, since his face is inhuman, this is super important. and Fiennes’ body language is great. Voldemort/Riddle commits to his actions. He is very emotionally-driven.

But yet, he doesn’t feel capable, in the way that the Joker or President Snow do. Yeah, we know anecdotally that he’s incredibly evil, sadistic, and second only to Dumbledore in terms of power, but he loses to a baby, and then that same baby as a teenager. So, we really could have done with seeing Voldemort’s power, cruelty, and evil firsthand a lot more often.

Voldemort is not well-characterized. I don’t understand his motives, and the ones that I do understand are not compelling.

Not to die? Well, he’s already made several Horcruxes. Why not sit back and relax? Why start a war and risk himself?

JKR said that Voldemort’s great desire was to become all-powerful and eternal. But that’s... boring! It does little to tell us about Voldemort, other than that he’s a villain and a wannabe dictator. 

Furthermore, the charm, manipulation, and cunning that are hallmarks of younger Tom Riddle’s personality are gone.

Is Voldemort (to return to Jungian terms) all shadow? An empty creature of simple creation and destruction, perhaps? We’ll discuss this further down...

And this isn’t a problem of having a fantastical world with magic and the like. Grindelwald’s quiet, self-possessed, almost coy “So you think you can hold me?” was infinitely scarier than anything that has ever come out of Voldemort’s mouth. It was chilling. 

OOTP is my favorite book, and the Ministry sequence is one of my favourite in the films. 

This scene where he psyches out Harry, talking so quietly that he could just be a little voice inside his head (and again, during the possession scene)? Absolute perfection. 

Why? Because this showcases what’s truly scary about him. Voldemort can get into your head. He can make you do things. And perhaps, if we had seen that more often, we’d understand how scary he is.

I wish this had been his grand entrance, and not whatever that scene in GOF was. Somehow, him screeching “I WANT TO SEE THE LIGHT LEAVE YOUR EYES!” is not menacing. At all. 

But, I can’t help but think how much greater the emotional affect would be if he had more human features (think the burned-and-blurred, waxy features from Dumbledore’s memory). 

Just imagine these scenes if Voldemort looked human, and spoke as quietly as he did in this one.

Because of the reason that I have little to go on in terms of characterization that I haven’t already covered, we’ll discuss the myth and legend of Lord Voldemort.

I can’t decide if the statue in the films is supposed to be the Angel of Death or the Grim Reaper. He has a skeleton and carries a scythe, but he also has wings. There are so many different interpretations, attitudes towards, and personifications of Death across the world that I don’t want to draw any one conclusion. But I must wonder if Lord Voldemort, with his yew-and-phoenix wand (which carries heavy symbolism of immortality and rebirth) and almost deified figure is meant to be a personification of Death himself? His name, Lord Voldemort, is a shade close to Lord Death.

For years, it has stumped me that wizards and witches are afraid to utter Voldemort’s name, especially since we only see the Taboo in the middle of the last book. It didn’t make sense just based on fear; in the real world, we don’t circumvent Hitler’s name, for example.

Perhaps this may have been obvious to others, but it wasn’t to me.

Here’s a counterargument to myself; why Voldemort shouldn’t look human.

Voldemort, in the Wizarding World, is seen as a literal deity.

I promised to attempt to answer this question in Part 3: 

And so, I can’t help but wonder if the opposite is true… if Tom Riddle creates Horcruxes, would that grant him additional magic powers?

In Part 3, I likened Tom Riddle to a sorcerer in Russian folklore, Koschei the Deathless, also famous for sequestering his soul in objects. This source suggests that Koschei was considered not an ordinary magician, but a representative of the ‘other’ world, the world of death.

So, what if... creating Horcruxes makes you... more than human? Now, I could definitely see god-like status being appealing to sixteen-year-old Tom Riddle. Perhaps, even appealing enough to kill for. Now, his proclivity for Avada Kedavra makes sense. We know it’s an incredibly sinister spell, but at the same time, it’s a very humane way to kill. Why might it be so horrifying?

Here’s a weird theory.

To the best of my knowledge, no one but Voldemort is seen using the Killing Curse more than once or twice. 

Perhaps, ordinary mortals can only cast Avada Kedavra a few times, but Tom, having split his soul and having become in some way a non-human instrument of Death, can cast it however many times as he likes, and that is part of what serves to make him so terrifying.

This makes the idea of Voldemort tossing around Avada Kedavras actually incredibly terrifying, if you take into account what that might mean.

The collective cultural fear of speaking Voldemort’s name supports this theory.

Take the chthonic (underworld) deities of Greek mythology; most notably, Hades and Persephone, the king and queen of the underworld.

Hades, the god of the dead, was feared. 

So feared that the word ‘Hades’ (”the unseen one”) was so frightening, that people came up with all sorts of euphemisms to circumvent actually saying it and he was rarely even depicted in art. For example, they would refer to him as Pluto (”the rich one”), Clymenus ("notorious"), Polydegmon ("who receives many"), and perhaps Eubuleus ("good counsel" or "well-intentioned"), amongst many other names. 

However, he was not seen as evil; just stern, cruel, and fair. Like most Greek gods, he had an associated cult (the Death Eaters, anyone?)

Another interesting connection between Hades and Voldemort is that Hades was associated with snakes.

Persephone (suggested to have a pre-Greek origin and probably pre-dates Hades), who was also a vegetation/fertility/spring goddess, similarly, was referred to as Despoina (”the mistress”), Kore (”the maiden”), etc, because as the terrible Queen of the Dead, it was considered unsafe to speak her name aloud. In mythology and literature, she is sometimes referred to as ‘dread Persephone.’

--Just like how Lord Voldemort is referred to as The Dark Lord, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, You-Know-Who... (and if you’re Dumbledore, ‘Tom’.)

Her central myth served as the context for the secret rites of regeneration at Eleusis (which was basically a mystery cult devoted to her and her mother, Demeter), which promised immortality to initiates.

We don’t know for certain what exactly went on, because, mystery cult -- the members were sworn to secrecy -- but it revolved around immortality and rebirth and possibly psychoactive drugs. 

Perhaps ironically, in comparison to the Death Eaters, anyone could join, as long as they could speak Greek and had never committed murder.

And that concludes my assessment!

hey darling, eleventhboi here! i was just rereading your character analysis for tom, and i must say i agree with you on so many levels and it’s wonderful to see all my compicated thoughts about him written down wonderfully like you did!! but, i assume just like you, i can’t really understand his motives later in his life no matter how i try to look at it from different perspectives from time to time. but there is this one analysis by @thecarnivorousmuffinmeta -a controvertial but great one definitely- but i’m not so sure if i agree with that or not. if you’re up to answer; since we think quite alike, i wonder what’s your take on that one? you can just say ‘idk bro’, or make an explanation or not answer at all darling- it’s your call. lots of love!!

Hi!!

I love to ramble and especially about Tom Riddle, thank you so much for giving me the excuse. The analysis you linked is definitely a really good one, Carnivorous Muffin has a lot of interesting points on Tom's character.

Long post ahead!

Link to my five-part character analysis here, in which I have opinions about Tom Riddle.

A Second Attempt: Demystifying Voldemort the Villain

Tom Riddle has the potential to be an interesting villain, but unfortunately Lord Voldemort is a shallow, unmotivated and disorganised Hitler metaphor, right down to the claim that Hitler’s grandfather was Jewish neatly coinciding with Riddle being half-blood.

Now, this wouldn’t be so bad if he were Sheev Palpatine, but he’s not. The attempts to give his backstory depth in COS and HBP only serve to make him more frustrating, because Tom Riddle is an infinitely better character and villain than the not very scary bogeyman Voldemort, and this leads me in Part 5 to come to the same conclusion as @theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin’s starting point — Lord Voldemort as presented doesn’t make sense. Unlike Carnivorous Muffin, I didn’t offer a serious solution (other than Voldemort becoming some kind of immortal non-human or the actual Grim Reaper, which is very weird and a bit tongue-in-cheek).

I think, going chronologically, where Tom’s characterization starts to annoy me (see Part 3, where I explain why it doesn’t make sense given his criminal profile, psychological profile, style of the murder itself, or family history) is the murder of the Riddle family. So, I ended up here:

Point being, I think the patricide bit was just put in to make Tom sound more evil.

Although this isn’t mentioned in Carnivorous Muffin’s analysis, this is going to be relevant; because I think from here, Tom's characterization generally starts to go south.

Here's the premises of Carnivorous Muffin's argument:

We know very little about Tom Riddle or Voldemort

What we do know of Tom Riddle comes to us from suspect sources

I’m just going to go out there and start with the basis that Tom is not crazy

I'm going to look at (3), because I think it's the most important one, as (1) and (2) have ample support, as CM elaborates.

While crazy is one of those terms that makes less and less sense the more psychology papers you read (along with its shadow cousins, mad and insane), I think if I can distill the common-sense idea of 'craziness' into two things, it would be (A) irrationality and (B) psychosis, or a break with reality.

I'll tackle (B) first, because it's simpler.

Does Tom suffer from breaks with reality? Delusions?

We don't know, because unfortunately we never get to poke around in his head, but I wouldn't rule it out 100%. The guy does have an unexplained pathological fear of death that leads him to rip his soul seven times. This could be the result of a delusion.

Not only that, but sixteen-year-old Tom floats around the Chamber, telling Harry how wonderful and awesome he is, and how he's Lord Voldemort, the greatest sorcerer of all time. Now, we know he's not far off, but both this and his fear of death, although we don't have nearly enough data points, are enough to raise a few eyebrows IMO.

And then (A). Is Tom Riddle unable to reason?

Again in Part 3, I believe Tom knows right from wrong (especially in the case of murder).

Emphasis on the noble. A noble thing is worth doing; a thing worth doing is good. Ergo, Diary Tom believes in the concept of good (and perhaps, by extension, evil). In fact, this is the last time we will hear ‘moral duty’ reasoning out of Tom for reasons that will be discussed below. And what I find really interesting about this, is what it suggests about Tom’s internal state: he either doesn’t believe in right and wrong (because murder is wrong), or he does, and just doesn’t adhere to it.

The latter is more likely than you think: Here’s a conclusion from the linked paper (about young children, but still interesting) that I think could apply here: "In summary, a concern for relative advantage may prevent children from enacting their knowledge of fairness when actual resources are at stake.”

Furthermore, canon tells us that creating Horcruxes did not affect Voldemort's mental abilities.

Evidence #1

But here’s a weird thing Tom says in HBP:

“Yes, sir,” said Riddle. “What I don’t understand, though – just out of curiosity – I mean, would one Horcrux be much use? Can you only split your soul once? Wouldn’t it be better, make you stronger, to have your soul in more pieces, I mean, for instance, isn’t seven the most powerfully magical number, wouldn’t seven – ?”

Evidence #2

Although we think that such a destructive process must weaken Tom, even Dumbledore doesn’t seem to think that’s the case:

“Yes, I think so,” said Dumbledore. “Without his Horcruxes, Voldemort will be a mortal man with a maimed and diminished soul. Never forget, though, that while his soul may be damaged beyond repair, his brain and his magical powers remain intact. It will take uncommon skill and power to kill a wizard like Voldemort even without his Horcruxes.”

In summary, although Tom may or not suffer from delusions, I agree with something approximately close to (3):

3*. Neither Horcruxes nor genetics nor environment impaired Tom Riddle's mental faculties sufficiently that he was unable to reason effectively and rationally, moral or otherwise. The thing is, oftentimes rational people reason that it is rational to kill.

Now, onto the actual argument:

Of course, I will address things out of order.

CM: I’ve gone over this before, but I don’t believe Tom had minions early and I think he was effectively treated as a muggleborn (see here and here) until he took on the Voldemort persona many decades later. I’m hard pressed to believe someone as intelligent, angry, and proud as Tom Riddle would willingly believe and accept he was inferior to the likes of Abraxas Malfoy. More, even if he wished he was a halfblood, I think the evidence of him being muggleborn would be stacked too high against him to deny even to himself (and when he finds out it’s not true, he has maybe a month or so before he realized that he’s the bastard son of a squib).

Which is about identical to my assessment in Part 1 except for a single, but important point:

While of course, this does NOT excuse ANY of his actions, I find it vastly implausible that the likes of Malfoy, Mulciber, Carrow, etc… would have been welcoming in any way, shape or form to an assumed ‘Mudblood’ in scruffy secondhand robes from a London orphanage, and as such, indoctrinated him into his fanatic belief in blood-purity via antagonizing him.

...

In other terms, I think Tom was bullied for having dubious origins. That’s often the swiftest way to radicalize someone, and would have left Tom with a crippling sense of self-hatred that I don’t think he would have even picked up from the orphanage.

I think one of the reasons, perhaps, that our opinions differ, is that I believe Tom discovered very early that he was a Gaunt on his mother's side (first or second year at the latest). Why? Because in COS he says he's been searching for the Chamber for a long time, meaning one or more years, and that means that he's known he was descended from Salazar Slytherin for a while. But of course this is Math of Throwaway Villain Lines; your mileage may vary. So I believe this Gaunt heritage (see Part 2 where I discuss the Gaunt Ring) was something Tom became obsessed with and really clung to, and that at the same time, he developed a lot of resentment towards Riddle Senior (because that's about the only way to resolve the annoying patricide subplot). Plus, seeing as the Pure-blood Directory existed, it was just a matter of Tom finding Marvolo Gaunt's name in there.

There's a second reason I think Tom really does, if not outright hate Muggle-borns, consider them beneath him. It's this.

While CM points out that this is Tom at a point of crisis, right now he's not actually fighting for survival. Right now, he's in control, and he's in control until Fawkes deus ex machina's Harry from dying of basilisk venom in Voldemort's most airtight and well-thought-out murder attempt.

Here's the shallow basis of why Tom does have at least contempt towards Muggle-borns (from Part 3, section on cognitive dissonance):

1. He believes murder is wrong. 2. He’s murdered someone. 3. We know that in order to successfully make a Horcrux, you can’t feel the guilt or remorse associated with your actions (or else you’ll end up healing your soul). 4. Tom has to rationalize his actions in order to not feel guilty.

Solution: Well, she's a Mudblood, so her life didn't matter. Or perhaps she even deserved to die.

Something like this, perhaps?

Salazar Slytherin is revered by my housemates, who I look up to -> Salazar Slytherin is good -> His ideals are good -> purging the school of Muggle-borns is good, plus it benefits me in that I get to make a Horcrux -> killing Myrtle Warren is good.

Now, do I think Tom is the #1 Muggle and Muggle-born hater in Britain? Uh, no. Not even close. But does Murder Justifiable, Mudblood Bad enter Tom's moral reasoning set? Yes. Definitely yes.

I'll summarise this post, where CM says that Tom opening the Chamber was basically an unplanned power trip with no end goal -- in their words, a mental breakdown.

CM: “Something” is releasing the basilisk, murdering all the roosters, and painting the walls in blood.

He watches the students run around in terror, feeling very important, very much like the Heir of Slytherin. LOOK, TOM IS IMPORTANT TOO!

And then someone dies and reality crashes back down.

Whenever writing pre-Voldemort Tom Riddle, we have to justify why:

(1) Tom does the Dumb Shit he does

(2) Tom does the Immoral Shit he does

(3) How TF he doesn't get caught doing the Dumb and Immoral Shit he does

Of course, me being me, I'll start with (3), in which case there's a major issue.

Namely, Dumbledore.

Love the twinkly-eyed bastard or hate him, he's an extremely skilled Legilimens, and I don't like sixteen-year-old Tom's chances over an entire year. Maybe Tom avoids looking him in the eyes. Maybe he practises Occlumency. Maybe Dumbledore's having a major depressive episode that saps his magical abilities.

Even so, Dumbledore is onto Tom, and Tom knows that Dumbledore is onto him. Furthermore, out of the several people who were attacked, only one died, which means that all the victims but Myrtle saw the basilisk's reflection... perhaps someone with mind powers made sure that this happened?

That in itself is a hint that a lot of thought went into this; Tom intended to Petrify, not kill Muggle-borns for whatever reason.

(I have my own headcanons about Salazar as a toxic father figure who Tom tried to emulate/please but that's unfounded and just a personal headcanon.)

However, my why is pretty close to CM's. First off, like CM, I think that Tom Riddle hates the status quo in the wizarding world. And I don't know if fifth year is his breaking point, necessarily. I think Tom is just generally in a quagmire of emotional crisis and mental turmoil which the Horcruxes are very much part of and a metaphor for self-harm (see Part 2 and especially Part 4 for an in-depth discussion of institutionalised childcare).

I think Tom assumes that his Muggle father most likely died before he was born, which is why Merope named him after him. Tom hates his father because he’s learned pureblood supremacy from his fellow Slytherins, and covets the respect and power that would come with being pureblood himself as he’s sick of being mistaken for a Muggle-born (we’ve seen Dippet do it) and feels that he has to prove himself as the Heir of Slytherin by opening the CoS, having no proof of magical heritage. I don’t think he’s that stupid to go around flashing his Parseltongue, especially given Dumbledore’s response to it, and it doesn’t prove that he’s the Heir of Slytherin, anyway.

And eventually, I came to a similar conclusion as CM, albeit that I think a lot of careful planning went into the Chamber openings. After all, transporting a fifty foot basilisk discreetly and quickly is no small feat.

Seeing as the public doesn’t know that Lord Voldemort opened the Chamber of Secrets (and thus don’t know that he’s the Heir of Slytherin, either), I think Tom did it all for the good of his own ego, insecurity, and of course that self-harming behaviour turned outwards that we discussed before.

Getting back to the point.

Anyway. So Tom is a petty, self-hating yet egotistical adolescent murderer who has had blood purist ideology drilled into him and solidified by his own actions/solving his own cognitive dissonance, and hates that the world where he should belong discriminates against him for being a Muggle-born/low-class, bastard half-blood who has a pureblood imaginary alter ego he uses to cope (did I mention Lord Voldemort is one of Tom's maladaptive coping mechanisms?) somewhat reminiscent of Pecola's blue-eyed reflection in The Bluest Eye.

CM: Second, I never really bought Tom’s racism. It’s too convenient and too contradictory with his backstory.

So, I suppose the main thing we disagree on here is that I think it's plausible and quite likely that Tom both has a massive ego and is self-hating.

CM: And it’s just so convenient. All the people with the power, with the money, who are itching for a cause against a threat that doesn’t really exist believe in blood purity. Ergo, Voldemort shows up suddenly espousing over the top blood purity rhetoric (rhetoric that directly clashes with his “there is only power” philosophy at that).

Now, this I do agree with. It's convenient. Tom is a rational being, and purebloods have money. Why not tell the people what they want to hear? But that doesn't mean he doesn't agree with it, even a little.

Tom Riddle is an Ineffective Big Bad... Or Is He?

CM: For a guy who has had the entire country in the palm of his hands twice, one time taking it over in a bloodless coup, he’s really big on causing collateral damage and really small on actually doing the ruling thing.

The problem with the Hitler metaphor, and where it falls apart big-time, is that Hitler was a German nationalist.

Voldemort is...

His motive is to...

His intentions are to... kill all Mudbloods... but he doesn't try to kill all of them... or even most...

His goal is...

Uh...

Voldemort is not well-characterized. I don’t understand his motives, and the ones that I do understand are not compelling.

Not to die? Well, he’s already made several Horcruxes. Why not sit back and relax? Why start a war and risk himself?

JKR said that Voldemort’s great desire was to become all-powerful and eternal. But that’s… boring! It does little to tell us about Voldemort, other than that he’s a villain and a wannabe dictator.

Not only that, but as CM says, Voldemort is already the greatest Dark wizard of all time and has control of the government of Wizarding Britain. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Remember how I said patricide is when Tom Riddle stops making sense?

Yep.

First, Tom turns down several Ministry offers to work at Borgin and Burkes. CM posits that it's possible that the Ministry positions were not offered and Slughorn told Harry a fib perhaps; because although Dumbledore points out that after several years, Tom was able to use his job to get Hufflepuff's Cup and Slytherin's Locket, there was no guarantee that he would find anything. He just got lucky, because plot.

Like CM, I don't think it's plausible that Tom turned down government positions to work in a disreputable shop in Knockturn Alley; yet, I don't think Slughorn was lying. Perhaps, they were only temporary positions, refused to pay Tom enough to live on or at all, et cetera.

Sometime before 1970, Tom pays a visit to Dumbledore to apply for the Defence position, and ends up stashing the Diadem Horcrux, then cursing the position, because petty.

But herein lies the issue; no one who wants to take over the world becomes a teacher. They just don't.

And it's not the first time Tom asked to teach, that being immediately after graduation. He even seemed interested at the beginning of his sixth year during the Pensieve scene. Furthermore, I don't think Tom was seriously considering World Takeover while at Hogwarts. I think, because as Harry says, Tom and Harry share a first love = Hogwarts, he may possibly have been quite content to be the Defence professor??? Teaching was good enough for his equal in skill and intelligence (Dumbledore), so why not for Tom?

I just don't see how he would corrupt the youths further than they already are, what with the pureblood supremacy in Slytherin and the Horcrux and Dark magic books easily available in the library. There is nothing in the Voldemort Handbook that hasn't been done before. He simply, as CM points out, mines and refines blood purity ideas that are already there.

No. I think Tom, having left his shitty job, picked up a few pureblood wannabes using his new Lord Voldemort persona (like CM, I don't think the Knights of Walpurgis existed early on as Tom's followers. In my opinion, Tom got a bit of street cred in his last two years for claiming the Gaunt ring, but idk if it's enough to regard him as anything more than a curiosity given he ended up at Borgin and Burkes), and completed his seven-part soul, intends to sit back and relax at his favourite place in the entire world and be showered with respect, admiration, and Christmas cards, which is of course the sensible thing to do.

But... Tom has poor impulse control at times.

By at times I mean often.

Temper, temper, temper.

He jinxes the Defence position (which could have been a savvy move to make Order fighters ineffective, but it would also impact Death Eaters since they're drawing from the same pool), hides the Horcrux like he was intending, and storms out.

Why start a war?

CM: I believe Tom was systematically destroying the very foundations of the country through its core aristocratic families. Within a few short years Tom decimates the Black family, it goes from having five heirs to none, and while some of this isn’t Tom’s fault he does take care of quite a few of them. He brands Lucius for life, while Lucius rises high in politics he never escapes the stigma of being a known Death Eater and in the end cannot escape the consequences for his actions. The Malfoy family is very nearly destroyed by the end of the series, had Draco died in the Fiendfyre. The LeStrange family, presumably decimated as well.

I'm going to go way back in time here. One of the chronologically first things we learn about Tom is this:

"Billy Stubbs's rabbit. . . well, Tom said he didn't do it and I don't see how he could have done, but even so, it didn't hang itself from the rafters, did it?"

"I shouldn't think so, no," said Dumbledore quietly.

"But I'm jiggered if I know how he got up there to do it. All I know is he and Billy had argued the day before."

While some might point out that Mrs. Cole isn't the most reliable source, I actually really like this detail; because it tells us that Tom has a hell of a vindictive streak. When he feels he has been wronged; you'd better believe that there will be consequences.

And yes, Tom Riddle is a very smart guy, but I'm not sure if CM gives him a little too much credit here.

Yes, he has no particular love for the pureblood leaders of the not-free world, but this kind of long-term planning requires unparalleled chessmaster-ing that makes me go ehhhh, especially when said chessmaster gets outsmarted by his old teacher, a twenty-one-year-old Muggle-born, one of his very own Death Eaters, and his very own vendetta against a certain green-eyed teenager.

In fact, let's talk about Voldemort and Harry. He fails to kill a baby due to the Power Of Love (canon) or the Power Of Love Plus Lily Evans's Badass Invented Sacrifice Spell (headcanon) and ends up as a wraith for nine years.

And what does Voldemort do a year later, when presented with the options to (1) get the Philosopher's Stone and his body back or (2) kill Harry Potter even though at sixteen, Tom Riddle KNOWS about the sacrifice spell/power of love?

Yeah. Tries to kill Harry. Because to Tom, Harry is the Bogeyman, he is Fear, he is the Grim Reaper, he is Tom's destiny, he is Death.

Voldemort is terrified of him; he is the number-one priority.

Tom has poor impulse control. Someone who makes this kind of mistake can't do long-term planning like that, IMO.

CM: By the time we get to Harry Potter’s canon, it is now only a minority that are anti-muggleborn, and they’re perceived as raving lunatics. Nobody wants to be grouped with these people. Which, just goes to show, how much Voldemort rattles the wizarding world in a very small amount of time.

This is true, but I don't think it's by design in the least. I don't think Tom cares for the fate of Muggle-borns, or anyone but himself.

Exhibit A: Tom is a selfish prick.

Yarn

They'll have your wand for this, Hagrid. You'll be expelled.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) clip with quote They'll have your wand for this, Hagrid. You'll be expelled. Yarn is

Yes, sometimes Tom is rational. He is often rational.

But he is very, very far from infallible. It isn't because Tom is 'crazy.' We all do irrational things and act on emotion rather than thinking things through.

Hanging Billy's rabbit was not rational. Releasing the basilisk, though it required strategy and precision and attention to detail, was not rational. Killing Myrtle to make a Horcrux because he has a pathological fear of death was not rational. Killing the Riddles was not rational.

To reason that murder is rational, you have to be operating on very flawed logic, a very flawed worldview, or both.

When he is in pain, he wants everyone else to be in pain, too. When he is scared, he wants the world to share his nightmares of the Reaper coming to collect his soul.

In short, Tom's pattern of poor impulse control and terrible planning makes it hard for me to believe he could pull off CM's version of events. Sure, he'd like to knock everyone off their pedestal, but... I don't think it was his main concern.

Tom is a generally very frustrated person. That much, everyone can agree on.

What I can't fathom, is why start a war? It's an odd style of revenge.

Here's what CM suggests:

CM: Given the results we see, that more than any others it seems to be the purebloods and often Tom’s own followers that suffer colossal losses, I think Tom’s actions are, in part, a means of vengeance against the entire damn wizarding world (but especially the purebloods).

Who the hell is Lord Voldemort, anyway?

But I must wonder if Lord Voldemort, with his yew-and-phoenix wand (which carries heavy symbolism of immortality and rebirth) and almost deified figure is meant to be a personification of Death himself? His name, Lord Voldemort, is a shade close to Lord Death.

In Part 5, I come to the amusing conclusion that Voldemort is Persephone. Deal with it.

But in all seriousness, I think Lord Voldemort is originally Tom's private coping mechanism/alter ego invented while at Hogwarts -- the greatest sorcerer of all time, a foreign Dark Lord who looks down upon the likes of Abraxas Malfoy.

Here's how it might have went down.

Once he's sufficiently changed his appearance, he decides to take the Voldemort persona out for a spin with the pureblood crowd, flaunts his charm and leadership skills, and chats his blood purity bullshit.

And they eat it up. Voldemort is a hit.

So, once he's turned down from the Defence position, perhaps Tom decides to see just how far he can go with this. How much he can humiliate and enslave these people who treated him like scum.

His life is meaningless. He's going to live forever, but the world is worthless and he hates everything and everyone in it. He installs a puppet minister, because he can't be bothered, he has no interest in ruling the damn world anyway. World Takeover was never the plan.

In fact, Tom doesn't have a plan.

CM: He makes fools of these people, brands them as his slaves, and has them participate in the most over the top ridiculous rituals (the cloaks, the masks, the entire theatrics of it feels like Tom got drunk one night and planned this whole thing out).

And so, I think Voldemort's not the Big Bad, but nor is he an iconoclastic, cloak-and-dagger chessmaster revolutionary. However, the fame, the veneer of being the Big Bad goes to his head, and not really having an identity of his own, I think Tom starts to believe his own hype, right up until the point where he gets killed by a fifteen-month-old.

CM: Basically, I think by the time the series begins Tom is fueled by a nihilist rage that knows no bounds. But dammit all, the wizarding world is going to burn.

Yeah. I'm still not satisfied and Voldemort's motives are unclear. But this is probably the closest you can get.

Since House of Gaunt just came out, of course I am planning to do a Part 6. I’ll try to watch it over the weekend, just we’ll see how it goes with the analysis since semester/term has just begun and I am super disorganized, but very excited!

the many faces of tom riddle

-i’m going to be doing five posts, discussing the four portrayals (and most popular fancast) of tom riddle/lord voldemort, and why, based on my interpretation of the character as someone who has spent entirely too many waking hours on re-reading the books, watching important scenes over-and-over again, child psych, moral theory, and free will to piece apart his characterization, they capture or fail to capture the most important aspects of the character-

I love the fact that he was played by so many people; there’s something interesting in that which kind of speaks to the character (as in he split his soul so he’s different people… sort of). There will be vastly unpopular opinions involved; be warned.

Part 1 (Monday)

Part 2 (Tuesday)

Part 3 (Wednesday)

Part 4 (Thursday)

Part 5 (Friday)

the many faces of tom riddle, part six or 5.5 or whatever this is because frankly there's not enough tom to analyse here and that's a damn shame

-what exactly is a backstory?-

Okay, I thought saying that I dislike Tom Hughes as a fancast for Tom Riddle would be my most cancellable moment, but here goes. I think I'm about to piss people off again lol:

*sobs* I was really disappointed in The House of Gaunt. Which is perhaps a function of my high hopes for it, but eh...

Boy, oh boy do I have opinions. I'm not going to tell you not to read it if you liked everything about the movie (which is a valid opinion), but just so you're aware, I have opinions.

(When don't I?)

However, before I say absolutely anything else, I have to say, gorgeous. The production is stunning.

Stunning, in fact, is the major issue with the film for me. It's just overall too pretty.

We open with the scene that Dumbledore shows Harry through the Pensieve in Half-Blood Prince.

At about a minute or two in — the Gaunt Shack looks less shack and more stately cottage overgrown with ivy (like the Riddle house!), and Gaunts themselves, especially Merope, whose actress is super pretty, are nowhere near as hideous, dirty, or impoverished as they should be. Instead, the whole thing is giving landed gentry when it should be giving Scary Peasants, and while I love the Miss Havisham aesthetic as much as the next girl, it’s definitely not canon and Morfin and Marvolo are not nearly as intimidating as I hoped they would be — and definitely not anything near to the magical family that Tom Riddle was so disgusted by. I just wish there’d been more squalor and — ugh — at first it's a small gripe — let’s see what happens with this change. It could be interesting to explore the idea of having functional Gaunts, so I hope they’ve done it for a reason and they address it.

(Spoiler alert, they don’t address it)

Merope, pretty and well-dressed, if a bit witchy-looking for a small village in the 1920s. Compare with the right panel.

The only Gaunt who comes off as sufficiently off-putting is Morfin.

Actually, on second thought, I can’t overstate how much Marvolo’s adaptational meekness bothers me. I have no idea why they decided to make his character soft-spoken when he doesn’t even sound intimidating. This isn't to say soft-spoken can't be intimidating; it's to say that Marvolo is trying too hard to be genteel, instead of grand and eccentric, which is quite OOC for him, and we don't know a lot about him.

Now that I’m a third of the way in, I’m not sure why they bothered with this scene in the first place. It doesn’t really add anything to Lord Voldemort’s story that can’t be summed up in a few lines of dialogue.

A battle between the Aurors and the two male Gaunts ensues. The production is great. It looks really cool, but there's a reason it wasn't in the book.

It doesn't add anything to the plot, or character development, which is a real shame in a thirty-minute film.

I thought it was a nice detail how two of the Aurors were from Beauxbatons, but it really jarred me when the British Auror leading the mission called them “French guys” — I don’t think people would have said that in 1926.

This isn't (just) me being pedantic as per usual. Admittedly the above graph shows only the prevalence of 'guys' in the written corpus, but you can see that it isn't really used until the 80's, and only starts gaining speed in the 00's. It's definitely not used in the 20's.

Also, halfway through and no Tom Riddle Junior. Sad. When it’s eighteen minutes into a thirty minute film and the title character hasn’t been born yet (it’s subtitled Lord Voldemort Origins), that’s possibly a pacing issue. Doing 2-5 minutes of this maximum and replacing the rest with baby maniac Tom at the orphanage or Hogwarts would have fixed it. If this film is supposed to show Tom's origins or backstory, it might have just missed the mark.

Additionally, Merope being super pretty is an issue. About nineteen minutes in, after Marvolo and Morfin have been arrested, she waltzes up to Tom Riddle Senior in the woods, all seductive... they gaze at each other… there’s sexual tension… he’s into it… she’s into it…

But Tom Riddle Senior being into Merope completely tanks a major plot point — Tom is r*ped, and the circumstances around which said crime happens is contingent on Merope being unable to seduce him without the love potion. If Tom was into Merope in the first place, he might not have even known when she stopped giving him the love potion and he wouldn’t have freaked out and left, and if he didn’t freak out and leave, Merope wouldn’t have died, sold the locket to Borgin and Burkes, and Tom wouldn’t have been born in Wool’s Orphanage. All changing the story of Lord Voldemort into something very different.

Maybe I'm seeing things from the wrong angle. But telling a story already told in an odd way doesn't clear up a character's backstory. Rather, it muddies the waters.

But, we are still meant to believe that this story should follow canon, because directly after Tom and Merope make goo-goo eyes at each other, we skip ahead thirty years later. Yes, that's right. We skip to Tom Riddle Junior/Lord Voldemort, age 29.

Real footage of Tom Senior making goo-goo eyes at Merope.

Twenty minutes in and one long scene of a robed man ascending the steps of a castle with his entourage... has Tom finally made his appearance?

Oh good, it is him. Finally.

We’ve been treated to a Masquerade Ball, where the early Death Eaters are in attendance, and yet some posh blonde woman with a nice haircut pops up besides Tom (who’s wearing a mask), and calls him Tom. Strange. Shouldn’t he be Lord Voldemort by now, if he’s started to gather followers?

OH GOD, it’s Hepzibah Smith?

I can almost forgive the Gaunts, but the fact that she’s dressed as a tasteful rich lady, and not as an affected old, wrinkly, flirty woman with a powdered wig is sacrilege.

I’m also quite upset that Tom’s wearing a full-face mask — every time he speaks, it gives me uncanny valley vibes — if only they’d had the mask only covering the top or one side of his face so we could see some expression.

(When you only have thirty minutes, you'd think you'd allow Lord Voldemort, aka the title character with less than ten minutes of screen minute, facial expressions... especially when Voldemort never canonically wore a mask.)

Not only is Hepzibah horribly out of character, but she and Tom have zero chemistry. Gone is her tittering, and gone is Tom’s disgust, and gone is the flirting on both sides. It’s simply an heiress carrying out a business deal with a guy in a mask. There is no dynamic. No atmosphere. In fact, I much prefer this sequence in Origins of the Heir. While I also, me being me, disliked Tom's overall portrayal in that film (and me being me, I often dislike Tom's overall portrayal in the canon films), that scene is pretty well done. One of the most memorable things about this scene in the book is his facial expressions; he looks hungry, greedy, his eyes glint red -- none of which are present here, because we can't see his face. And because of that, the scene feels very flat.

WHY IN THE EVER-LOVING FUCK WOULD ARROGANT AS FUCK TOM RIDDLE EVER TELL HEPZIBAH THAT THE ‘RAGGED-LOOKING WOMAN’ IS HIS MOTHER?

(Apologies. That was my unfiltered reaction at that very moment and I chose to share it with you.)

Not only that, but Tom slashes her throat in the middle of the ballroom, pretty much. Which I'm not tooooo mad about, because although pre-Voldemort Tom did try to be stealthy about murders, this is evidently post-Voldemort Tom, so all bets are off, really. Although I really didn't see that one coming.

On the positive side, the following fight scene where Tom mows down a squad of Aurors in about thirty seconds is possibly more threatening that canon Voldemort’s ever been, minus the duel with Dumbledore.

And after only six minutes of Tom existing (there's a duel in a sexy French Versailles-looking corridor, but it's kind of boring. Tom wins, obviously.), we cut to 1981, with James and Lily, who’s holding a bundle who we must assume to be Harry — Voldemort confronts them in an alley, instead of their home.

Not only that, but he murders James and Lily, and doesn’t even seem to notice Harry’s existence at first, only returning for him as an afterthought rather than the whole purpose of the attack. I mean, we know it's not, but it feels like Voldemort killed them all because he's petty (he is, but that's not the point) instead of, you know, Actual Plot Reasons Like a Prophecy.

Hello, canon? Where are you, my old friend?

And I’m not saying everything has to follow canon, but just… why not write a story that fills in the blanks in Voldemort’s origins rather than rehashing what we already know in such an odd fashion? In fact, although I have my gripes with Origins of the Heir, at least it tries to depict pre-Voldemort Tom in some way and expands on canon. I just feel like The House of Gaunt stuck too close to canon for my taste, at least. Although it's visually stunning and the acting is great, it (1) doesn't feel like part of the quirky, dysfunctional and sometimes gritty, or at least grimy Harry Potter Universe, and (2) it fundamentally doesn't develop Tom/Voldemort as a character at all.