The Suffering “Baby”

Travis, I agree about the “baby” being the portion of LV’s soul that was in Harry. It reminded me very much of the form that LV was in before his rebirth in the graveyard in GoB. It is really interesting to see that pitiful being, so detached from everyone and everything and so helpless; it’s own little Hell, really.

I found it intriguing that the only thing that would save LV would be remorse. Not just saying “sorry”, but true repentance. If not for Christ’s sacrifice, and through our repentance from our sins, we would suffer a similar fate. Our total exclusion from the presence of God in Hell. What a parallel.

My first response was the same as yours, Travis. It was Voldemort’s hell. It’s an incredibly powerful image of unbearable suffering.

But then I thought of the lines:

‘Well, where do you think we are?’ asked Harry, a little defensively.

‘My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party.’

Harry has no idea what Dumbledore means. I think what he means is that this is Harry’s limbo, or transfer station, or vision of the afterlife. Dumbledore is there to explain things to him, so he can decide whether to go on, or go back. What is Tom Riddle doing there?

To me the likeliest explanation is what you said: that Harry carried a bit of Riddle’s soul, and when he “died”, that bit died too, and came with him. And while Harry is naked but intact and clean – i.e. his soul is intact and pure, Riddle’s soul is small, repulsive and pitiful, reflecting the damage its owner has done to it.

The fact that they seem to share an afterlife is disturbing. But perhaps when the time comes that Harry does decide to go on, Riddle will already have taken a train in a different direction.

Just a thought on the baby…

Many Christian saints and theologians use a new born baby as the example of man’s total depravity as the most self-centered and self absorbed of all creatures. As parents we all know that our kids think that they are the center of the world. They are totally selfish.

The baby in this chapter works perfectly as LV never learned to see beyond himself. His greatest sin is like that of Lucifer, namely, he wants to be like God. He is absorbed only with himself, hence the self absorbed baby.

It is ironic that the young man is the one who has learned to sacrifice and see himself as a man with responsibilities and obligations and it is LV who is concerned only with himself. The miserable baby is the state of LV soul as it dies…he never developed as a man, but only increased his similarities to a newborn.

You may be right. There’s a sort of semi-Gray Town-ish (from “The Great Divorce”) thing about that particular scene.

I have been enjoying this site for a few months now, but I’ve never posted. I love it here! You all are so insightful.

I believe that the baby at King’s Cross was the part of Voldemort that was still alive, just as Harry was still alive, but near-death, but unconscious in the forest. Harry is pure and content, while Voldemort is miserable and suffering. I think that if it was the part that Voldemort had just killed, the horcrux, that it would have gone straight to hell, not the “holding station.” I’m not sure why they’re sharing the same holding space unless it’s because they “died” at the same time.

Jennifer

On second thought, Dumbledore says all this took place inside Harry’s head, but that it was stil real. That suggests that the child was the Harrycrux, doesn’t it?

Now I don’t know what to think.

“Blimey! What a waste of parchment!”

TM

I would like to add to Andrzej’s toughts. John Granger, who is also an Eastern Orthodox Christian, pointed to the same thing in an analysis of book one. When prof. Quirrell touched Harry, he was tormented. John points to the Eastern Orthodox view of Hell, the belief that God (Love, truth and Light) is present also for those in Hell. But they suffer from it.

There are pointers to this in the Bible. 2. Thess. 1:9 says (in KJV) that the damned will “be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” (emphasis added) Most translations add the word “away” (“away from the presence…”), but that is not there in the Greek text. We see also in Rev. 14:10 (ESV) that the damned “will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” And in Psalm 68:2 (ESV) it says that “as wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God!”

John writes:

Professor Quirrell is possessed by the evil one. He stands before the judging Mirror, looking at the quality of the desires reflected from his heart. It sees what possesses him: a selfish and self-centered love apart from God. He is unworthy of the Stone/Christ and the ensuing Elixir of Life, so these are kept from him. When he touches someone blanketed by the sacrificial love of a savior (here, of course, Harry’s mother) and worthy of having Christ in him, the love of God therein burns Quirrell. His judgment reflects the judgment of hell that rejecters of hell will experience. (…)

Granger, John, Looking for God in Harry Potter. Updated second edition (Saltriver/Tyndale, 2006), pp. 136

Why didn’t Harry die? His blood wasn’t a horcrux.

…and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

I thin JKR wants us to see LV’s soul as an abandoned baby because
a. LV chose power over his own soul(unwanted)
b. after he created the horcrux he hid them away(out of sight)
c. separated from Harry it will not survive(struggling for breath)
I think that the baby(piece of soul) is there at King’s Cross only until Harry makes his choice and then when Harry leaves, the piece of soul dies.
Marge, Harry did die.

Well he certainly got a miracle pill!

Mathew

Re 16—And Tom Riddle was himself an abandoned baby, which is at least part of what set him on his awful path. So his “hell” is to go back to that very state that he’s tried to escape from (via power and control over others, rather than via love and connection).

I believe everybody agrees that hell is awful. But the point that he has made this choice himself is a very important note. It changes things completely!

Sally, I had the same thought about the timing of the Harry-horcrux creation.

Not to get into a debate about the sinful state of babies, but there is a whole bunch of good conversation that can happen about the necessarily self-centered nature of babies, especially the psychology involved, and comparing the first year of the lives of Harry Potter and Tom Riddle, Jr.

I do agree infants can show love at a very early age, but recent studies have also showed that babies learn to lie as early as 6 months.

I think the image of the “baby” is used here to give the reader a sense of abandonment. What else do you think of when you see a baby alone and crying in a train station?
The case here can be made however, that the soul was abandoned by LV himself in favour of the material world. Is their any error greater in alchemy than forsaking one’s soul in favour of the material world? It’s essentially choosing lead and forsaking the gold.

Two comments: the Tom Riddle which is depicted at King’s Cross is not a baby, it’s a “small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.”

This image is at once so pitiful and repulsive, and so clearly captures what the soul of Tom Riddle must look like, that I’m reluctant to interpret or deconstruct it. However, that is what we do here, so here are some of my interpretations.

At one level, I think the small child is Tom Riddle’s soul, or what he’s made of it. It’s small, “stunted”, suffering in pain and can’t breathe. It has flayed looking skin because it was flayed – by all the acts of cruelty, torture and murder that Riddle committed. The idea, that the harm that we do to others is reflected in the state of our soul is brilliantly depicted in the state of Riddle’s soul.

It could also be the part of Riddle’s soul that entered Harry. In which case, the exposure to Harry’s soul, which is almost its antithesis, must be like torture to it, unbearable.

Yet a third way to look at it is this is what Voldemort looked like before Wormtail reconstituted him from borrowed parts: a small child. Take away the parts that come from his father, Peter Pettigrew, Harry and Nagini, this is what’s left. It makes sense that this is what Voldemort’s soul-self would look like.

The thumping, flapping, flailing and struggling is intriguing. I haven’t figured that one out yet. Matthew seems to have an idea, though.

Matthew, what do you think is happening?

This image is one of my favorite of this series. Reyhan’s comment about this thing being at once “pitiful and repulsive” is exactly how I felt.

There is so much packed into this image in this context that I don’t think I’ll do justice to this, but here it goes.

It’s one of the instances in this book in which Rowling’s vagueness works for her very well, and I really hope she doesn’t try to pin this image down too much in interviews. I initially read it as the fragment of Voldemort’s soul that Harry was carrying. My wife and her best friend (who know these books almost by heart) read the image as a “prediction” of what Voldemort is to become, based on Harry’s comments during the final showdown.

The passages quoted in earlier comments keep suggesting to me that both readings could be right at once, especially given all the emphasis in these books on the soul’s continued existence in the afterlife. This is a fractured, literally “flayed” portion of his soul, torn from its origin in a manner that leaves it “pitiful and repulsive”. It is injured in the worst way possible by the one person responsible for its wellbeing.

Rowling’s choice to depict this as a child is the brilliant part. It conjures images of both Harry’s and Voldemort’s childhoods, their torments (suffered and inflicted). And this points to the childlike quest that Voldemort has been seeking, at once evoking a sense of fleeing from death (children don’t generally consider themselves that vulnerable) and the sense of immaturity that still pervades throughout Voldemort’s existence. And I can’t help but see shades of both Christ (the hunted child) and Moses (the “abandoned” child, though that’s not the best term).

And then there is the abandonment each suffered in his different way. Voldemort is left to an uncaring institution, while Harry is left to an uncaring family. This image hints at a question that’s been floating in my head for a while now: which situation would be worse? Struggling to grow and survive without any family connection? Or knowing a family who should love you, but actively hates you for no real reason other than your simple existence?

Placing this scene at King’s Cross Station also brings back earlier scenes at the station in which it is constructed as the boundary between Muggle and Wizarding Worlds. The boundary is not just reconstructed here as a boundary between life and death, but as one between good and evil, right and easy, knowledge and ignorance (the most intersting to me as a reader), choice and destiny.

My one question is this: If Voldemort has torn his soul apart and refuses to acknowledge his wrongdoing in the end, then is this “thing” hanging around, waiting for the final fragments of soul before “moving on”? Or does Voldemort get the rather horrifying distinction of having multiple soul fragments consigned to Death at once? Theologically, would it matter?

Travis, have you ever thought about opening up a thread on the relationship between emotion and intellect, and how exactly “knowledge” is constructed in these books, especially knowledge of “love” and “choice”? For all our focus on these two themes, particularly “choice”, there do seem to be some things about Harry’s goodness and Voldemort’s evil-ness that are innate. But Christologically speaking, the admission is that all people are “flawed” or enveloped in sin (which is evil, at least to some). Yet, there is a sense that one can choose faith, right action, etc. in the face of that innate nature. I wonder, is there a clear point in the books in which we could say that Voldemort chose his path with at least some recognition of the consequences?

Oh, Dave, what a door you just opened.

You wonder: ‘Is there a clear point in the books in which we could say that Voldemort chose his path with at least some recognition of the consequences?’

Think of his adopted name: Voldemort, translates as flight from death, or flight of death, or theft from death. He is terrified of death. Everything he does – and he does a lot of awful things – is to prevent himself from dying.

We’ve never asked, why is he so afraid of death? Is it the supreme narcissism of someone who, say like Ozymandias, can’t imagine the world could go on without him?

Is it because dying for him is equivalent to helplessness, and that is the one state he can not contemplate?

Is it because he believes that there is nothing after death, and can not accept not being?

Or is it that part of him knows, or suspects, that maybe there is something afterwards, and that if there is a hell, he has earned his place in it many, many times?

He knows he has a soul – he must, because he slices it up like a bologna sausage and deposits it in objects he values. And that is the only use he seems to have for his soul: a commodity he can use to ward off death. And the more he does this, the more horrible his eventual fate becomes.

We will never be able to ask him this question, but it would be interesting to ask anyways: did you fear death so much because of the fate awaiting you, or did you just not believe there was anything which could hurt you after you died?

And sitting on the other side of the station is Harry, who is literally able to walk into death because the people he loves who died are walking besides him.

Voldemort was a student at Hogwarts, he must have seen the ghosts, and at least theoretically known that there was a place the soul went to after death. My theory is this: he feared death because, unlike Harry, there was no one on the other side who loved him, and whom he loved. There was nothing to make death bearable, or even welcome.

So yes, he feared death because of the consequences, but that only made him try harder to avoid the consequences.

I am currently writing a piece on my Harry Potter´blog (click my name) on hell, seen from the perspective of Rowling. This is not a pure Harry Potter-article, it could easily fit inat my other blogs, but I winn publish it there.

I will draw on what I’ve written in the combox for this post, and I will also quote Andrzej’s thoughts.

Korg,
‘the small, soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent.’
We used to share a room! Steady on!

I have to admit it is very uncomfortable reading. It gives me the impression of a fish out of water: not in its natural environment, struggling, and pitiful to watch.
In this place where such love and peace are being expressed by Dumbledore and Harry, and where both are so content with being dead, Voldemort cannot stand it.
I agree with earlier posts that the wicked would be supremely uncomortable in heaven (to say the least!) And it’s slightly indecent to see him there. He’s out of place. Harry’s nakedness a la Genesis 2 is quickly forgotten because he has nothing to hide. But Voldemort’s nakedness is indecent. He has been exposed. And so perhaps the indecent flailing is the remorse he refused to show in life. And as Dumbledore hints, it’s too late for that now. Nothing can be done: there is no place for post-death repentance.

How could Dumbledore forbid Harry to offer comfort? How could Harry obey that? I would not have been able to.

labrialumn, I haven’t got my copy, but I think Dumbledore said that the “child” was beyond both their help. If they could, they would have offered comfort. I think Harry tried to help Voldemort in offering him the chance to repent, because he’d seen what he’d become if he didn’t. But it was Voldemort’s choice, nobody else could do this for him.

The reason why Harry asked whether it all just happened inside his head was, I think, that Rowling didn’t want to show what really happened after death, what heaven or hell were like. It reminded me very much of Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, someone else already mentioned it. There are visions of heaven and hell, or some state in between, but in the end, you don’t know if it all was just a dream.

I guess, some questions cannot be answered on this side of heaven. Personally, I very much liked how Rowling handled it.

And further, Rowling wasn’t denying the reality of an afterlife; she was challenging the way we think.

Surely Rowling suggested that there would be an afterlife. And if Harry would have taken the train, he’d be going “beyond the veil”, whatever that may be like. Heaven or hell? Dumbledore simply said that he would have gone “on”. Since Harry wasn’t dead in the King’s Cross scene we can’t be sure.

Many people have near death experiences, but this isn’t prove for an afterlife. Those who don’t believe in it would say that it all just happens inside their brain. In the end, it comes down to what we believe, it’s a question of faith.

Even the dead ones that Harry called with the resurrection stone could only be seen by him. I appreciate how Rowling handled it and let death remain a mystery.

I think that the baby we see is the horocrux that was “inside” Harry and when he chooses to go back, he doesn’t take the baby so he leaves the horocrux behind therefore defeating it and leaving it to go to it’s destination. Just a theory, we won’t ever know unless JK comes right out and tells us .

It seems to me that the key characteristic of the pathetic, suffering, baby-like thing lies in its stunted, wounded, immature, helpless condition. In contrast to Harry, it’s utterly incapable of effective actions or choices. Moreover, it’s unable to communicate or have any kind of relation with anyone else, other than to simply flap and flail its misery.

The friendship and love exhibited in the conversation between Harry and Dumbledore, which JKR believes transcend death (as the William Penn quote at the beginning suggests), would be out of the question for someone whose soul was as shattered, ruined, and undeveloped as Voldemort’s.

That kind of totally isolated, but conscious, existence may be JKR’s suggestion of hell.

Ms. Mimbulus, I agree with you that the baby in King’s Cross is probably “representative of the unconscious Voldemort on the ground in the woods.” But there’s a distinction between that part of Voldemort’s soul and the one’s that were encased in Horcruxes. You remember Hermione makes the distinction quite clear when she talks about how killing Ron’s body wouldn’t destroy his soul, though destroying a physical Horcrux destroys (annihilates?) the portion of soul encased therein.

Following that line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that Voldemort’s (badly fractured) soul wouldn’t be destroyed by the death of his body in the Great Hall, even though all the portions of it that had been encased in Horcruxes were already destroyed. So what would be left of his soul would be what Harry saw in King’s Cross; hence, Harry’s advice to Voldemort to ‘try for some remorse…it’s all you’ve got left.’

The difficulty with this interpretation is that, according to Hermione, remorse is the only thing that will allow Voldemort to ‘put himself back together’ after splitting his soul. If all the Horcruxes were destroyed, there are really no separate pieces left to put back together. Perhaps Harry’s advice simply reflects the belief that if there’s any chance of improving your outcome, Riddle, it lies in that direction.

Jack, it wasn’t my question, I just quoted it. I also think that help was impossible.

I saw the “baby” in King’s Cross, not as a baby but as a small human soul, deformed by his own choices. I assumed it was the part of Voldemort’s soul that was in Harry. Harry had just sacrificed to kill that very remnant. If he had helped it, it would be like undoing the good he had just done. I think he isn’t a “baby” in the innocent, full of potential, image of God “baby” that we think of when we hear that word. But instead the “baby” was deformed, raw looking, and crying because the acts he had committed from Childhood had prevented him from growing.

I do think JKR is refering to Hell. Not that Kings Cross is Hell, but that if Harry is killed when he returns he will simply pass through Kings Cross again and go “on” to be with friends and family. If the rest of Voldemort is killed he will pass through Kings Cross but his “on” will not be the same a Harrys. The quote I am refering to is
“” I think,” said Dumbledore, “that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But know this, Harry, that you have far less to fear from returning here than he does.” page 722

Harry does not need to fear death. Voldemort however should. I am however, reminded of the biblical phrase, “God does not rejoice in the Death of the Wicked.” (Ezekiel 33:11) An unredeemed soul is to be pitied, even if the consequences are just.

I understand that JKR is a member of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, rather than the Church of Scotland. The Church of Scotland are Presbyterians (and Calvinist in origin, at least), but the Piskies are Anglicans.

(Apologies to Mia for misquoting)

Harry looks towards Tom three times, struck by his distress.

The first time, Dumbledore tells him: ‘You cannot help’. The second time when Harry asks him what it is, he says: ‘Something that is beyond either of our help.’ And the third time when Harry asks him whether he’s sure they can’t do anything, Dumbledore says: “There is no help possible.’

The fact that there is no help possible is amplified each time: first, Harry can not help him. Second, neither Harry nor Dumbledore can help him. And last, there is no help possible.

It’s like three tolls of the bell, deeper and more ominous each time, with the final toll announcing: there is no help.

The austere power of the literary device of repetition is striking. But beyond this, the message, to me, is clear: there is no help. Anywhere. Ever. This is Tom Riddle’s hell, and this is what he is condemned to for eternity.

Scary folk, Calvinists. Or even an Episcopalian writing in a Calvinist mood.

I thought Rowling was a Presbyterian.

Matthew

My point was that JKR seems quite willing to condemn Tom Riddle to hell. She doesn’t have mercy on him. Even when she gives him a last chance (via Harry during the last battle) it is pretty clear that Tom is not going to be able to accept the suggestion that he’d better watch out for eternal damnation. Which sounds a lot like predestination to me.

It’s ridiculous, of course, writing about an author and predestination. Of course everything is predestined in a work of fiction. What staggers me a little is that she was willing to create a character who was not only unredeemably evil, but she was willing to let him face the ultimate consequences of his actions as regarded by people of faith: she sent him to hell.

I think I’ve finally understood what she meant when she said the last book would answer questions about her Christianity. Harry’s quasi-resurrection is not as central to a determination of what she believes in as Tom’s damnation.

BTW, this is a quote I found from John Calvin. Seems awfully apropos, somehow:

‘The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.’

This is where things get a little fuzzy for me. It wasn’t Tom Riddle who placed himself beyond redemption, it was his author. She chose to place him beyond redemption, and then sent him off to hell for being as she made him. So the question isn’t whether he deserved to go to hell, it’s her uncompromising view of evil and hell.

Do I agree with that vision? Well, it’s not very merciful or loving towards a sinnner, is it?

As for why I think Calvinists are scary, I would remind you of Michael Servetus.

I’m not saying Tom Riddle is inauthentic – he is very convincing in all his roles: psychopath, sinner and Shadow. And of course authors are allowed to write whatever they wish, as long as the story and the characters hold together, as they certainly do in this case. I also did not mean to judge anyone’s beliefs. Servetus’ fate neither proves his theology nor disproves Calvin’s.

All I’m saying is that JKR has written a convincing depiction of hell, and shown a character in hell for doing evil – although if King’s Cross is a way station, one wonders how much more unimaginably horrible the ultimate destination must be.

Not too many mainstream authors write about hell, nowadays. To me, Chapter 34 is incredibly moving, but King’s Cross confirms her faith.

I just read John Granger’s essay/presentation on the Christian content of Deathly Hallows. His point that JKR shows us “Spiritual Authorities are Fallen People with tragedies and failings of their own” is ironic given this discussion.

Reyhan,
I still think that Dumbledore was just making the point that he and Harry could not help Voldemort’s soul. “There’s no help possible” does not reference to God’s ability or inability to intervene or to help. After all, nothing is impossible for God.

The whole chapter reminded me very much of Lewis’s “The Great Divorce”. There’s a scene where the narrator asks his spiritual guide, MacDonald, why nobody visits and helps the people in the “grey city”, wasn’t that unmerciful? And his guide answers that it is impossible, because “there’s no room in hell”, nobody can descend there. But God can and Christ descended to hell.

I read Dumbledore’s statement in a similar way and I don’t feel that Rowling is presenting an unmerciful doctrine.

Matthew, Christina understood my point exactly; read her third paragraph.

Christina, I too applaud JKR for clearly showing us what she believes will be the punishment for an unrepentant sinner. She did not try to soften the fate that awaits Tom Riddle, any more than did Homer or Dante, her predecessors in this task.

Mia, I did not read “There is no help possible” as meaning that God – or the books’ equivalent – could not intervene or help. I read it as meaning that God would not, presumably because Tom Riddle did not feel remorse and would not repent.

It brings up an interesting point. Tom Riddle feared death so much that he was willing to hurt, kill and torture any number of people to avoid it. His actions put his soul beyond the possibility of redemption. Why was he so afraid of death? Because he did not believe in the afterlife (not having known love in his life)? Or was it because he knew the fate which awaited him? If the latter, then how ironic that the harder he tried to avert his death, the more certain he made his ultimate fate.

Yes Matthew, to both.

I like the fact that she does not compromise her views, but takes them to their logical if unpleasant conclusion. The soul is eternal, and there is an afterlife where it reaps the consequences of what it does here on earth. Tom Riddle’s soul is condemned to hell for eternity for the evil which he commits while alive. Artistically, I admire the integrity of her uncompromising decision as an author to take it all the way to the end: this is how it is, and there is no avoiding it, even if it makes you uncomfortable to look at it. Almost as much, I appreciate her economical style in showing such a hell. No flames, no pitchforks, no screams: just a stunted, whimpering child, hiding under a seat in a railway station. That is one of the most haunting images I’ve come across in literature.

That’s the writer and reader in me speaking.

But the sentimentalist in me, the one who doesn’t like to see anyone and anything in pain, shudders at the image of any creature existing in such pain and misery – forever?I couldn’t write that, I couldn’t bear to. I would have killed him outright. But JKR did write that. Hence my foray into her possible Calvinist views. But apologies again to the Calvinists. The idea of hell and eternal punishment is certainly not their exclusive intellectual property.

Riddle might be condemned to hell for all eternity, but the text doesn’t outright say it. I think that the figure of the naked child is a powerful image that is open to interpretation, as well as the whole Kings Cross chapter. And I believe Rowling suggested nothing about hell that isn’t also suggested in the New Testament, so it really isn’t Calvinist or any specific denomination.

Matthew, no I don’t think that Voldemort considered the need for remorse. He’s never done it before and I suppose it was one of the many things he didn’t understand.

It’s curious to consider that Voldemort never as an adult considered that he may be mistaken about his life direction. Even when he was following Harry’s words with rapt attention do you think he was still completely sure?

Sauron realised the magnitude of his folly before he fell. Voldemort’s destruction doesn’t seem as poetic if he had not realised his errors or vulnerability. I think there was a lot going on in his heart/mind when Harry was speaking.

Matthew

Before the release of Deathly Hallows we were conjecturing about Tom Riddle’s ultimate fate. We agreed, of course, that he had to be defeated, but what about afterwards? Would he die unrepentant? Would he allow love into his heart? Would he see the error of his ways and repent? Some of us (me!) speculated that after his death he might be somehow redeemed through the mercy and grace of Dumbledore – as the closest approximation of God’s agent in the books. He’d still be defeated and dead, of course, but he’d find some kind of love and peace, and most importantly for him, freedom from fear, in the afterlife.

I may have been swayed in this direction by G.K. Chesterton’s view of sin and redemption as expressed in one of his Father Brown stories. I can’t remember the name of the story, but as is typical, Father Brown solves the mystery of the identity of the murderer. But once the murderer is caught, he leaves his friend to be with the murderer. He reminds his friend of his real vocation: as a man of God, his overriding concern is for the soul of the sinner.

In retrospect, I guess my hope that Riddle would find some comfort after death was pretty Disneyish. You don’t torture and kill countless people and come out at the other end with a chance at redemption.

Mia’s words do make me feel a bit better about the whole thing. The whole King’s Cross chapter is open interpretation. We don’t know that Riddle is condemned to hell for all eternity. All we really know is that he has done unspeakable damage to his soul. We knew that before, but JKR is showing us: here is what that looks like.

Like I said before, I do admire JKR for following her own vision to its logical conclusion. I just wish that Tom Riddle could have transcended his fear of death as did Harry. The fate he faces after death makes that just about impossible.

Rena, your comment reminded me of the short story “To Bell the Cat” written by Joan D. Vinge. It’s the story of Piper Alverian Jary, whose crimes rival and perhaps exceed Tom Riddle’s. He is condemned to a horrible fate: to pay for his crimes without ever remembering what those crimes were. This is how the story ends:

‘But here in this alien universe his crime did not exist. He could prove what he could never prove in his own world, that he was as free to make the right choice as the wrong one. Whatever happened to him from now on, it could never take away the knowledge that somewhere he had been a savior, and not a devil: a light in the darkness.…

Jary got to his feet and started back up the slope, carrying an empty cage.’

That is redemption.

Rena, Rowling said that Voldemort wasn’t born evil, because in her opinion, nobody is.

Did he ever have a “real” choice? It is a tough question, because it depends on what we believe about choice-making and how free we are in our decisions. If Voldemort never had a chance, it would be an injustice to send him to hell, I believe. Because it wasn’t his fault to be created that way.

I think in the books it is suggested that he did have a choice and that he could have taken a different path when he came to Hogwarts. And did he really not understand that it was wrong to inflict pain upon others, to kill and to rip his soul apart?

In his heart of hearts I think he did understand it and he did know the difference between right and wrong, as a human being who was created in the image of God. But he didn’t want to understand it in the first place and as he went further down the road he lost his moral consciousness and the ability to discern.

Dumbledore said to Harry that above all he should pity those who lived without love. I believe that Voldemort was a pitiable man and I do hope God would show mercy and lead someone like him into the light. I’m not a Universalist but I keep hoping anyways.

Pat, I agree with you regarding Dumbledore and his feelings towards Tom. When DD said that Riddle’s death would not satisfy him, I took it to mean that DD did not want to see Riddle die, knowing what his fate would be in the afterlife. He truly wanted Tom to be redeemed. He tried his very hardest. But some people just can’t be saved, and Riddle was one of them.

I think it all comes down to choice as well. Harry was raised like Riddle–an orphan who was very much neglected and unloved. Harry didn’t even know about his mother’s sacrifice until Hagrid told him on his 11th birthday. All he knew was that his parents died. Yet we clearly do not see the sadistic, evil tendencies that Riddle was already showing by that age.

We all have choices, but sometimes our selection is different from others’. While one person may have to choose between starving or stealing, someone else may be choosing between bread and fruit. We are not all granted the same choices, and those are the people who should be pitied. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

Mia, thank you for the quote. I had forgotten that JKR has said that. I share her belief that nobody is born evil and still wonder why Voldemort made his bad choices in the first place. Perhaps it was the combination of his poor surroundings in the orphanage without parental care (shared with many other children who were not better off) and his extraordinary magical abilities which gave him the power to control and dominate other people. He thought he didn’t have to fear anything but death.

Apparently, it was already too late, when he first met Dumbledore, “the only one he ever feared”. Dumbledore couldn’t change him anymore, although he tried to. Even the (kind of) preview of hell, after Voldemort tried to kill Harry, when he felt “pain beyond pain” and was “less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost” didn’t disabuse him.

We all have been given a free will, but it is influenced by many factors we can’t determine. Eeyore, I can see that young Tom Riddle had an idea that it wasn’t allowed what he did, because he kept it secret, but I doubt he had any idea what “good” means, let alone what it feels like.

Fortunately, JKR didn’t explicitly say, that Voldemort will suffer in hell to the end of time. Probably, this was deliberately. As you – Mia and Reyhan – said, the text allows different interpretations. So, I hope there will be some gracious help possible for the suffering baby, even if it takes a gazillion years for it to be prepared.

P.S. Travis, sorry for using that special word, I’ll not do it again.

the baby for me indicated stagnation, failure to grow.