Backfiring on Voldy in Chamber of Secrets
Here is another set of things from recently listening to COS recently. First is that in an earlier post I had been noting the correlation between books 2 and 6 in the chiastic structure and been noting that I think the fact that the "eat slugs" backfires in book 2 is an indicator that Slughorn backfired on somebody, either Voldy or Dumbledore, in book 6. I am now pleased to announce that I am pretty sure that Sluggo backfired on Voldemort. I say this because in COS Ron had one final relapse of puking up slugs, later that night, while in detention helping Filch clean trophies in the trophy room he pukes up his last few slugs ... all over Tom Riddle's trophy for special services to the school that he got for "catching" Hagrid. The second thing also involves Riddle, maybe even a part of Riddle that isn't wholey perverted by Voldy's corrupt ego (but I'm less sure on this part being any purer than anything else about Riddle.) I think there is evidence in COS that Harry's scar is indeed a Horcrux. We hear about Ron's puking slugs on Riddle's trophy when they find the diary with his name on it ... and it is also at this point that Harry is described as feeling, when he reads the name, like it is the name of maybe a friend he had when he was little (which he knows could not be because the Dursley's made sure that he never had any friends.) This feeling is what makes me think part of the soul went into the scar. He never has this feeling when he hears Voldemort's name - which is what makes me think that maybe there was a process in which Voldy's ego corrupted his soul, but the soul in and of itself, apart from the ego, is not as evil - that is not to say that it is pure as the driven snow, I would imagine it being at least confused and a bit irrascible - but maybe not as malicious, and maybe baby Harry, in childlike simplicity of good emotion, tried to befriend the new person on the front of his head. We're talking about a "piece of a soul" here, not a whole person living in a body, and so naturally Harry could not befriend him and so as he develops past the age of concretely self-reflexive thought he forgets about that experience, except for little encounters like this. Of course, this raises another COS question - the Diary is never referred to by Voldy/Riddle as a piece of his soul, but rather a piece of his memory ... and it is precisely Ginny's soul that he is siphoning. My best guess is that Horcruxes are not an exact science and difficult to get "right." Maybe Voldy intended to make a Horcrux, ie part of the soul, and really dumped mainly a copy of his ego with a smaller piece of soul, just enough to animate a book? ... Not Sure. |
Comments on "Backfiring on Voldy in Chamber of Secrets"
i've wondered about the 'piece of soul' concept.
is it like a fabric? if you cut off a piece you would have elements specific to it's location on the cloth - design wise etc. also would it be a clean cut or one that frays?
or is it more like a glass of water? if you take some out there's no 'incision', just the level in the container goes down.
and the portion you take out has all the elements shared with the entire glassful.
or perhaps gas. where the gas there fills all the space available, but a little more sparsely. maintaining the charactaristics of the whole like liquid.
i'm finding less objections to the 'scar as a horcrux' theory (against my will), but still wonder how the 'portion' in the scar would communicate with the 'remainder' within voldemort to link for the dreams etc. i was under the impressions that the soul portions were all kind of 'self contained' not communicating with each other.
eg the diary and the ring - voldemort wasn't aware they had been destroyed until informed after the fact.
how would that all work?
i like the tie in with the slugs and ron expelling one onto the riddle trophy in cos. i am under the impression from sluggy's reactions under intoxication while harry is using the good luck potion that he is being quite candid there.
cheers,
jo
I think the fabric analogy is more accurate that the water analogy. At one point in the series, Dumbledore speaks of Voldemort going through "many dangerous transformations." So I think the human soul is one of those things which is "greater than the sum of it's parts" - actually it has no parts because it is spiritual - but since in the Potterverse it can be torn, let's state that for the sake of the argument.
What has been animating Voldemort ever since he made his first horcrux is not a human soul at all, but something which has been transformed into an increasingly terrifying travesty of a soul.
so if it's like fabric, pauli, do you think that perhaps the 'section' holding 'memory' was torn off to the diary perhaps?
I don't think the soul is like fabric so much as it is more analogous to a whole piece of fabric, like an intricate tapestry. You tear it into pieces and you've destroyed the entirety of it, the wholeness is gone. You’re left with mere fragments which can never really be put back together the way 2 glasses of water can be "rejoined".
I think Voldemort would rather think of it as being liquid which he is pouring out into different vessels - that would fit nicely into a power-mad view of life. But I think he’s nonetheless mistaken.
In a sense the diary soul is a memory. The diary had pretty much all the faculties of the soul, though: intellect, will, imagination, logic. In the Potterverse, I don't think the horcrux souls tear along categorical lines. I would imagine each "piece" contains a little slice of each functional bit - does that make sense?
I also love the symbolism of Ron barfing slugs onto the Tom Riddle trophy as a symbol or foreshadowing of something between Voldemort and Slughorn.
yes, i see what you mean.
so you are thinking that the fragment maintains many or all of the charactaristics of the whole?
and yet voldy becomes more and more corrupted each time he does this spell. i suppose the act of killing was marring enough, but this is a specific non-humanising process.
it's quite a concept to come up with don't you think?
jo