Along with good vs. evil, and the burden of being “the one,” death is a looming theme. Dumbledore paints death as a great adventure. Voldemort fears it and seeks to power over it. Throughout the series and especially in this last installment beloved characters die heroic deaths in the battle against Voldemort. Loved ones grieve their loss. This is the nature of death.
In the first movie Harry gazes into The Mirror of Erised (desire backwards) and he sees his dead parents. Quirrell/Voldemort is mistaken or lying when he tells Harry he can bring them back in exchange for the Sorcerer’s Stone. The Sorcerer’s Stone offers fortune and immortality but it’s the Resurrection Stone that brings back the dead. Since he loves no one, the only person Voldemort would care to resurrect is himself; it is immortality of the Sorcerer’s Stone that Voldemort is after but it is destroyed in the first movie.
In an attempt to gain immortality to go with his quest for absolute power Voldemort tears apart his own soul and commits murders to create horcruxes to house the pieces of his shattered soul. Fear of death motivates a few wizards to choose life as ghosts. Nearly Headless Nick tells Harry “I know nothing of the secrets of death, for I chose my feeble imitation of life.” A ghost is merely an imprint of a departed soul, but having splintered his own this is no longer a possibility for Voldemort. Continue reading
We get small glimpses of some of the old crew from Hogwarts but for the most part the players in Deadly Hallows Pt. 1 are Harry, Ron and Hermione. While Harry and Hermione seem to be focused on battling Voldemort’s minions and destroying horcruxes, Ron’s battle is with his own envy and insecurity.
Ron operates under misplaced perception that status is a criterion for worth. Though Harry makes a concentrated effort to downplay his importance, he is “the boy who lived.” Hermione’s the smartest. He’s not the most talented quiddich player on the team. He’s never the smartest or most talented person in the room. In Ron’s family Fred and George are the funniest, Ginny is the most magically talented, and Bill is the bravest. On top of that Bill is about to marry the beautiful Fleur, Ron’s idea of the perfect woman. Ron has no superlatives associated with himself. He sees himself as an unnecessary add-on in the groups to which he belongs. Continue reading
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Lord Voldemort, speaking through Quirrill, declares that “there is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it.” As we meet the young Tom Riddle in the latest installment Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince we see a child so caught up in his special power that he denies a moral order larger than himself. In an interview J.K. Rowling, writer of the Harry Potter books, compares Voldemort to paranoid megalomaniacs like Hitler and Stalin. Megalomaniacs exhibit an obsession with his or her importance and power that psychologists also call “delusions of grandeur”.
Tom Riddle reinvents himself as Lord Voldemort, relying on his hatred and pride to gather power. Whether the magic he employs is good or evil is immaterial to him. In fact he becomes convinced that he will amass greater power employing the Dark Arts. Pride motivates and enables evil. Voldemort, fueled by his evil pride, has complete disregard for the pain of others and may actually find his sense of power enhanced by inflicting pain. This is Voldemort’s M.O. As the young Tom Riddle pride shields him from revealing any vulnerability he may feel. Continue reading
