What do you guys think truly made Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort? Is there anything that could have prevented it (besides kill baby Tom Riddle).

Also discuss other things that have the capacity to influence one to be so evil.


I feel there are quite a few ways people could prevent a person from becoming evil, but I wanna hear from you guys first.

well i think he chose to be voldermort because he found out that his dad was a muggle and his mother died even though she was a wich and he had slytherin blood which made him even more

firstly what you have written in your first post dosen't seem to be ss apropriate.

and Secondly the reason's for Tom Riddle turning into Voldemort are explained through out the books

Yes they are explained in the book but that doesn't mean we can't still discuss them in a mature manner

i think voldie was just a bad apple that was given the right ingredients to turn into the Dark Lord

This forum exists to specifically allow more mature discussion of Harry Potter themes, as explained by the disclaimer in the forum description before you enter and the "about this forum" thread. Also, all threads are moderated by myself to ensure topics are within appropriate limits.


Please do not post unless you have something constructive to contribute to the topic of discussion.

I guess I'll start and see if I can help this discussion a little.

For starters all people who kill think they have the right or the reason to end a persons life, but their reasoning always comes from some disturbing or enligtening event in their life.

For Voldemort he discovers is father was a muggle and being enlightened in the Slytherin house that muggles were foul beings and this insight is truly what made Voldemort want to kill his father and muggle people in general. If Voldemort was not put in the Slytherin house do you think he would have learned muggles as disgusting beings. Not to mention with all the bad people that formed their pat in life from Slytherin values would it have helped to have intervention within the Slytherin values to try to instill better values, by teaching them early on te consequences of Slytherin values.
:power, pride, and discrimination, will lead to a very lonely life.

For Voldemort having Sytherin values power was everything, he wanted to rule the world forever and did what it took to attain that goal. Do you think Voldemort had a clear idea of what living forever truly meant, most people could never bare it, but Voldemort never had feelings for anyone but himself, or did he mabe care for his followers? One thing is for sure Voldemort was either mentally disturbed (not having feelings for anyone but him) or did not tink things through. Either way his humanity was the price he willed to pay making horocruxes splitting his soul at the expense of another. I don't think Voldemort made horocruxes because his mother had died even thoug she was a wizzard.

I have to disagree with you there. Voldemort was already hurting and torturing people even before he knew that he had a father. So I think he just hated his parents from jump street, regardless of what they had been.

As far as this all being Slytherin values I have to disagree yet again with you. Slytherin just wanted to keep things strictly within pureblood families. That doesn't mean that he thought everyone else was horrible foul creatures, he just wanted to preserve his way of life. I'm sure the magical community started off with purebloods. And some of the people in Slytherin already thought that mudbloods were foul even before they went to Hogwarts. So they made the house, the house didn't make them.. Get what I mean there.

And not everyone agreed with the whole mudblood thing. I mean Snape was a half and half who loved a muggleborn. And he hated two purebloods.

To be honest i think the perception that Voldemort only valued purebloods from Slytherin was a red herring. I mean he himself was not a pureblood, many of his DE weren't purebloods either. I mean other than Bellatrix the dark lord trusted Snape the most and Snape wasn't a pureblood. He even crowned himself the Half Blood Prince.

And Voldemort killed anyone and everyone. Muggles, muggleborns, half and half, purebloods, elves, goblins... So he didn't care who he killed in his race to that top.

I think he wanted to be an elitist. He came from humble beginnings and he wanted to break away from that and shed that life. So he riled against all the things that made him humble and ordinary. Only a handful of wizards could call themselves purebloods and then since he was related to Slytherin that made him even more elite. I mean how many people could trace themselves back to a Hogwarts founder.

He still hated muggles and especially mudbloods, that was proven in the books.
Not allowing Mudbloods into Hogwarts during is reign is a Slytherin way to be.



And Tomasina I'll admit I was wrong and thanks for pointing it out

Like I said I think the muggle hating this was assumed by everyone because of his followers and the house he was in. It was a red herring in my book. I think if he had been in Gryffindor the muggle hating thing wouldn't have been an issue. Vodelmort surrounded himself with people that furthered his cause. Not all pureblood witches and wizards

The only thing he respected was power and those strong enough to take it.

He felt like a tortured soul being a half and half? Where in the books did you read that? I never read that. He acted like he didn't exist before he went to Hogwarts. He only went back to kill his father out of pure vengeance, not because he was a muggle.

Maybe it's genetic. His grandfather was hardy the nicest man on the planet. Also, when he was old enough to understand what being in an orphanage meant, he may have felt abandoned. He wasn't like any of the other kids because he could do magic and he was probably excluded for that and in turn used it against the other children, which most likely bred his anti-muggle ideals.

When he arrived in Hogwarts, he felt like he was at home and wanted to be the best. He put out a pureblood front (Bellatrix didn't know he was a half-blood, and I assume none of the DE knew.) because a half blood in Slytherin probably wouldn't have worked out so well.

With the immense amount of pressure he put on himself to succeed, teamed with an early hatred of muggles, he probably snapped. Finding out he was heir to Slytherin himself, everything went downhill, Myrtle was killed and Harid was framed. Until then, he probably had a chance of being good.

I'm going to go all Dumbledoreish. I think if he had been adopted, cared for and loved, none of this would have happened. Perhaps if the teachers had kept an eye on him, he wouldn't have been able to turn into such a socipath.

I was wrong on so many levels from previous posts but Lieutenant Lestsrange, you posted something truly productive to this chat and I thank you for that.

He caught onto the glory of power, and then he began his power hungry life style. I believe its as simple as that

I think Tom Riddle became Voldemort because he loved power and control. Growing up, he didn't have control over where he lived or what he did (at least, not much), so when he realized he could take control of his future he went power-hungry and completely overboard. He liked the idea that he could secure his future and his immortality by making horcruxes, and because he was so power-crazed, he ignored the consequences.

Voldemort, like Harry, had no prior knowledge that what he could do was actually magic. He had no idea there was a parallel world that existed alongside his own. So his ideas of mudbloods and muggles vs. wizards was not ingrained in him at birth. They were not a product of his upbringing, but rather a product of the idea of superiority that Salazar Slytherin had held. Finding out that he was in fact a descendent of Slytherin helped to solidify those ideas and his power trip. If Salazar Slytherin, an incredibly powerful wizard in his own right, had those ideas, then Tom Riddle's ideas were obviously right on target. And then he could not get the idea out of his head, and it grew monstrously until he became Lord Voldemort.

Regarding true historical figures who remind us of Voldemort, Hitler (the obvious choice) comes to mind. Another, lesser-known figure of history that comes to mind is Vlad Tepes III, or the historical "Dracula". Tepes lived in
15th Century Romania, specifically Wallachia (a region that borders Transylvania, where the legends of Dracula originate). He rose to power after his father sold him, as a teen, to Turkish lords to pay off a debt. He was a fierce and patriotic ruler, but he was also extremely cruel. Tepes used the method of impalement to teach his subjects a lesson about his rule. When all was said and done, he had eventually impaled a good 20,000 of his own subjects, purely because he was so power-hungry, and much of the time the only reasons he had for doing so were simply that he wanted to spread as much fear and "respect" as he could.

I think if his mother wasn't muggleborn, Tom wouldn't have felt so ashamed of his bloodline, and would not want to prove his family tree to be
weak, and therefore, would not need to show power or greatness to become known to the wizarding world.
I think that is why the wizarding world was kept secret to the muggle community.
I muggles knew that they could have power like wizards, they would believe they could own the world...
So, really, you can't blame Tom for wanting magic power after all those years it was unkown to him.
If every muggle found out about the wizarding world, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them turned out like Voldemort, in his situation.
Like every bully, even Voldemort, there is a sob story behind it.

I dont think its anything to do with his parents. if his dad had stuck around he might not have killed him but it wouldnt stop him killing anyone else. He feared death so did everything he could to become immortal. He had the power to make the horcruxes and didnt stop to think bout it first?

I think losing his mother and being aboandoned by father, and growing up relativly alone, and without true familial love and care he was damaged from childhood. Because of this lack of love he craved a way to become special. Opon realising how "special" he was, and socializing with others who renforced his negative atributes, he slowly turned into the evil person he became. I don't think much could have been done to help him, other than a wizarding family taking him in at birth, because I don't think he was evil because of nature, I believe it was nurture, or lack there of.

I think Tom Riddle became evil because he grew up in that orphanage, and he didn't have any friends, and he was so angry.

So instead of becoming a nice person and telling people about how he was feeling, he became evil. And he wanted revenge on all muggles and muggle-born people. He probably felt like the orphanage was a prison, and he wants revenge for his imprisonment.

If that makes sense. And he didn't have a family, or friends, just shut up in a room all day, so he didn't know what love felt like. So, then he comes to Hogwarts and finds out he is a wizard, and finds he is so powerful, and there are so many people at Hogwarts that have love too; but he didn't. So he probably became obsessed with power, and wanted power over all people. He most likely got jealous of people that had love, and wanted it to stop; because he didn't have it.

I feel bad for him

I think that he truly was afraid of being powerless. When he found out that his mother was a witch and yet she fell for someone completely and utterly powerless, it drove him mad with the fact that he was related to someone useless. He finds out about these extoadiny powers and suddenly he wants to become someone different. Someone that can actually do something without terrorizing people. But this was all before the horcruxes. He was so obsessed with power that he didn't want to die. By finding out that he didn't have to die, he would do anything to get that power.

I think that a way to prevent him from becoming Voldemort would be for someone that he trusted (Dumbledore perhaps?) to convince him that there are other ways besides ripping his soul out in seven different ways. I know that this isn't the greatest, but maybe this could have worked with a younger Tom.

JUST AN OPINION


In my opinion Tom Riddle was a bit sour about growing up as an orphan and he was afraid that he was powerless.

I also believe that Tom Riddle had become the monster that he had because he wanted to be different, special. He liked that idea. (Remeber how he was not so much as pleased when he learned that the Hogsmeade's bartender was also named Tom). I think that he felt like an equal as a child and wanted to feel, to be superior.

I think that a murderer either thinks that they are gaining something whether it be a feeling of self fulfillment or power/ control OR that the world is out to get them and that they are like the only "sane" people in the world which is what I think had crossed Tom's mind. He didn't want to be alone in the world. He wanted to be the popular jock that all the girl's fell for and all the guys wanted to be. He wanted to be supported, well-liked.

What it boils down to is, do you believe a sociopath is born that way or does his environment make him that way...

I really believe that Tom Riddle was born bad. It was in his nature to only take, never give. He dismissed anything that wasn't important to him.

He may not have been adopted, but he certainly could have had friends and people that cared about him, but he rejected everybody.

I guess you could be born bad from an imbalance of neurons in the brain can shape the way a person thinks, mabe Tom Riddle was born mentally ill, I don't think it is one natures to be bad, I believe it is a choice or an illness or mabe a combination of both. A mental illness see's the world in a totally different light and because of this they see the world totally differently then a normal person and there actions are affected by the world they percieve but I honestly don't think this is the case with Tom Riddle. An imballance in the brain can make a person see the world in quite a gloomy light and sometimes even make someone want to cause others pain cause it warps the mind to make some people like to do appalling things that many people deem as horrible but to their mind it is perfectly normal. His want for immortality may also come from mental illness cause an imbalance in the brain distorts there veiw cause it is truly crazy to want imortality but a mental deranged person may see it differently cause there veiw of the world is completely different from a normal persons, we don't really know but good point Torchwood that Tom Riddle may have been born bad.

I don't really know if anything could have stopped him from turning into Voldemort, other than give him different parents. When he was in the orphanage, he felt that since he could do things the others couldn't, that meant he was better. From the start, he felt that muggles were beneath him.

I think Voldemort was born with a bad complex... when he was a little kid he was somewhat scary... but I think life in the orphanage just made it worse. As a teenager he used the Basilisk to torment Hogwarts and kill Myrtle, so this evil guy personality must have developed early in his life, and got worse.

I think just all the bad things leading up to him learning he was a wizard. Lik by being in that orhanage he was forced to grow up a lot by the time he was 11 and by then he just wanted revenge on all the people who hurt that he couldnt see the light at the end of the tunnel and there for he just sank into a deep evil sort of thing.

he wanted power and he got it. didnt he? except for the one dreadful night when voldemort was destroyed.