Aug
5th
Wed
5th
The spiritual faculty of the human person is uncreated; call it conscience, the active intellect, the eye of the heart, or what you will—it is the divine aspect of the human person. Rowling calls it love, and Voldemort knows nothing of love. Love burns the unworthy or polluted in the Gothic horror. Remember the scar left on Mina Harker when the Eucharist, representing the God who died in loving sacrifice for his sheep, was placed on her forehead? Voldemort/Quirrell burns in agony when he touches Harry at the end of Sorcerer’s Stone…Voldemort too must murder to achieve immortality, but, while perhaps not as gruesome as vampirism, Horcrux creation is at least as horrible. The Dark Lord is the satanic cartoon of a materialist who infuses objects with pieces of his own soul, pieces he has acquired via destruction of his neighbor. His “life,” such as it is, is entirely exterior and material, rather than interior and spiritual. As an allegorical figure, he is the embodiment of our fragmentation, self-estrangement, and alienation—the postmodern, fallen condition that Gothic literature presents in imaginative form. Voldemort is Rowling’s gothic masterpiece.
