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I actually did get a fair bit of "Secrets" written last night and this morning. Am now at 6,300 words in the chapter, baby! And I'm no longer flinching away from writing Tom, so there's a good chance I'll get the post-dream-scene conversation written this evening. (I already have the dream scene. I wrote that before I realized I was missing a vital transition between the Quidditch match and the dream, and had to go back and reformulate.)
I was flipping through some of my old analyses of Tom, and I came across this theory: when he let the Basilisk out the first time, he was playing around with it, for lack of a better term. Because there were several attacks before Myrtle died, and even then I think that was something of an accident.
This is not to say that Tom isn't a sociopathic bastard, but I don't think he really meant to kill people at the time. You see, with the non-fatal attacks, we have three possible explanations. 1) Tom is completely incompetent. 2) The Basilisk has some built-in reluctance to look people in the eye. 3) Tom didn't really intend to kill people, just scare them a lot.
#1 seems a bit unlikely, given the way Tom/Voldemort has shown himself to be a clever manipulator (though I grant you, working through nutsos like Crouch Jr. and then crashing the Ministry aren't brilliant ideas) and the way he did manage a reign of terror for quite a while before Harry stopped him the first time. #2 seems even less likely, given the Basilisk's dialogue -- let me rip, tear, kill etc.
So we're left with option #3. And I think that holds true for the attacks in CoS as well. They're targeted very carefully to cast suspicion on Harry, without actually closing the school so Tom would lose his access to Harry before he got out of the diary.
What do you think?
I was flipping through some of my old analyses of Tom, and I came across this theory: when he let the Basilisk out the first time, he was playing around with it, for lack of a better term. Because there were several attacks before Myrtle died, and even then I think that was something of an accident.
This is not to say that Tom isn't a sociopathic bastard, but I don't think he really meant to kill people at the time. You see, with the non-fatal attacks, we have three possible explanations. 1) Tom is completely incompetent. 2) The Basilisk has some built-in reluctance to look people in the eye. 3) Tom didn't really intend to kill people, just scare them a lot.
#1 seems a bit unlikely, given the way Tom/Voldemort has shown himself to be a clever manipulator (though I grant you, working through nutsos like Crouch Jr. and then crashing the Ministry aren't brilliant ideas) and the way he did manage a reign of terror for quite a while before Harry stopped him the first time. #2 seems even less likely, given the Basilisk's dialogue -- let me rip, tear, kill etc.
So we're left with option #3. And I think that holds true for the attacks in CoS as well. They're targeted very carefully to cast suspicion on Harry, without actually closing the school so Tom would lose his access to Harry before he got out of the diary.
What do you think?
