Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

creates Horcruxes in order to avoid dying so he can dominate the world… [and]….aims to make himself
„impossible to kill by murdering other people‟” (Bell 31-2). Voldemort‟s ultimate fear of physical death
causes him to overlook the damage to his soul and the destruction of others‟ lives (Neal 184). Here
Rowling depicts Voldemort as a satanic figure through his inversion of Christ‟s sacrifice for his own selfish
desire to conquer death.
passage reads:
Voldemort‟s seven Horcruxes also allude to the unclean spirits in the Gospel of Luke. The biblical
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest;
and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he
cometh he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other
spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of
that man is worse than the first. (Luke 11.24-6)
Like the man in the parable, Voldemort has seven other “spirits” and becomes less human with the creation
of each (Killinger 80). His face lights up with a happiness that makes his features “less human” when he first
learns of Horcruxes, later his face is “waxy and oddly distorted… though the pupils were not yet the
slits…they would become,” and after his rebirth, his face is always described as snakelike (HBP 499, 441).
Here Rowling clearly shows the destruction of Voldemort‟s soul on his once handsome face in a biblical
allusion to the Gospel of Luke.
The similarities to the Luke passage become clearer when considering Voldemort‟s past. In Half-
Blood Prince, Dumbledore reveals that Voldemort visited his mother‟s home as a teenager and killed his
muggle father and grandparents. Though he does not find it “swept and garnished,” Voldemort returns to
his family‟s home as the unclean spirit of the parable does. Only after this visit does Voldemort create the
“seven other spirits more wicked than himself,” his seven Horcruxes (369). Rowling completes the
comparison through Voldemort‟s placement of his Horcruxes. Five out of the seven dwell in or refer to
locations that are significant to Voldemort‟s past: his mother‟s house, Gringotts, the cave he discovered as a
child, the Chamber of Secrets, and the Room of Requirement in Hogwarts. Clearly Voldemort would not
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