preface, humanity and our god complex
I read the first sentence of ‘The Secret History’ and thought of Tom Riddle, a circumstance I learned to accept as I thought of him all the time. I thought of Donna Tartt and her way of making the familiar suspenseful. Alfred Hitchcock says that suspense doesn't come from dropping a bomb that nobody knew was there, but rather it creates only surprise.
Suspense is caused when you are already aware of what is going to happen. When you, as an audience member, see the bomb that has been planted and only the people at the table can't hear it ticking underneath them.
And that is the feeling that Tom Riddle evokes within me, because we already know everything. There's a dark, hidden force in every book about him, and every time you know that he's the source, that the characters just don't know it yet.
For example, ‘Murderer's Maze’ by ibuzoo. You are aware that Tom is the murderer (because he is Lord Voldemort, because he is the evil one, and you realise it with each of the hidden sentences), but Hermione doesn't know, and continues to search for the murderer. We know it's Tom, but we hope we are wrong, otherwise Hermione must have realised something sooner.
I wanted to write a book where everything was already known. So Tom Riddle killed someone, which is not an unusual thing for him to do, but usually the feelings behind it are misinterpreted or not presented in a way that I would actually be interested in.
I keep reading that he kills someone out of greed, out of revenge, out of anger, out of pure emotion, and I understand why someone would write something like that. Partly it's because we already know how much Tom Riddle acts out of emotion, but also because we as humans can't (and don't want to) understand that another human being can kill for no reason at all.
After all, what could be more horrifying than someone committing murder simply because they can. Not out of some dark, twisted urge (be it perversion or greed, revenge or rage), but simply because the person knows that no matter what they do, nothing will happen to them.
Murder must be one of the highest forms of power and control. So profound must be the feeling of holding the gun to someone's forehead and knowing that you are the one who decides what will happen. That you have the control otherwise reserved for only God.
Now you can decide whether to spare or to rob.
And then you do it. You kill that person and maybe you will be one of the few where nothing happens that might give you the idea that what you just did wasn't right.
The majority of people only fear the consequences. Christians fear only the consequences. (Above all, they fear going to hell, not rotting from the inside out because the cruelty remains embedded in us). We are all afraid of the consequences of our own actions.
And then there are no consequences. You have done something for which the voice of reason in your head would demand consequences (but how trustworthy is that voice when you have killed a human being?), but nothing happens.
In that moment, don't you feel more powerful than anything else? In that moment, don't you feel like a god, for you have judged and your verdict has been deemed correct by all that is higher? (Why else would nothing happen?)
At some point, most serial killers who were caught late or never had a moment when they were overcome with hubris, and I do understand why. If the consequences don't arrive for so long, why should they ever arrive?
I wanted to write a book where you already know everything, and where you are afraid of humanity itself, because there are so many people capable of so many dreadful things if there weren't any consequences.
Imagine Tom Riddle kills someone. The reader knows it, the killer knows it, and the deceased victim knows it and just looks back at their former self and wonders why they didn't see it.
Imagine you are the person with the gun. Doesn't that make you feel powerful? As if God himself would fall pleading on his knees because you are the new God?
the author, Aurora