What does the Big V want anyway? Its obvious he cares little for anyone, and nothing for anyone who has not allied themselves with him. We know a little about his past. How does it all fit in?
Short answer, POWER .
One point that is mad is that Harry and Voldemort are very much alike. Bothe were of strong magical heritage, both were orphaned, and never knew their true parents, both were raied by muggles in bad circumstances (Harry by the horrid Dursleys, Voldemort in an orphanage). What seperated them, and Dumbledore points this out, is the choice that they made. Harry CHOSE not to be put in Syltherin. Voldemort is what Harry could become if he chose evil over good.
Harp and Sword
I think we’re still missing a big part of the puzzle. J.K. still has three books left to flesh out the story, and I think we’ll learn a lot of the backstory in those. One of the big plot turns is supposed to involve Harry’s mother. I just hope she doesn’t pull a Darth Vader and reveal that V is Harry’s father/brother/twin/clone/you get the idea.
I think it’s always cooler when bad guys are just that: bad. No reason. Evil is just evil.
That’s much scarier.
They keep on talking about how much harry and Lord voldamort look alike- i think they are going to show some relation in one of the books.
Agreeing completely (or well enough for sake of argument) with Harp and Sword and of course in part with [Why A Duck] [/Why A Duck].
It’s a contest between good and evil. Voldemort, a power-mad, evil personality seeking to destory anything that gets in his way, adding to that anything that annoys him, causes bad dreams, etc. A wizard Hitler. Rowlings, of course, having demonstrated she can spin a tale of 100 pages (plus padding) into a convoluted tome of hundreds and hundreds, can play this game of cardboard evil as long as readers have the strength to turn the pages.
Luckily, we have Harry Potter, who, as Professor Snape observes, seems to feel the rules have nothing to do with him, and is perfectly willing to cheat to win a prize Goblet if everyone else is doing it.
In this, Rowlings may have transcended into a whole new paradigm: utter evil vs. careless, unlawful, cute selfishness. Could be a great series.
Did you even read the book??? Harry didn’t choose to cheat. He was shown without any knowledge of what he was going to see. Hagrid didn’t tell him what he was going to be showing him. Plus, once Harry realized that two of the other players and he had an advantage over the last one, he went and told the last guy everything he knew, so it would be fair. Not to mention the fact that Harry didn’t cheat so that he could win. He cheated so that he wouldn’t be killed. Remember, he didn’t enter the contest, someone else entered him. As far as he knew, the person who entered him did so in hopes that he wouldn’t survive the contest. When push came to shove, and he was handed the chance to win, he chose to make it a draw instead, even though he had been judged unfairly in the two other rounds.
I am completely baffeled at how you came across the conclusions that you stated above.
I’ve read it VERY carefully. And you even say so yourself: He cheated. Not just once, SEVERAL times. (Not to mention breaking school rules practically every chapter.)
Nearly every con in prison will tell you they broke the law because they had a “good reason”. Reasons like: “She deserved it”, and “I wanted it” and “I’m just getting my own back”. The sort that stand up SOOOO well in court.
A MORAL person, mind you, would have done one of a few things:
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Quit the contest. If there was a treasure hunt, and someone told you where the treasure was, you think it’s ok just to go get it, or what???
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Admit to the judges they had inside information. The judges could decide what to do. Like giving the same information to all of the candidates. Or changing the contest. It’s not Harry’s decision, it’s not his contest! If he wasn’t at fault GETTING the information, he was by KEEPING any of it.
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Exposed the people who had given him the illicit information. Sorry, that does mean loveable old Hagrid. (Sniff, and i really liked him, too…)
Harry is wonderfully upright when it comes to plug-dumb moral dilemmas like: “Is it wrong to kill somebody just because you don’t like them?” and “Is it fair for Draco to make racial slurs about Mudbloods?”, but he doesn’t show a jot of confusion at far trickier questions that are posed him.
Harry is a one-man law who can break any law, any school rule, any convention, it pervades the series. Snape, who is the strictest moral authoritity, is treated as an enemy. It’s as though part of Harry’s “magic” is to avoid the moral consequences of his actions. “Avoid” might be strong here, since he apparently barely thinks about them.
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Harry wasn’t able to quit the contest. Dumbledore said that the name coming out of the goblet meant a magical contract to compete, therefore students should consider carefully before putting their names in; if their name came out, they were in, with no option of withdrawal.
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Admitting to the judges (who included Karkaroff and Madame Whatsit from Beauxbaton, remember, who’d passed information to their own students already) may not have been enough to get him out of the magical contract; he’d still have had to compete. At least he did everything he could to level the playing field.
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Is a possible solution - but I wouldn’t expect it from a realistically drawn, average fourteen year old. I know that, when I was fourteen, given the choice between dobbing in one of the few friends I had and upholding a moral code, I would have had to think long and hard about it - before I went with the first option. Harry isn’t a moral standard - he’s an adolescent.
Plus there’s a comment in there somewhere that cheating is actually a time-honoured part of the Tri-Wizard Challenge. 
And Snape as the “strictest moral authority”? The same Snape who displays extraordinary bias towards Slytherins? And against Gryffindors (not just Harry)? Is wilfully blind about Harry’s good points - and his family’s? Sure, he’s turning up to be a much more interesting character by the end of Goblet of Fire, but he’s no kind of moral authority at all.
The JUDGES were the ones cheating! Heck, Harry was bloody well trying to stay alive!
dude, are you telling me that you never broke the school rules? the school rules are dumb - everyone breaks them. it’s not comparable to the theft, violence or murder that you allude to in your post (though these rules seem to be viewed in a slightly higher regard in the magical world than in ours). there’s is a difference between rule-breaking and felony.
also, as far as i can remember, all harry’s “crimes” are entirely victimless. he mayn’t be a goody-goody two shoes priss, but he certainly does nothing more than your average teenager does.
criticise harry all you want - i personally think he’s a smarmy little self-righteous prick (strange that i like hermione though), but do find a better reason for doing so.
I’m more astonished that someone who claims to have read the books ‘VERY carefully’ could state that Harry was trying to win a goblet.
Spoilers for Book 2, Chamber of Secrets:
It’s revealed there that Voldemort’s father was a Muggle, and abandoned his mother after finding out she was a witch. Hence his insane hatred of Muggles and “Mudbloods.”
You’re being disingenuous. If he wasn’t trying to win, why didn’t he just not try as hard and let the others win? He could have stayed alive in the second contest by not opening the egg, and in the third by just not trying. His motivations, at various points, were CLEARLY to win.
Of course I broke school rules. But I didn’t break in to professor’s rooms and steal things. I didn’t break rules that could get me expelled.
And if the judges are cheating, then what do you do? Expose the judges occur?
Harry (and his friends) are willing to lie, steal, and break other laws–anything that comes into their heads–rather than act morally. Some heros! Who can cheat best? Wow, I can hardly wait to see what’s next! Gun-running to the house elves? Riding broomsticks under the influence? Blackmail? Cool! (Oh, I forgot the twins already did that, rather than turn their case over to the police. Darn.) I just hope they get to kidnapping soon, that’ll REALLY show those evil dark wizard guys!
OH, tavalla, I didn’t see your post, I was answering the later ones. You’re right, of course, that Rowlings invented a convenient reason he couldn’t quit (even though his name was clearly entered under false pretenses, which in normal legal terms constitutes a non-binding contract). However there was no law saying that he had to risk his life trying very hard.
Well, the idea that one establishes rules for a game, and then cheats on the rules speaks really well for the wizard community, doesn’t it? Actually, I feel it’s just Rawlings, again, whitewashing her plot so Harry doesn’t sound like an out-and-out con.
Sure, Snape represents legal authority. Favoritism towards the Slytherins is not a punishable crime. But what Harry and friends do often are crimes. Snape points this out, repeatedly, and Rawlings seems to take great delight in the way his attempts to see justice done are thwarted.
what I dont get are the point distributions.
I dont have the books here so I can’t be specific, but it seems that the points are arbitrary.
(making numbers and situations up, but you get the point)
Neville: you stood up to your friends and showed valor: 10 points.
Harry: you looked at Snape wrong, 5000000000 points deducted.
Too often the points seem arbitrary (Snape aside, other teachers have given points out inconsistantly: like 50 points for getting the stone and then 50 points for shining your shoes just so. ).
It seems like more of a plot thing. Slytherin is ahead by 150 points, so Harry will get 150 points at the veeeeeeeeeeeeery end for any ol’ reason.
[Snape]
300 points from BNB for pointing out plot devices!
Now sit down, that’s quite enough of your cheek!
[/Snape]
This may be true, but he didn’t know that. How could he know without opening the egg? Once he found out what the egg had inside, and researching without success, he was just going to not do it. Remember that he was going to just say that he couldn’t do it, until he found out that they had taken Ron. Remember that he took the clue seriously, so even after the egg was opened, while he could have lived by not preforming the task, he believed that Ron wouldn’t survive. Even while preforming the task, he made sure that all the hostages got out, because he believed that if they weren’t saved, then they would die.
Of course I broke school rules. But I didn’t break in to professor’s rooms and steal things. I didn’t break rules that could get me expelled.
[Golden Goblet spoiler]
As we have noticed before, a lot of the grown ups in these books don’t listen to kids when the try to expose something. Fudge wouldn’t even admit that Voldemort was back, despite Cedric’s death and Harry’s eye-witness report. He was all too willing to brush it off because Harry wasn’t a grown-up. (Granted he was in major denial, but still). No one would believe that Sirius wasn’t evil either, even your precious Snape. Trying to expose the wrong-doings of grown-ups hasn’t worked for them in the past, so why would it work in this case.
I’ll leave the discussions of situational ethics and moral relativism to other posters (for now, anyway), and address some speculation as to the question in the OP. I believe that Voldemort is motivated by a desire to rule the world. His quest for physical immortality seems designed to ensure that he has enough time to wipe out any magical Resistances that will spring up. I suspect he feels that his magical abilities alone will make him invincible against Muggle resistance.
Also of interest to me is where Harry Potter figures into Voldemort’s plans. Dumbledore refused, in the summer of 1992, to divulge Voldemort’s reason for wanting Harry dead, and I think this will be a crucial point in the ultimate denouement of the series. In the summer of 1994, Dumbledore drops another clue into the clue bin, when he establishes that Professor Trelawny had made exactly one true prediction before meeting Harry (and one more after meeting him ;)). I’m thinking that the particulars of this prediction will provide Voldemort’s motivation for desiring a dead Harry Potter.
Harp and sword got it right in one word: Power.
World Power. At any cost.
Why a duck: According to what I’ve seen in the press, JK has spent a ton of time prepping the movie actors on their characters and motivations (which begs the question of who the real director is. One reason Chris Columbus is leaving?).
Anyhoo, she seems to have dropped that book 5 will reveal a lot of backstory on Hagrid. Nothing deep on Potter’s Mom yet.
If I have any complaint against JK it’s the way she builds a story and then realizes the need to wrap it up by dropping 18 bombs in the third to last chapter. I want to think of this as a fantasy story, not a whodunit that’s solved in the sitting room.
BTW…are both of Harry’s parents wizards?
I get the feeling they were both enchanted.
We know that Tom Riddle (Valde) is half a mudblood. He’s calling for strength from folks (like the Malfoy’s) who wouldn’t put up with a half-breed in their castle.