Set Me as a Seal Part 8

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metoo
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The elephant in the room

Post by metoo » Sun Apr 02, 2017 11:31 am

There's one thing in particular that I miss in this story: How Mr. Ávila and Professor Grigore handles O&E's vampirism. They are remarkably insensitive to this.

How do they manage? Don't they feel any kind of guilt for the dozen or more innocent lives O&E have so far taken under their protection? No qualms at all?
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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dongregg
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Re: The elephant in the room

Post by dongregg » Sun Apr 02, 2017 4:11 pm

metoo wrote:There's one thing in particular that I miss in this story: How Mr. Ávila and Professor Grigore handles O&E's vampirism. They are remarkably insensitive to this.

How do they manage? Don't they feel any kind of guilt for the dozen or more innocent lives O&E have so far taken under their protection? No qualms at all?
Thanks for your occasional comments on the story. For the Malmö part, your photos of the fast hydrofoil and copies of the 1983 schedule gave me confidence to write about it.

Good question about Mr. Ávila and Professor Grigore's rationale for shielding two serial killers. Mr. Ávila declares his misanthropy in part 2 and expands on the explanation in part 6. The children and the professor coming into his life rescue him from bitterness and isolation following the massacre at the pool.

Professor Grigore states his acceptance of vampires as part of nature -- During his childhood in Transylvania, people he knew reported the occasional sighting of vampires. It's important to my understanding of him (part 3) that his childhood was in a fascist country and his entire adulthood was under a Soviet-dominated kleptocracy. He explains part of his sang froid as a result of his profession in Bucharest.

However, Eli shoots down the grownups' rationalizations, euphemisms, and denial during the family meeting she asks for (part 7), and the grownups are forced to do the kind of self-examination that she and Oskar have been going through beginning in part 6.

It gets very sticky in part 10 when a fifth person, without their baggage, has to come to terms with who the kids are.

Eeeee!
Last edited by dongregg on Sat Sep 16, 2017 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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dongregg
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Re: The elephant in the room

Post by dongregg » Sat Sep 16, 2017 7:12 am

metoo wrote:There's one thing in particular that I miss in this story: How Mr. Ávila and Professor Grigore handles O&E's vampirism. They are remarkably insensitive to this.

How do they manage? Don't they feel any kind of guilt for the dozen or more innocent lives O&E have so far taken under their protection? No qualms at all?
I want say more than I did when you posted this.

Aspects of their personalities that would indicate reasons for the lack of guilt are described throughout the story. Ávila was already misanthropic from his experience in Spain as an anti-Francoist activist, reinforced by the mealy-mouthed teachers he had to work with in Blackeberg. The guilt he felt was for being so self-involved that he didn't realize how badly Oskar was being bullied. That guilt made him retire and become a recluse. Oskar showing up in Vällingby pulled him out of his deep depression and gave him a way to redeem his life. Grigore is inured to death because his profession led to a lifetime of dealing with cruel and greedy defendants, most of them charged with capital crimes. Additionally, growing up in Transylvania led him to believe that vampires exist and are therefore part of Nature's scheme.

All of this comes to a head when Eli rejects blaming her depredations on the virus and accepts that she is a vampire who must kill to live. That leads her to challenge the grownups on the issue that you raised. She and Oskar have already been actively debating what they really are and questioning the grownups' roles as their protectors.

When they have the family meeting, Eli demolishes their rationalizations. The grownups own being accessories to murder and admit their selfish motives in being the kids' protectors, although there are altruistic aspects, too.

The one thing that that makes their protection of the kids palatable is the fact that the kids can survive without their help, just not cheerfully. In fact, mere survival is boring. And Eli has survived for the better part of 220 years largely without protectors. Even Eli has to admit that the number of deaths would be constant whether or not Ávila and Grigore help them lead a more pleasant life.

I wonder if that helps you understand the grownups. It seems to me that some of the devoted readers of Set Me as a Seal just find the fact that the children don't somehow change to be unacceptable. They will change, or at least find a more acceptable source of blood, but the 11 months that the story encompasses isn't enough time for that to happen.

Back to your observation -- as far as the story's narrator understands them, neither man is given to rending his clothing or showing any interest in the feelings that you suggest are lacking. Well, they are who they are.

Now, to another issue you raise. "Weeks later, the capricious currents of the Baltic deposit a man's sea-ravaged body on a desolate stretch of the Finnish coast."

The surface currents of the Öresund do indeed flow north. From the narrow channel at the top of the Sund, however, a colder, deeper current flows south, beneath the north-flowing surface current. I see the body going north and then back south again around the southern tip of Sweden. Well, I changed it anyway so the body ends up on the coast of Jutland. Then I changed it back. Not chilling, whereas a sea-ravaged body washing up on a desolate stretch of the Finish coast gives me a chill each time I read it.

Edit: From a Swedish weather site:

["The water movements in the Sound (Öresund) depend on the weather system, the wind and the air pressure in Skagerrak, Kattegat northwards and Baltic Sea southwards.

"Therefore the current directions in the water outside Limhamn may change between running north-northeast or running south-southwest."]

About hygge. I changed it to read so that Connor hears it as HOO-gah. I justify that based on English-language hygge sites that recommend that pronunciation. Slight of hand that should satisfy everyone.

I genuinely appreciate your major contributions to the story: the brightness of Scandinavian twilight; the dawn chorus of birds; pictures of the hydrofoil ferry, terminal, and waiting building. The actual ferry schedule from that period. My blunder about the Öresund bridge.

I would love to have more comments from you, especially since you lived in Lund. I also wouldn't mind hearing about some of the things I got right. Not easy to do since my research for the period depends heavily on current info, much of which would undoubtedly be wrong for 35 or so years ago.

Never mind about my question concerning travel in pre-Shengen Europe. One of my children travelled around Europe in 1983 and filled me in on visa requirements. Apparently only France was still rigidly adhering to the visa rules that other countries had stopped enforcing or were enforcing with a lot of latitude.
Last edited by dongregg on Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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metoo
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Re: Set Me as a Seal Part 8

Post by metoo » Sat Sep 16, 2017 3:59 pm

dongregg wrote:The surface currents of the Öresund do indeed flow north. From the narrow channel at the top of the Sund, however, a colder, deeper current flows south, beneath the north-flowing surface current. I see the body going north and then back south again around the southern tip of Sweden. Well, I changed it anyway so the body ends up on the coast of Jutland. Then I changed it back. Not chilling, whereas a sea-ravaged body washing up on a desolate stretch of the Finish coast gives me a chill each time I read it.
Well, an actual corpse recently floated up on the shores of Amager, a Danish island, after having been dumped into the waters between Sweden and Denmark. To be true, the body probably was dumped in the Køge bay (Køgebugten) rather than in the proper Öresund, but this actual example still gives a hint of what would be a plausible drifting distance. ;)
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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metoo
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Re: Set Me as a Seal Part 8

Post by metoo » Sat Sep 16, 2017 4:12 pm

dongregg wrote:About hygge. I changed it to read so that Connor hears it as HOO-gah. I justify that based on English-language hygge sites that recommend that pronunciation. Slight of hand that should satisfy everyone.
Hmm. The two syllables of hygge are stressed equally, so hoo-guh might be better. Still, it is far from the correct pronunciation. For instance, the double o and the dash suggest a long sound, while the correct pronunciation of the y is very short. Higg-uh, perhaps?
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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dongregg
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Re: Set Me as a Seal Part 8

Post by dongregg » Sat Sep 16, 2017 7:59 pm

Upon reflecting further about the death on the fantail of the ferry, I want to be explicit about what it means to me. I take it to be at the heart of LTROI's success -- that the reader or viewer is sympathetic to the "monster" rather than to the victims. The murder on the ferry ramps up the macabre thesis of (my take) on LTROI by juxtaposing the horror of the drunken passenger's death to the levity that the children show when they are washing their bloody faces in the restroom after they have thrown the poor old sod's body overboard. Eli tries to make a dumb and completely insensitive joke by equating the murder with experiencing hygge -- a form of comfort and coziness that a vampire could experience after having just fed. The children are of course drunk from the alcohol in their victim's blood and are acting silly and giggly. Not the least bit contrite. Indifferent to the fate of their victim. The last sentence draws the reader's attention back to the victim. The body, roughly used and disfigured by crabs and other scavengers, is not mourned, not given a proper burial, but lies washed up on a desolate shore as a completely dehumanized object.

Part of my take on LTROI is that Eli does not mourn for Jocke under the bridge (as shown in the film). Rather, that she is miserable, even bitter, about the life she is cursed to live.

Could I have not written all of this into the scene? Dostoyevsky would have. To me it would be a "TMI" breach. I've kept faith with the reader by letting the reader make of the scene what he or she will.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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