The Vicious Bullied vs. the Kind Bullied - spoilers

[lombano]

*WARNING* I'm putting this in the LS section (and there are LS spoilers), but I'll mention Harbour spoilers also, and of course LTROI spoilers. You've been warned.


Something mentioned in the Harbour section about outsiders made me think about how the bullied in JAL's novels seem to come in two categories: those that turn vicious, and those that remain essentially kind, or at least as kind as they can be while ensuring their own survival. Eli and Oskar fall into the second category and are thus sympathetic. Flora from HTU isn't bullied as far as I remember but is similarly a kind outsider. However, in Harbour we have Henrik and Bjoern, who turn vicious. After all, Anders wasn't guilty of anything worse than being a fair weather friend to them (but had never turned against them) and Maja obviously had done nothing to them. But what really struck me regarding this theme is how in LS all the bullied kids turn utterly vicious. One might think while reading it that the Wolves are going to turn rip all the people who'd wronged them, such as Teresa's bullies (though at least they never tried to murder her), into shreds (and a case could be made for the murders of Laila and Lennart fitting this model, and of course Max Hansen), or at least people symbolising those who oppressed them (in the vein of, in La Haine, the idea of killing a cop, any cop, to avenge a friend shot by a cop), but it's much worse than that. Teresa however is the 'vicious bullied' cranked to eleven - she makes no attempt to take revenge on Jenny or the other bullies, but murders an innocent stranger in cold blood for no reason, refrains from murdering her family (who despite their faults actually cared and at least tried) only because it might prevent her from participating in the Skansen massacre and, to top it all, murders in cold blood 'possibly the only boy she had ever loved' and who had always supported her. At least the other Wolves seem to just kill random strangers, and Theres herself has the decency to keep Jerry away. Pretty much the polar opposite of Oskar, who strikes at Jonny in an open-and-shut case of self-defence and offers him his sock (sure, he also thinks about murdering him, but the point is he chooses not to). If we bring LTODD into this, then it's a heck of a lot more ambiguous, but at least vampiric Oskar and Eli aren't killing anyone for the sheer h**l of it. I find it interesting how radically the portrayal of bullying victims has changed in JAL's work - not really a paradox, but a matter of the characters making different choices.

[DMt.]

He said that in researching the book he studied a lot of psychopathology, might explain the darker turn. That stuff is not reassuring.

[sauvin]

I, too, may spill a spoiler or two.

... Oskar, who strikes at Jonny in an open-and-shut case of self-defence and offers him his sock (sure, he also thinks about murdering him, but the point is he chooses not to). If we bring LTODD into this, then it's a heck of a lot more ambiguous, but at least vampiric Oskar and Eli aren't killing anyone for the sheer [deleted] of it. I find it interesting how radically the portrayal of bullying victims has changed in JAL's work - not really a paradox, but a matter of the characters making different choices.

Or not-choices. I get the impression that most people just sorta go where they're pushed, sometimes changing course only slightly when running into obstacles or new conditions, and sometimes ricocheting dramatically.

I've not read LTODD, understanding from this forum only what the kids did when they got to Karlstad. Is nothing said of their lives together after that point?

The bulk of my own thinking about the kids' future presumes that Oskar remains unturned, but many people seem to feel that a "happy" ending for them both can only be realised if she turns him. I've resisted this, fearing that turning means changing, with Oskar possibly turning into something she hadn't anticipated. This quiet, withdrawn little boy who before the ice hole scene never harmed anybody (never, one gathers, ever even used foul language on anybody) but has violent revenge fantasies, collects clippings of newspaper stories about murder and carries around a very large hunting knife - and I've asked this before - how are we to know that his newfound vampiric powers wouldn't go to his head? Maybe he'd think himself invincible, invisible and invulnerable and launch a vengeful campaign to do for society what it did for him.

Bullied people can turn nasty. It's been speculated that most bullies are people who've grown up themselves bullied by their own parents.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

[DMt.]

Yes. Alice Miller speaks of a 'repetition compulsion' whereby those of the abused who have never properly addressed the matter therapeutically will, consciously or not, re-enact their abuse on someone else at some point; a healing drive gone wrong, if you will...

I wish I could not personally vouch for this, since the brutal bully is the human creature I loathe the most, but I'm afraid I have found it to be so, and it's very hard to live with.

[lombano]

Or not-choices. I get the impression that most people just sorta go where they're pushed, sometimes changing course only slightly when running into obstacles or new conditions, and sometimes ricocheting dramatically.

But that's not really true. Oskar, for example, chooses to take Eli's advice and, having hit Jonny, chooses not to try to murder him, though he is tempted, and to give him his sock, and so on. TA has said that the film is in a way the story of Oskar's choices. If anything, in LS choices are starker and more dramatic - to me perhaps the epitome is, towards the end, Teresa choosing to murder Johannes, which she does entirely freely and without need. Yes, choices can have results very different form the intended ones, but still the choices people make tell us a lot.

Bullied people can turn nasty. It's been speculated that most bullies are people who've grown up themselves bullied by their own parents.

Yes, but most people don't go as far as Henrik and Björn, or some of the characters in LS. My own theory is that there are three kinds of bullies: those that are indeed bullied or abused by their parents or whomever, those that are bored, spoiled brats, and those that are not rational, those that are vicious beyond any rational self-interest.

I've not read LTODD, understanding from this forum only what the kids did when they got to Karlstad. Is nothing said of their lives together after that point?

Apparently not.