At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teresa?

For discussion of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Lilla Stjärna
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drakkar
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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by drakkar » Wed Mar 14, 2012 9:03 am

danielma wrote:Oh I know its madness...like I said, I don't sympathise with their actions and I do agree that the paths they go down are that of irredeemable and repulsive...but I strangely enough can empathise with that core idea of empowering one's self. It's partly the magic of JAL's writing, by all accounts I SHOULD dislike these characters but yet I felt strangely compelled by them and never found myself completely repulsed by them
About my feeling also.
danielma wrote:Sympathy is questionable...but I did get a strange sense of Empathy

though I found her sympathetic at first (all sympathy evaporated when she murdered the shopkeeper).


This too was where my sympathy started to go awry
I didn't lose the empathy for them even then. It was like it was a product of the society and the circumstances, even if Teresa did it of free will, she had been pointed in that direction for a long time.
I actually did go looking for the shop - it is fairly well geographical described in the novel - and the feelings I got when I (believed) I found it, was an image of a (child) soldier coming into my mind, even if Teresa was older than that. This new universe was all she got, and she acted according to it.
Or, putting it slightly differently, if we just killed or stowed away Teresa, this could happen again. If we dealt with the forces in the society pointing her in this direction, it would perhaps not happen again.

I view Little Star as a (weak) parallel to the Utøya massacre in Norway last July, where one man killed 69 teenagers, and wounded 66 within an hour. Except from serving the hunger for revenge, It does not help much to just punish this guy. If we leave it as that, same thing could happen again, and we're left with a pesky revenge relief . If you truly want to deal with this case, you will have to go behind the actions, and try to block the forces and circumstances that lead to the massacre.
For the heart life is simple. It beats as long as it can.
- Karl Ove Knausgård

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by snaps » Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:22 am

I was always up rooting for them. I don't think I felt sympathy so much as identification. I thought that what they had was pure devotional love, even when tried and tested against circumstance.

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by lombano » Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:52 pm

drakkar wrote:If you truly want to deal with this case, you will have to go behind the actions, and try to block the forces and circumstances that lead to the massacre
In the case of LS, I disagree - all the other, bigger forces (bullying, inept authorities, celebrity culture, etc) are more like a backdrop. They're important for how the story unfolds, true, but they're not the driving force. The real driving force are the characters' individual pathologies.
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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by drakkar » Mon Mar 19, 2012 4:55 pm

lombano wrote:In the case of LS, I disagree - all the other, bigger forces (bullying, inept authorities, celebrity culture, etc) are more like a backdrop. They're important for how the story unfolds, true, but they're not the driving force. The real driving force are the characters' individual pathologies.
In LS, the events and personalities are so intervowen I have problems separating the driving forces and the "backdrops" just like that.
For the heart life is simple. It beats as long as it can.
- Karl Ove Knausgård

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by lombano » Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:17 pm

The thing is, they all have plenty of options at various points - they don't face anything like the constraints Eli faces, for example, or even Oskar. For instance, some of the blame can be laid at Theres' childhood's feet. But there were no bigger social forces making Laila and Lennart act as they did, as they always had options, even long before finding Theres, such as getting a divorce. Likewise later Teresa, her bullying wasn't nearly as bad as film Oskar's, let alone book Oskar's, so it's hard to say she was cornered into acting as she did. She always had alternatives (friendship with Johannes and even Agnes).
But more importantly, I think wider social forces merely shape the exact manifestations of their own darkness. For example's, Theres' leadership of the Wolves takes on the form of celebrity worship, but in other circumstances, she would've just been hailed as a seer, prophet, etc. Likewise in the olden days Teresa would've not been an internet troll but would've found some other way of tormenting others (animals, small children, etc).
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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by drakkar » Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:18 pm

Firstly, I didn't compare LS with LTROI to any degree while I read it. Now, if I do, I agree with much of what you are saying to some extent, but not to the extent that I for a moment felt "the real driving force are the characters' individual pathologies", as you put it. For me the environment's interactions with them is just as important.
For the heart life is simple. It beats as long as it can.
- Karl Ove Knausgård

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by [Eden] » Fri Mar 30, 2012 12:39 am

Hi,

just finished reading. Im quite weak and a bit dizzy, so I'll just drop some random thoughts I've had while getting through the story.

Teresa was condemned. By both her body features and her boring personality. She felt like she had nothing to offer but selling herself out (when she 'rewarded' Micke - I think she was simply overwhelmed And embarassed because of a kindness she felt she didn't deserve. She had to sell herself out.)
She wants to die, disappear, and she longs for a rebirth.
Theres doesn't care about basically anything, while Teresa overcares about everything, someway.
The worse thing is that Teresa couldn't ever be Theres. Not physically nor mentally. Nor she has her talent.
All she had left was pretending, acting. Pretending to know, pretending to feel, pretending to understand.

I think Teresa, in the end, is as far from Theres as she had been during their first meeting.

This is a book about pure despair. Things you just can't undo.


"And so it is", like Damien Rice sings.
Outsiders love best.

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by a_contemplative_life » Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:03 am

[Eden] wrote:Hi,

just finished reading. Im quite weak and a bit dizzy, so I'll just drop some random thoughts I've had while getting through the story.

Teresa was condemned. By both her body features and her boring personality. She felt like she had nothing to offer but selling herself out (when she 'rewarded' Micke - I think she was simply overwhelmed And embarassed because of a kindness she felt she didn't deserve. She had to sell herself out.)
She wants to die, disappear, and she longs for a rebirth.
Theres doesn't care about basically anything, while Teresa overcares about everything, someway.
The worse thing is that Teresa couldn't ever be Theres. Not physically nor mentally. Nor she has her talent.
All she had left was pretending, acting. Pretending to know, pretending to feel, pretending to understand.

I think Teresa, in the end, is as far from Theres as she had been during their first meeting.

This is a book about pure despair. Things you just can't undo.


"And so it is", like Damien Rice sings.
I think you have hit on something here with the concept of being condemned and without hope from the get-go. It is even more tragic that her parents felt things slipping away and were, in the end, powerless to stop it. One must wonder how often this story is repeated, in greater or lesser degree, in real life families across the globe. It is probably close to a universal fear for any parent--to lose one's child to the world.
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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by varamiglite » Fri Mar 30, 2012 2:49 am

I'm kinda wishing I hadn't ventured on here and started poking around in this thread. I spoiled a bit for myself, although I'm not surprised by the things I have become privy to. It just shows that I still have a lot to look forward to. I still have 234 pages to go and it sounds like they're going to be good ones! :D
slog tillbaka. hårt.

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Re: At What Point Did You Lose Sympathy for Theres and Teres

Post by [Eden] » Fri Mar 30, 2012 8:33 am

The fake self-confidence of Teresa in the end is one of the most disgusting thing I've ever read.
She thinks she's alive, born again, yet she just got rid of fear, but still dead to the world. Still nothing to the world.
Still nothing to Theres, in my opinion.

Her mom never tried to really accept her (the party paragraph - about her childhood), her dad couldn't handle her personality in a proper way.
Johannes? Was he a 'good friend'? Is it really correct?
To me he wasn't.

"And you do everything you could
(like any decent person would)"
(cit.)

Johannes was a chance. He was what society had to offer to an individual like Teresa.
Somebody who made it, kind enough to slow down a bit and walk besides her for a while.

He probably was interested in her when they were younger... when Teresa wasn't 'fat' yet.
'And so it is' (again).
Then he found Agnes and someway let her go. Didn't need her anymore, and that's something so human.

I can envision Teresa's soul in the end. It's like her caressing her own self and whispering 'you're doing it right, you're doing it right'.
I think that maybe her only comfort is the feeling of belonging to something greater, the pack.
But she's not the alpha female in the pack... nor the beta, actually.


I think it's rather wrong talking about Theres and Teresa as 'two outsiders'.
Theres is not an outsider. Theres is a sociopathic with some beautiful features and a great talent, she's charismatic and someway comforting.
She's emotionally dead. But still, I can't think of her as an outsider.

Teresa is an outsider instead. She's worse than nothing, because she is there, and she is wrong.
She can't suscitate anything but with trolling around with an alias, not even as herself.
She really is the epitome of nothingness.

"When you're not on the edge, uh... than you just waste space!" (another cit, not from the book obviously)


I can't see love in the ending... maybe the only emotion Theres is finally showing is just pity.
I think they're going to die eaten by wolves.
Theres doesn't need courage, never did. But Teresa does instead.
Theres eventually feel something, and it's pity.
Outsiders love best.

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