gattoparde59 wrote:lombano wrote:It's not just the outcome, but also the differences in their natures. Oskar is by nature kind, and this is shown most starkly, ironically, right after he whacks Jonny. He is kind to Eli early on, though Eli is rude. His fantasies are mere fantasies, which vanish like a puff of smoke when push comes to shove, at least up to the end of the original novel.
I did not find Oskar to be that monochromatic. Eli points out to him that he would kill, if he thought he could get away with it. Oskar does have a monster inside of him. The difference between him and Teresa is that Oskar is frightened and appalled by this aspect of his own personality. That comes out in the Jonny whacking scene. Oskar also has his own grievances with his father and with his friend Johannes.
True, but as you say, the inner monster is restrained. The key point is not that Oskar isn't tempted to murder Jonny, but that he doesn't try and offers him his sock instead. His
actions were an open-and-shut case of self-defense. With Teresa there is nothing other than the monster, at least towards the end of the novel.
gattoparde59 wrote:lombano wrote:Teresa shows not the slightest hint of kindness to anybody, ever. She is perhaps by nature cruel, at the very least unkind. She may not have violent fantasies, at least not very explicitly, but she is by nature far more violent. Also, Oskar seems to want to be accepted, in any terms as long as the acceptance is genuine. Teresa only wants to be accepted in terms that suit her pride - perhaps she would like Johannes to court her, to get attention from the boys, even though she doesn't want any of them. She seems to want admiration, or at least attention, from her peers whom she doesn't even
like.
To be charitable to Teresa, I find her problem to be an inability to make a connection to other people and find acceptance as well. I did have sympathy for Teresa when she was forced to attend the "fancy dress" party. In addition to my own wealth of experience with situations like that, I have had to rescue what are now two shell-shocked children from grade school "dances," much like Teresa's father in the novel.
I'm familiar with that sort of situation, extremely so. Yet I've never murdered anyone, and I've known other outsiders who have also never murdered anyone.
Theres seems to suffer from a more acute version of the same problem.
Yet she is kinder than Teresa - in a very twisted way, part of the motivation for the killings is trying to help the Wolves, beginning with Teresa. And she protects Jerry.
I need to go back and review Teresa's "case history" and try to get a better picture of the character. I have read that Teresa was actually based on real case histories of mentally ill children. Someone may be able to tease a diagnosis out of the novel.
That's pretty interesting - are there any links where we could read about that?
drakkar wrote:...Teresa crying together with her father when she realises he hasn't yet got a bracelet from her. Then she offers him all the bracelets she got. Question is why didn't Teresa offer her father any bracelets earlier? Was it because she didn't want to, or was it didn't occur to her because her father just wasn't present for her?
...
Perhaps, but she willingly turned her back on her father.
Yesterday I watched
I, Pierre Rivière, and in some respects the protagonist was a bit like a male version of Teresa. He brutally murders his mother, sister and brother. While the entire story leading up to the murders (based on a true story) is told through his confession, police interviews and the trial itself, at least a few facts are established unambiguously - Pierre's innate cruelty, manifesting itself since childhood against animals (he makes Teresa look like an animal lover) and to a lesser degree against children (though until he murders his little brother, he had limited himself to terrorising children but not physically harming them), the lack of any meaningful social or family bonds (with the possible exception of his father, though in that respect some of the testimonies and his confession are contradictory), etc.