Would you let Eli in?

[DMt.]

I live in daily misunderstanding of my fear...

[Wolfchild]

I was just wondering... A thought just popped in my head... If Eli was ever cured of her vampire infection...

How stable will Eli be? If Eli and Oskar was growing up together, could they maintain their relationship? Would you let your kids (or your favorite nephews and nieces) be friends with cured Eli?

Why would I not?

Absent the need to drink my child's blood, and also absent any superhuman abilities, Eli would not present a greater danger than any other random child. In fact, Eli would be likely to want to form stronger bonds of friendship than the average child her age, so in fact I could almost prefer Eli as a friend for my child.

Edit: The above is about film Eli, but I would say the same about Eli from the novel, too.

[TΛPETRVE]

When deprived of the animal ranting and raving within her, I see a very kind and gentle character in Eli. So I don't see a reason why I shouldn't have my children, given I had any, play with her.

[ykeleven]

I agree that Eli seems like a sweet, kind and strong person. I am a bit more worried about Eli not having a gender. As a perpetual 12 year old, I think she has learned to get by. Once she is cured and starts to grow up, wouldn't that be an issue? More plastic surgery? And how about the trauma of living and killing for 200 years? I'm sure that'll take some toll on her.

Will the romance between Eli and Oskar survive growing up? Is there such a thing as true love when you are 12 years old? And why do I start to sound like the announcer from "Soap"? Will the people on this forum even recognize the "Soap" reference?

I need to stop that... OK. I'm back.

I missed last few chapters of Dawson. I should catch up.

[sauvin]

I agree that Eli seems like a sweet, kind and strong person. I am a bit more worried about Eli not having a gender. As a perpetual 12 year old, I think she has learned to get by. Once she is cured and starts to grow up, wouldn't that be an issue?

I don't know that Eli was "just getting by". We don't even know if vampires of Eli's "strain" even have any kind of sexuality, at least not as a human would understand it. When a vampire adult and a human adult "really love each other", is procreation possible? If it isn't, I wouldn't have thought that whatever "evolutionary forces" that brought the vampire to its present form would have coded for something that expends energy fruitlessly unless it somehow eases the process of procuring food (the term "honey trap" comes to mind). Since I presume that transmission by biting is more than adequate a vehicle for the beast to spread itself around, I'd have thought that more traditional forms of procreation and gestation would be prohibitively expensive in terms of energy and time.

Even if adult vampires have sexuality, Eli doesn't and can't. If Eli hadn't been castrated, he'd have had all the preteen sexuality any other child would have had, but we old farts don't remember what that's like (mysterious, tentative, vague, a bit terrifying, etc.) and so would have a hard time recognising it for what it is, but Eli's turning into vampire came at a perfect state of liminality where any normal twelve year old is in the process changing from a nonsexual being into a nascent sexual being. This change can be startlingly rapid! One girl at work told me she went to bed one night a bosomless little girl and woke up literally the next morning with nearly fully developed breasts. Elina's appearance in much of the movie suggests she hadn't quite reached this point yet, even if it's clearly imminent.

The other reason, of course, is that Eli has nothing to change into a sexual being with, at least, not a sexuality I'd immediately recognise as such. Sex as we understand it is driven by hormones she can never have in her present state.

As far as how a cured Eli would contend with her genderlessness, I suspect we'd need to look at case histories of other children who've been mutilated in this manner.

She may not be a sexual being (as we understand it), but that doesn't mean she's never had to endure it. In other threads, I've speculated on how much this "enduring" might have affected her psychologically, and especially by comparison to whatever feelings she might have about being "responsible" for so much death. Still kinda going back and forth on that one.

And how about the trauma of living and killing for 200 years? I'm sure that'll take some toll on her.

Will it take some toll? She seems to observe Mae's advice to her new boyfriend (was this movie "Near Dark"?): "Don't think of it as killing. Don't think of it at all", and I could very easily see her saying something markedly similar to a freshly turned Oskar as she tutors him in the realities of his new existence. Most soldiers in shooting wars do this, I believe, and most come home to go on raising families, holding down steady jobs, and so on... even if they're prone to nightmares for some considerable time afterwards or given to dropping to the ground and crawling to cover whenever an engine backfires or somebody lights off a firecracker.

I think the answer to how well a cured Eli would handle a long history of killing might be best guessed at by looking at children who've had to participate in shooting wars and were then moved to a peacetime setting. I'm not aware of any studies done in this area and have a strong suspicion the psychological effects on them will vary markedly in at least some respects from their adult counterparts.

One thing is certain: Eli is no stranger to death, and no stranger to killing. A cured Eli is still an Eli who has this knowledge and the ability to use it without a second thought. In this respect, she'll be orders of magnitude more potentially dangerous than even the darkest of normal children. For all that she's sweet and gentle and caring and suchlike, I would imagine a cured Eli would still need to spend some considerable time learning (or being taught) the circumstances under which the use of force, especially lethal force, is considered appropriate - or, more likely, when it isn't.

[thestich]

I have been "soaped" and I like it.

Needless to say I get the reference.

But now I have the "soap" theme music running through my head.
do...do dee..do deet..deet deet deet.......

[EEA]

If Eli was cured she would need a lot of support and guidance throughout most of her life.

[lombano]

When deprived of the animal ranting and raving within her, I see a very kind and gentle character in Eli. So I don't see a reason why I shouldn't have my children, given I had any, play with her.

Exactly.

Sex as we understand it is driven by hormones she can never have in her present state.

There's no reason why a cured Eli couldn't be given hormones. Lack of hormones is one of the more trivial issues a cured Eli would face.

One thing is certain: Eli is no stranger to death, and no stranger to killing. A cured Eli is still an Eli who has this knowledge and the ability to use it without a second thought. In this respect, she'll be orders of magnitude more potentially dangerous than even the darkest of normal children. For all that she's sweet and gentle and caring and suchlike, I would imagine a cured Eli would still need to spend some considerable time learning (or being taught) the circumstances under which the use of force, especially lethal force, is considered appropriate - or, more likely, when it isn't.

A cured Eli would presumably have no superhuman abilities, nor any special need to kill. So I don't see why she would be any more dangerous than the average kid - in fact she really doesn't seem to enjoy violence, etc. A cured Eli would I think be actually much less dangerous than even the garden variety of bullies.

[sauvin]

One thing is certain: Eli is no stranger to death, and no stranger to killing. A cured Eli is still an Eli who has this knowledge and the ability to use it without a second thought. In this respect, she'll be orders of magnitude more potentially dangerous than even the darkest of normal children. For all that she's sweet and gentle and caring and suchlike, I would imagine a cured Eli would still need to spend some considerable time learning (or being taught) the circumstances under which the use of force, especially lethal force, is considered appropriate - or, more likely, when it isn't.

A cured Eli would presumably have no superhuman abilities, nor any special need to kill. So I don't see why she would be any more dangerous than the average kid - in fact she really doesn't seem to enjoy violence, etc. A cured Eli would I think be actually much less dangerous than even the garden variety of bullies.

There's nothing "superhuman" about a normal twelve year old boy (or girl, for that matter) who happens to possess advanced knowledge (for example) of where all the major blood vessels near the surface are, where accessible major nerve clusters are, and other vulnerabilities. We have many more such vulnerabilities than most of us even suspect.

A cured Eli, returned to fully human status physically, would probably not just "lose" this knowledge when the beast vanishes. The sheer speed with which she jumped on Lacke in her bathroom suggests to me that she's had a great deal of conditioning in the form of practical experience over a very long time, and while a cured Eli probably won't be jumping on any adult man's back to gore open a neck and crush his ribs, she could probably still move more than quickly enough, with sufficient force and with deadly enough focus against a grown man's vulnerabilities to make any unprepared man's life expectancy very, very short.... and did not novel Eli remind Oskar that he has a knife in case his bullies get out of hand?

My impression of Eli is that she does not love violence. She'll avoid it if she can, if she sees a safe, easy and quick way out. My fear would be that a cured Eli's ability to evaluate circumstances in terms of possible violent response would differ rather radically from a normal child's. She's just never had anybody around to constantly remind her it's not nice to kill random strangers for no good reason.

[lombano]

On the contrary, for me it is precisely this knowledge that makes Eli less dangerous. She does not resort to violence for petty reasons, only for her survival or Oskar's - these for a cured Eli translate to self-defence, which I don't see a problem with. Precisely because Eli know so well what it takes to kill someone, I would trust her not to go too far without need, not to let herself be carried away.