Is Eli more human or vampire?

[sauvin]

Some of the question "how much is Eli the vampire, and how much the human?" depends on how you view humanity. In various threads in this forum we've treated with the idea of Eli's brand of vampirism being a kind of metaphor for mental illness, addiction or other things - how much we might also view a thoroughly repulsive homeless crack addict or a outwardly sweetly innocent serial rapist-murderer might also depend on how much we buy into the alleged monster's appearance or demeanour, and how much we're willing to ignore the effects these arguably human-monster hybrids have on the innocent lives they touch or destroy.

Eli's various physical aspects in this regard are actually bit less interesting overall, no more interesting than an otherwise normal man's prosthetic leg or artificial heart might be in evaluating the degree and quality of his "humanity" even while we sometimes subconsciously think of folks who wear glasses as being somehow necessarily "smarter" than those who don't. For this reason, Eli's ability to fly, see in the dark, superhuman strength or speed or those weirdly feline eyes don't have much impact on my impression of Eli as a human child with an unfortunate illness, but her attacks on Jocke, Virginia and Lacke do. I think most of us are more inclined to judge Eli's humanity on the basis of her behaviour and what we glean of her motivations and inner conflicts.

I've myself noted more than once the strong impression that Eli's defining characteristic is dualism rather than vampirism, that the vampiric aspect is merely the particular manifestation Lindqvist chose for this particular Hyde.