sauvin wrote: ↑Mon May 22, 2023 7:35 pm
Jessy7217 wrote: ↑Sun May 21, 2023 12:54 pm
I'm talking about what I've read online. And going by the movie. I haven't gotten far in the book. But, it's still a fact that Eli is a castrated male.
In the novel, this is a fact. In the movie, it is not. The novel and the movie are closely related, but still separate works of fiction. For many of us, Eli is a girl; this, too, is a fact.
While we do value fact-based reasoning, the term "fact" apparently needs some review.
Having seen the film first, Eli is a girl to me too, no matter how many times I read the book. The film came later in time, after the book was published and cast in concrete. But remember; JAL was personally involved in picking the lead characters for the film. He could have easily picked a more androgenous child to play Eli; instead, he picked Lina, the very personification of a 12-year=old girl. This has been discussed on the forum in many different threads, but the bottom line is, he picked a genuine, state-of-the-art girl to play the part of Elias.
I take Eli at her word: "I'm nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing," which pretty much leaves it to us to decide for ourselves. Since S(he) was castrated before S(he) was physically either a clearly defined boy OR girl, I (and Oskar) feel fully justified in thinking of Eli as a girl, damn the 'facts' of the case.