Then you are saying that Eli's evil nature as a vampire preserved Eli's innocence as a child, frozen as a 12 year old?Wolfchild wrote:Perhaps this takes this thread off topic, but I don't really think that Eli can be characterized as a feral child. Isn't it generally agreed that Eli's development ceased at the point at which she was turned? The film doesn't really comment on this except when Eli says that she has been twelve for along time. Indeed, the film doesn't comment on her childhood or family life at all, but if you want to take it that she did having a loving family during her childhood, then all of her development would have taken place in the context of that family. There has been no development during her life as a vampire. Maybe this is the key to how she has retained her grip on her humanity and the basically good aspects of her character. By being "frozen" as who she was at the time when she was turned, she is also frozen against the evil and horror that now make up her existence.
Exactly my point. Eli needed this love that she knew previously with her hypothetical family to be able to survive her long corrosive existence as a vampire. She does display some signs of being feral. She is ignorant of proper dress and hygiene. She is ignorant of common place things and does not know her own date of birth. In the deleted exterior scene Oskar says something to the effect: "don't you know anything?" Most of all the sense that all those years as a vampire have taken their toll show up in the first meeting with Oskar, and later when Eli pleads "Be me a little" and appears suddenly very old, closing her eyes on some unvoiced misery.Indeed, the film doesn't comment on her childhood or family life at all, but if you want to take it that she did having a loving family during her childhood, then all of her development would have taken place in the context of that family.
That was one of the reasons I like the quotes from the "Little Prince."