We, The Infected

After showing this movie to my mother, the first thing she said was the two 12 year olds can never fall in love.

My question to you is:

1. Can a 12 year old feel real love?
2. If so what kind of love do Oskar and Eli share?

To answer question 1 I believe 12 year old can know love in a way that adaults can never understand. A twelve year olds love is so pure andin their mind without consequence. With no real knowlege of sex and relationship, the 12 year old mind can find love in its purist form.

That being said I think the kind of love Eli and Oskar feel isnt a real romantic love but a love closer to friendship. I believe both are attracted to eachother in a middle school sense of the term. Oskar may not fully understand Eli and visa versa but love without understanding is so important.

Those are my thoughts. whats everyone think?

Bustedstuff15 wrote:After showing this movie to my mother, the first thing she said was the two 12 year olds can never fall in love.

My question to you is:

1. Can a 12 year old feel real love?
2. If so what kind of love do Oskar and Eli share?

To answer question 1 I believe 12 year old can know love in a way that adaults can never understand. A twelve year olds love is so pure andin their mind without consequence. With no real knowlege of sex and relationship, the 12 year old mind can find love in its purist form.

That being said I think the kind of love Eli and Oskar feel isnt a real romantic love but a love closer to friendship. I believe both are attracted to eachother in a middle school sense of the term. Oskar may not fully understand Eli and visa versa but love without understanding is so important.

Those are my thoughts. whats everyone think?

I agree with everything you have just said. Anybody can tell that the love that Eli and Oskar share is a very deep form of friendship, probably due to the fact that neither of them has ever had a friend like each other until they met on the jungle gym.

I belive they can love, not only hade a buddy like friendship. I remember myself having a cruch at his age, and if that had a chanse to grow, I am sure I could love. But since I would have been twelve, no sex nor much nolagde of relationships, as you said. I would make my own ideas of how it "should" be. Sure it can be pure, but who said it was false?

Bustedstuff15 wrote:After showing this movie to my mother, the first thing she said was the two 12 year olds can never fall in love.

My question to you is:

1. Can a 12 year old feel real love?
2. If so what kind of love do Oskar and Eli share?

To answer question 1 I believe 12 year old can know love in a way that adaults can never understand. A twelve year olds love is so pure andin their mind without consequence. With no real knowlege of sex and relationship, the 12 year old mind can find love in its purist form.

I agree totally, they really love each other for being who they are and they love being with each other without any raging hormones to mess things up.

I believe in such type of love. Though, I had not experienced it by myself, but when I was 12, there were boy and girl in my class, who, I think, were in love. I've seen it by my own eyes and I can't interpret it in any other way.

1. Definitely can, but needs the right circumstances ... like the movie, all the right ingredients for the perfect storm. I think the parents have a big role to play, because at that age they are still the biggest part of your life, so carries most of your love ... but if that is not there, then your love will find it's next victim and the next and the next, till it's satisfied (reads a little like a vampire story now that I have typed it)

2. Pure love ... not the spray on type you find in today's life or the lust people confuse for love.

I am quite certain that 12-year-olds can experience love. But it's love from a 12-year-old's perspective, not a 45-year-old's, or even a 20-year-old's.

I think when we search back in our memories and try to remember what love was like at that age, we tend to think of "puppy love." Usually that experience is tied to our encounter what that first person outside our family with whom we feel strongly attracted, or had a "crush" on. Those early experiences and feelings tend to stick with us for the rest of our lives and may become a kind of yardstick for what we want to experience in our adult relationships. And because we tend to remember the intense emotional feeling above everything else, it's easy to look back and say, "well that was pure love." But to my way of thinking, that is not really what we see in LTROI, nor really what love truly is, because the "puppy love" experience does not have to be grounded in a well-founded knowledge of the other person. You can have this kind of intense longing for someone who doesn't even know you exist.

I really don't see much "puppy love" between Eli and Oskar in the film. Oskar's looking at Eli on the jungle gym while she explains how to solve a puzzle, and his stroking his bedroom wall while he listens to Eli and Hakan fight, is about as close as it comes. (In the novel, there is much more of this kind of thinking expressed as regard to Oskar, but there we have the benefit of reading his inner thoughts.) It seems to me that because of the childrens' unusual circumstances (both being intensely lonely outsiders) that they move very quickly to a very deeply committed relationship that is grounded on a very clear understanding of who the other is. So, for example, I don't see anything "puppy lovish" (sorry) in the bedroom sleepover scene. Of course, that's not to say that they aren't still children, but it's not an infatuated type of love. And in this regard, they basically bypass the whole section of adult love that has to do with sexual relations. So, in a strange and ironic way, their love seems more akin to that of an elderly couple who are deeply committed to one another, but may no longer having sex.

Well, Eli is 12...more or less.
Oskar really IS 12.

So, Eli views things from her...unknowable perspective, really. It's not possible to stay in a perpetual childlike state for 200 years, so we can only theorize what it must actually be like for her.

Speaking of 'her', also /his/ degendered state that makes him a her, when we refer to Eli by pronoun.

(Lina is much to blame for that. Also Chloe in the remake).

Oskar, however, is a 12 year old boy in truth...lonely, perhaps, but anybody could find an Oskar in their local grade school if they looked. Just find out which one is the bullied kid, and you have an Oskar equivalent.

However, there's something else going on that's breaking reality. And that is Eli's telepathy, which Oskar himself gains when he's turned. Once you throw telepathy in the mix, there can be no lies, no deception. All that they are is open to the other. Even adults don't have that. Even a couple married 50 years doesn't have that.

Angelalex242 wrote: Oskar, however, is a 12 year old boy in truth...lonely, perhaps, but anybody could find an Oskar in their local grade school if they looked. Just find out which one is the bullied kid, and you have an Oskar equivalent.

However, there's something else going on that's breaking reality. And that is Eli's telepathy, which Oskar himself gains when he's turned. Once you throw telepathy in the mix, there can be no lies, no deception. All that they are is open to the other. Even adults don't have that. Even a couple married 50 years doesn't have that.

I dont completely agree with any kid who was bullied being an equivalent for Oskar. There were many other factors in Oskars loneliness that made his case different.

The telepathy theory is very cool though. I never thought of that and it changes my whole outlook on their future "relationship". Great thought.

Can two 12 years old love? Good question.
First both kids are 12 years old, but with difference life experience. Oskar is real 12 years old kid just finding about life. Eli is old 12 years more mature who is not girl and not boy.
Let start with the question Oskar asked Eli will you go steady with me. Oskar is trying to define this relationship with Eli do I mean anything to you. Do you just see as someone to hang out with or more? If I remember right going steady at twelve mean that you right to that person time and she talk you café line.
What did going steady mean to Eli? First, Eli made Oskar define what going steady meant. I found this line interesting, because it showed difference between Eli and Oskar. To Oskar is simple question, to Eli who has live with adult caretaker you must make sure you first understood the question. Once Oskar made clear the question, Eli agreed that they can go steady. What do going steady mean to Eli. First, Eli it from different century and I think Eli see this as long term commitment. Second, Eli has to fight for this relationship which you see in book , but not as much in the film. Eli does everything to keep her relationship with Oskar going from swallowing her pride, bribing, holding Oskar against his will to begging. I my opinion Eli can truly love from 12 years old.
Back to Oskar, he is 12 years old who will be 13 and on up. Kid change over time and he will ages and Eli will not. I know fan fiction have Eli changing Oskar into vampire, but no kid want to be stuck as child. We as adult romanticize our childhood and think Oskar want to be kid forever. Oskar from the book and movies cannot wait to get out of childhood even for true love. Oskar is maybe on love, because he will not be 12 forever and if Eli change Oskar one day he will hate her for making him Peter Pan.