That unnamed vampire woman... (Spoilers)

[metoo]

What is it to be human? It's said that you can never truly see yourself until you see your reflection in others' eyes. Since we're an innately gregarious species, anything that distances us from others diminishes us, and anything that illuminates our reflections in others' eyes elevates us; without others, we are nothing, and if we have people, we have true power.

This much would be true regardless of apparent age, human or Eliform vampire. Kids are just as useless to themselves as adults are when they're cut off from human company.

Yes. I suspect that Eli stayed with his helpers not only because he actually needed help, but for company. This seems to be the case with Håkan, at least.

The "cynical, 'destroyed'" woman may well have been around for several centuries longer than Eli, but before we start talking about the destructiveness of Eliform vampirism, let's not forget that we have no idea what this woman was like before she was turned. Who knows, maybe she'd taken too many lessons from Medicis, Macchiavellis, de Bathories and de Sades before she'd been turned. The infection isn't necessarily completely responsible for her apparent condition.

I agree. The infection isn't necessarily solely responsible for her apparent condition.

Apart from having to deal with whatever emotional or psychological consequences as might accrue from a solitary existence as serial murder{,ess}, the one thing that breaks my head is living with the sheer ennui, the unending unvarying sameness of it all. ...

Yes. The absolute boredom would take its toll on anybody.
Novel Eli had his puzzles, but I wonder if he wasn't also an avid reader? He could read, after all, and reading offer an escape from whatever drab existence one might find oneself in. Wouldn't Eli read whatever he could get his hands on? Over and over again, until he knew it by heart?

... Maybe this is why Eli is so fascinated puzzles (and why she's so disconcertingly smart in some ways): applying her mind to intellectual exercise pushes ennui out into the night, and maybe the vampire woman had no such escape, whereas Eli appears to have remained faithfully Elias in many important respects.

Perhaps.

As for the Hollow Man, well, can't really speak for other countries, but Americans have had a few very famous, perfectly physically human people who apparently have (or have had) absolutely zero conscience, moral compass or empathy. People, in other words, utterly lacking a soul. One seriously doubts, for example, that Manson would have learned anything from his decades of "rehabilitation".

I believe this is a universal trait. You'll find these people everywhere.

[sauvin]

As for the Hollow Man, well, can't really speak for other countries, but Americans have had a few very famous, perfectly physically human people who apparently have (or have had) absolutely zero conscience, moral compass or empathy. People, in other words, utterly lacking a soul. One seriously doubts, for example, that Manson would have learned anything from his decades of "rehabilitation".

I believe this is a universal trait. You'll find these people everywhere.

Thing about that guy, he's charming and he's charismatic as all get-out, and cleverer than any fox, but when he gets in that mindset, he's got cold eyes. Dead eyes. Doll's eyes. You don't want to be the one he's looking at when his eyes roll over dead like that.

[Wolfchild]

But this is from Eli's point of view. Eli, not being interested in her euthanasia suggestion and, frankly, frightened off by it, understandably does not write her name onto his BFF sheet.

I think it rather is from the narrator's point of view. It is JAL telling us two things about the infection:

• Infected people are very scarce: In 200 years Eli had met just a single other infected.
• Infected people are likely to be wicked: All infected people Eli had ever met were "cynical and ruined".

We may also ask about the purpose of this scene - why did JAL put it into his novel?
Well, he had made the infection quite infectious. If you are bitten, you will get it. And every infected will need to feed about once a week, so this infection would spread incredibly fast if not hindered.
So JAL needed to invent some hindrance, and that's the purpose of the vampire lady. She is there to present JAL's explanation why the infection doesn't spread.
And since she apparently had not committed suicide herself, but survived and thrived, she needed to be a rather unpleasant person.

I just recently realized that the hollow woman serves another, much more specific purpose in driving the plot forward. To refresh your (and my) memory, this is the passage where the hollow woman is introduced:

Only once after he had been infected did Eli meet another infected person. A grown woman. Just as cynical and hollow as the man with the wig. But Eli received an answer to another question that had been nagging him.

"Are there many of us?"

The woman shook her head and had said with theatrical sadness:

"No. We are so few. So few."

"Why?"

"Why? Because most of us kill ourselves, that's why. You must understand that. Such a heavy burden, oh my." Her hands fluttered; she said in a shrill voice: "Ooooh, I cannot bear to have dead people on my conscience."

"Can we die?"

"Of course we can. All you have to do is set fire to yourself. Or let other people do it; they are only too happy to oblige, have done so through the ages. Or ..." She held out her index finger and pressed it hard into Eli's chest, above the heart. "There. That's where it is, isn't it? But now my friend, I have a wonderful idea ..."

And Eli had fled from that wonderful idea. As before. As later.

Eli put his hand on his heart, felt the slow beats. Maybe it was because he was a child. Maybe that was why he hadn't put an end to it. The pangs of conscience were weaker than his will to live.

I noticed recently that the hollow woman is mentioned once more in the novel. Later, Eli buys some blood from Tommy in the basement. After a while, Eli returns to see if Tommy is okay:

Tommy was gone; that meant he was alive. He had left on his own, gone home to sleep, and even if he put two and two together he didn't know where Eli lived, so ...

Everything is as it should be. Everything is ... great.

There was a wooden broom with a long handle leaned up against the wall.

Eli picked it up, broke it over his knee, almost as far down as the head of the broom. The surface of the break was rough, sharp. A thin stake, about an arm's length. He put the point against his chest, between two ribs. Exactly the place that the woman had put her finger.

He took a deep breath, squeezed the shaft, and tried on the thought.

In! In!

Breathed out, loosened his grip. Squeezed again. Pressed.

For two minutes he stood with the point one centimeter from his heart, the shaft held firmly in his hand, when the handle of the cellar door was slammed down and the door glided open.

He removed the wooden stake from his chest, listened. Heard slow, tentative steps in the corridor like from a child who had just learned to walk. A very large child who had just learned to walk.

So Eli was able to get himself some blood with minimal risk, without killing anybody, and the person walked away. Everything was great. So what does Eli do next? He contemplates suicide, and even goes so far as to arrange things so that he is only one act of will away from death. How do we know that is what he is doing in this passage? We know because there is a reference back to Eli's recollection of the hollow woman. Eli places the stake against the fatal spot on his chest that the hollow woman pointed out. Even though for Eli at that moment things are great, JAL is making us see that Eli never escapes what the hollow woman derisively called, "Such a heavy burden, oh my." I think it is a brilliant bit of writing. JAL just relates what Eli was doing in that moment, but by describing the spot on his chest where the point rests with a reference back to the hollow woman, he also tells us what Eli's intentions are and why.

As a reader you can sense that things are spinning dizzily toward a climactic confrontation between Eli and the "very large child who had just learned to walk." Just before zombie Håkan makes his appearance, JAL inserts this little scene to let us know how Eli views his existence, even when things seem to be going well for him. JAL wants to be sure that we understand that however powerful Eli's monstrous aspects might make him, he is still a victim. Eli is worthy of our sympathy. It was easy for me to miss the relevance of Eli's actions until now, given the scene that immediately followed. From suicide ideation to rape by a zombie... apparently for Eli, things will never really be great. JAL pulled no punches in getting that concept across.

The vignette with the hollow woman was a very elegant plot device. It was just in the past few weeks when I was rereading this thread that I realized how elegant.

[dongregg]

The cunning of the innocent. How his will to live asserts itself immediately after this as Håkan attacks him.

[cmfireflies]

Eli was able to get himself some blood with minimal risk, without killing anybody, and the person walked away. Everything was great. So what does Eli do next? He contemplates suicide, and even goes so far as to arrange things so that he is only one act of will away from death. How do we know that is what he is doing in this passage? We know because there is a reference back to Eli's recollection of the hollow woman. Eli places the stake against the fatal spot on his chest that the hollow woman pointed out. Even though for Eli at that moment things are great, JAL is making us see that Eli never escapes what the hollow woman derisively called, "Such a heavy burden, oh my." I think it is a brilliant bit of writing. JAL just relates what Eli was doing in that moment, but by describing the spot on his chest where the point rests with a reference back to the hollow woman, he also tells us what Eli's intentions are and why.

I think that the two references to the old woman serves a slightly different purpose than just highlighting Eli's thoughts of suicide. The first time, Eli rightly thinks back to the old woman what the old woman said and remembers her (rightly), as "theatrical" and empty. This is because, as rare surviving vampires, Eli and the old woman both know that the "heavy burden" is a very dark joke. The old woman is "theatrical" precisely because she chooses her words as so to pretend to care about the lives she's taken, i.e., implying that there is a heavy moral burden of choosing to survive by killing others. The joke is that in actuality, the "heavy burden" is solely selfish, the woman means the heavy burden on the vampire because they must keep getting away with murder just to stay alive and the "wonderful idea" is to end it all because life just isn't worth the hassle anymore.

What's brillant about this is that Eli understands the joke the first time, but really gets it the second time. Eli is smart enough to know the old woman's words are insincere the first time he recalls them. But by the time he checks up on Tommy, he understands that there really is a moral burden to killing. Thinking about Tommy alive, going home, going to sleep, almost drives Eli to suicide because at that moment he truly glimpsed the magnitude of the lives he's taken. How many thousands of people did not make it home because of Eli?

I think it's a great way to demonstrate that Eli is really only mentally twelve and that he's survived so long by simply not thinking about the implications of his actions.

[metoo]

About the word "great".

Note that Eli hesitates before using the word.

The Swedish original uses the word "toppen", which in this context I would also translate into "great". No problem with that. However "toppen" is slang, and quite new (in this use) - the earliest reference in the Dictionary Over the Swedish Language is from 1962: https://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=toppen&pz=1

Thus, the word might be one that Eli had only recently learnt from Oskar. Perhaps he had to search for it, or perhaps he felt a bit awkward using it, it didn't feel natural to him, so he hesitated.

But rather obviously everything was not great. Eli was about to leave the first "ordinary" friend he had had for 200 years, so he had little reason to feel great. The pause thus also signals that the word wasn't applicable to how Eli felt.

Which he shows rather explicitly by his next actions.

[Wolfchild]

About the word "great".

Note that Eli hesitates before using the word.

The Swedish original uses the word "toppen", which in this context I would also translate into "great". No problem with that. However "toppen" is slang, and quite new (in this use) - the earliest reference in the Dictionary Over the Swedish Language is from 1962: https://www.saob.se/artikel/?seek=toppen&pz=1

Thus, the word might be one that Eli had only recently learnt from Oskar. Perhaps he had to search for it, or perhaps he felt a bit awkward using it, it didn't feel natural to him, so he hesitated.

But rather obviously everything was not great. Eli was about to leave the first "ordinary" friend he had had for 200 years, so he had little reason to feel great. The pause thus also signals that the word wasn't applicable to how Eli felt.

Which he shows rather explicitly by his next actions.

Interesting. In English, at least in the US, the word "great" is used ironically more often than not. To use it and have it be taken without sarcasm or irony usually requires making specific effort. Given the context in the novel, it seems reasonable that it is meant to convey that Eli was using it to himself ironically. Is "toppen" used ironically very often in Svenska?

[metoo]

Is "toppen" used ironically very often in Svenska?

Neither more nor less than any other similar word, I would say...