Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

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intrige
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by intrige » Fri Dec 11, 2015 7:22 am

I honestly think Eli would be honest with Oskar about Håkan and others before him. But probably bit by bit.
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by dongregg » Fri Dec 11, 2015 7:35 am

intrige wrote:I honestly think Eli would be honest with Oskar about Håkan and others before him. But porbably bit by bit.
I agree. Bit by bit as she gets to know Oskar enough feel comfortable with show and tell. Bear in mind, in my take on the film in "When I Am with You," she shows her insecurity a lot -- her smell, drinking blood off the floor, being naked and freezing cold in his bed ("Is that gross?"), and a bunch of other missteps that really scare her that he might reject her. Oh, and just replace "her" with "him," if you like. It comes to the same thing in that insecurity isn't gender specific.
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by metoo » Fri Dec 11, 2015 1:38 pm

dongregg wrote:Lack of trust is about right. I'm inclined to believe that love carries equal amounts of hope and insecurity. There is also the fear of betrayal, that the beloved is saying one thing to you but something else to a rival.
I do think that the level of trust and understanding Eli has for Oskar is such that it pre-empts any jealousy. Alas, some of the evidence for this are found only in the novel.
Last edited by metoo on Fri Dec 11, 2015 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
But from the beginning Eli was just Eli. Nothing. Anything. And he is still a mystery to me. John Ajvide Lindqvist

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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by intrige » Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:09 pm

If Oskar befriends someone his "age" I think Eli will too. I get the feeling they would do everything together, inclouding befriending anyone. If they'll do that in the first place. They probably won't. Eli didn't befirend any child in over 200 years, and would probably think Oskar was more than enough to sociolize with. Oskar had no friends in a long time and left everything to be with Eli (following LTODD) he also let himself get turned for real. Doing so he must have intended to spend all of his time with Eli, and not befriending girls his age. And again, if he ever did, Eli would too, standing by his side.

I also think Eli would not seek out adults anymore. The whole point of it was for someone to feed him while he was weak after a long sleep. If Oskar and Eli do not sleep at the same time(over at few months each year, I think) then they would be able to hunt and tend for each other. IF they sleep and awake together their combined strength might just be enough to feed on certan adults. No more grown-ups that's for sure.

Eli for sure would tell Oskar about his caretakers, as I mentioned earlier, bit by bit. Maybe not in graphick detail. Oskar being innocent, and would probably be as innocent about sex as long as he doesn't experience anything like hit himself, would probably not ask to get the most graphic details. I alos imagine the topic to upset Eli a great deal. So maybe it won't be brought up very often. Eli would for sure shield him from any toxic adults, and probably all adults. Maybe not women and children.

I also got that wibe from Eli to be quite cold. In the book ofc, and not to Oskar. But about the killing he says it's a pity. Like, not a tradegy, not the worst thing ever? Not the worst cure imaginable? No, just a pity. Quiet, manipulative, quick. Silent in speach and movement. Eli seemed to be gentle and protective and wise. Socially awkward and maybe even a bit shy. With the cancer woman he seemed fn nothing else, head on, quietly violent, and even a bit respectful. I know that sounds strange, but when the woman asks for something, Eli listens and asks what the woman wants. Something like: Please, please. And Eli asking: Yes? What do you want?
Maybe a last wish, last words kind of thing, something to respect. Eli was never overly violent, well, apart from the pool killings. But we all know why.

He also is not very easely offended. Oskar constantly tells him he smells, are gross, and should change, tells him he is weird, and strange. Or stupid, because he doesn't understand simple social norms. I always got the impression he took it as a shrug and a: yeah, I am. But it didn't seem to get to him, apart from this one time Oskar really made a point about Eli taking clothes from the carbadge and that it was REALLY gross. And Eli then asked if he should change, to which Oskar said yes, and so he did. I always found that to be kinda strange. But understanable.

Oh yeah and he is kind of suicidal. Probably not all the time, but he does ask himself why he can't have anything and presses the end of a brookstick up against beneath his heart as he does so(The beginning of the rib cage, somewhere under the middle?). Where the infection is located. After knowing he had to leave Oskar, maybe getting a taste of happiness then having to leave it? Was oskar an emotional awakening of sorts? Not to sympathy for his victims or anything, like some fan-fictions here on the form implies. maybe just to Oskar, as in, caring for another person at all. Maybe hard letting go of after wandering around for 200 years not caring about anyone, oneself inclouded? He did start to wash properly after a while, because oskar said he smelled.

Man, I am still so very infected!! 8-)
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by EEA » Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:54 pm

I don't know if Eli would tell Oskar about what she knows, probably will protect Oskar if she can from such things. Sometimes there are things that are just too hurtful to talk about with anyone, no matter if the two are very closed. I have written about Eli and Oskar been jealous in two stories I think, but the results are bad.

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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by banjoist123 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 12:41 pm

ltroifanatic wrote:One of the great things about this beautiful story is about the purity of love that Eli and Oskar have for each other.Unincumbered by sex or gender.One of my favourite quotes is when Oskar dismisses his doubts and thinks "yes.A boy.My friend".Eli on the other hand is 220 years old and seems to know more about sex than Oskar.Although Eli's confused about love (adult love) when she talks to Hakan but still tells him he can touch but "not that" and also seems to know the mechanics of it when they (Oscar and Eli) laugh about the man in the kiosk and his lady friends.I'm hoping that as Eli is 12 he knows about it but thinks (as 12 year olds think) that its sorta of yucky and a bit disgusting.Your thoughts?..I hope I'm right.I don't want their beautiful relationship marred by sex.Thats why (for me) the little story of Oskar being infected in LTODD is so satisfying.They both stay the same caring loyal lovers forever.
This is something I've thought about quite a bit. As Elias was "made" at the age of 12, it is possible that he had not yet gone through puberty, which would greatly affect his sexual identity. Also, once "made", does a vampire stop maturing physically entirely, all the while continuing to mature emotionally and intellectually? These would all play in greatly in Elias's sexual identity, and ultimately reveal itself in a relationship with Oskar, who is very much a male, but who we are also not sure of his level of sexual development. 12 year olds can be worldy and mature or childlike and immature. I plan on rereading the book when I get it back from my daughter and son who are passing it around, to see if'what I may have missed. I read it in 2 sittings and probably missed a lot.
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by a_contemplative_life » Wed Mar 23, 2016 3:14 am

banjoist123 wrote:
ltroifanatic wrote:One of the great things about this beautiful story is about the purity of love that Eli and Oskar have for each other.Unincumbered by sex or gender.One of my favourite quotes is when Oskar dismisses his doubts and thinks "yes.A boy.My friend".Eli on the other hand is 220 years old and seems to know more about sex than Oskar.Although Eli's confused about love (adult love) when she talks to Hakan but still tells him he can touch but "not that" and also seems to know the mechanics of it when they (Oscar and Eli) laugh about the man in the kiosk and his lady friends.I'm hoping that as Eli is 12 he knows about it but thinks (as 12 year olds think) that its sorta of yucky and a bit disgusting.Your thoughts?..I hope I'm right.I don't want their beautiful relationship marred by sex.Thats why (for me) the little story of Oskar being infected in LTODD is so satisfying.They both stay the same caring loyal lovers forever.
This is something I've thought about quite a bit. As Elias was "made" at the age of 12, it is possible that he had not yet gone through puberty, which would greatly affect his sexual identity. Also, once "made", does a vampire stop maturing physically entirely, all the while continuing to mature emotionally and intellectually? These would all play in greatly in Elias's sexual identity, and ultimately reveal itself in a relationship with Oskar, who is very much a male, but who we are also not sure of his level of sexual development. 12 year olds can be worldy and mature or childlike and immature. I plan on rereading the book when I get it back from my daughter and son who are passing it around, to see if'what I may have missed. I read it in 2 sittings and probably missed a lot.
IIRC, novel Eli seems to know a fair amount. This comes out with the revelation of his thoughts upon encountering Zombie Hakan in the basement:
And Eli laughed with relief.
All this. To be able to jack off.
He could stand there, rooted to the spot until. . . until. . .
Can he even get it off? He's going to have to stand there . . . forever.
Eli imagined one of those obscene dolls that you wound up with a key; a monk whose cape went up and he started masturbating as long as the mechanism allowed.
clickety-click, clickety-click. . .
Eli laughed, was so occupied with the crazy image that he didn't notice when Håkan stepped into the room . . . .
Image

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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by sauvin » Wed Mar 23, 2016 8:51 am

She says "This is the only thing I still think is strange", commenting that she still seems to think like a kid. The vampirism might have arrested physical growth, and thus presumably the gross physical changes that would otherwise accrue to the brain of a person still furiously growing up, but doesn't seem to have impaired her ability to store memory. Since the process of maturing physically is governed by timed and measured releases of various hormones, I'd hasard the guess that various processes of change at the neurochemical level are similarly arrested in Eli's brain. This has more than just sexual implication: various forms of broadened and expanded cognition and powers of reasoning are correlated highly with age.

I'd hasard the guess that Eli's intellectual landscape would be intriguing, to say the very least. An unimpaired memory implies (to me) an unimpaired ability to learn, and therefore an unimpaired (but not necessarily unencumbered) ability to solve problems. Imagine, if you can, what it's like to have a mind that's stuck with seeing things with the eyes of a preteen but within the framework of practically limitless relevant prior experience! Such a mind wouldn't really be that of a true child, but could never match, mimic or even follow the processes of reasoning that might be applied by an ordinary adult of "merely" thirty or forty years seeing precisely the same thing(s) she's seeing. She'd have a very powerful mind, I'd think, but it wouldn't be a really "human" mind, because no ordinary person's mind could ever be anything like this.

Sexual matters are something of a case in point. At his age, Oskar doesn't really have much hope of understanding human passion. He might liken it to the pleasure one feels when eating a hot, steaming pizza after having gone without eating anything for a couple of days (mm mm snarf om nom nom MmF!), but such a likening is essentially empirical: he can understand the pleasure a pizza can bring because he's had to've known what it is to miss a meal or three, and could really only attach that pleasure to human passion because (mm mm snarf om nom nom MmF!) of the sounds people make when consumed by it. Eli's understanding, I think, would be similar, just so much MORE so because - especially with the kind of hearing she has - she's bound to have heard a few thousand couples too many being consumed by adult passion.

However, what Eli probably understands - empirically, and probably through a distorted lens, but with the force of vast relevant prior experience - and Oskar won't for a small few years is the kind of cohesion human passion lends to an adult human relationship. The LtODD proposition obviates any need Eli might feel to apply such knowledge, but alternative interpretations that don't include Oskar's turning almost necessarily demand that some kind of consideration in this area be taken sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later.

Some of the fan fiction written around an unturned Oskar clinging to Eli across the years and decades speculate very, very darkly in this area.
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by banjoist123 » Wed Mar 23, 2016 6:37 pm

I hope she doesn't go all "swimming pool" on them!
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Re: Eli's worldliness (spoiler)

Post by banjoist123 » Wed Mar 30, 2016 8:52 pm

I just finished my second read through of the book and realize what an enormous role trust plays in this story. It's easy to see this one dimensionally, though Oskar's eyes - how dangerous to be in love with a vampire! But she places huge trust in him. And isn't trust the basis of love.
Every time I read it, I come away with a different view of gender. Lindqvist plays this with wonder subtlety. If you miss one paragraph, you may miss a passage in which Eli's switch is thrown over to the other side with respect to Oskar's view of her/him. It is so nuanced that it's hard to come away with any one polarized view of who/what Eli is. It seems that I read somewhere, perhaps on this site, that Swedish has a neutral pronoun that is neither "her" nor "him" that would allow for this ambiguity. Can someone corroborate this for me? I know that in the translation, Lindqvuist simply switches from her to him at one point. (Sorry if I've drifted away from the thread topic.)
I want to close my eyes very tightly, concentrate, hear the sounds around me disappear, sense the night against my closed eyelids, feel snow flakes hit my cheeks, feel the cold of the jungle gym, and hear the sound of light approaching footsteps…

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