If Eli was cured

For discussion of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Låt den rätte komma in
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ltroifanatic
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If Eli was cured

Post by ltroifanatic » Mon Feb 15, 2016 4:22 am

If Eli was somehow cured, would he..could he.. ever be fully recovered? Remembering the terrible things he had to do to survive.I don't think so..but memories are funny things..they can soften and fade with time,so hopefully he'll find,with age,that he escapes his little hell, at least for a little while? I want him so much to find peace.I'm sure Oskar would help a lot too.His love giving Eli hope and courage.Just like when he was a little vampire.(please forgive me for waxing lyrical,but this beautiful beautiful story brings out the romantic in me.) :oops: :D
Please Oskar.Be me for a little while.

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intrige
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by intrige » Mon Feb 15, 2016 6:03 am

Considering Eli not only killed people for 200 years but seemed to exchange sexual contact from grown men for blood. Eli probably has and would have post-traumatic stress for quite some time, even with Oskar at the end of it. If Eli got cured today, and I always include Oskar cause he infected himself as well. Still, 30+ years of over 220 would not soften much. Eli in fact might already have PTSD even in the events of the book. We might not be shown it.

Eli's mind sure would be interesting to a psychologist.
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by PeteMork » Mon Feb 15, 2016 3:54 pm

intrige wrote:Considering Eli not only killed people for 200 years but seemed to exchange sexual contact from grown men for blood. Eli probably has and would have post-traumatic stress for quite some time, even with Oskar at the end of it. If Eli got cured today, and I always include Oskar cause he infected himself as well. Still, 30+ years of over 220 would not soften much. Eli in fact might already have PTSD even in the events of the book. We might not be shown it.

Eli's mind sure would be interesting to a psychologist.
For the sake of argument, isn't PTSD a disease (or perhaps an injury), even if it is a mental one? And vampires can cure themselves of diseases and injuries. So a cured Eli wouldn't have PTSD.

Unless he killed someone after he was cured of his vampire parasite, like perhaps Oskar after having lived with him for another 200 years before being cured. ;) (See Sauvin's "Oskar at 40")
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain. (Roberto Bolaño)

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intrige
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by intrige » Mon Feb 15, 2016 4:34 pm

Disease? More like a disorder, a mental disorder. And there is no mention of the infection hindering connections between neurons forming. That is how mental disorders are formed.
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sauvin
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by sauvin » Mon Feb 15, 2016 5:59 pm

It's hard enough to say where she is, mentally or emotionally, after having been what she is for a couple hundred years. She has to be by turns assertive, stealthy and secretive because she's vulnerable when she sleeps. It means she has to be naturally distanced and distrustful because she can't let the truth get around, and she has to (try to) be very manipulative because the kind of help she usually needs, when she really needs it, isn't the sort most people would gladly give. Under the circumstances, it's probably a healthy thing (for her) to be able to dismiss the reality of having to kill people as being "unfortunate" because she has "an unusual illness".

I'm guessing that not all "mental illness" has any kind of physical component, causative or consequential. You don't have to be a vampire to grow up naturally distanced and distrustful if the lessons life has taught you aren't what concerned and attentive parents would have wished for, and being distanced and distrustful is not usually considered healthy. If a colonising pathogen that enhances powers of healing can reverse the various kinds of harm that simply having learned the wrong lessons can bring, then how would it know where, when or how to stop?

Assuming the cure would be achieved very rapidly, I think there'd be an initial euphoric stage to her new existence. We may not be able to appreciate the simple pleasure of wolfing down a hot, juicy meat loaf and a pile of buttery mashed potatoes in a crowded restaurant, or the profoundly calming effect of laying flat on your back on a beach of warm sand under the noontime sun wearing nothing but a smile and hearing nothing but the sounds of the sea. People who've spent years in solitary confinement could imagine and describe some of these small pleasures, and soldiers who've been to shooting wars could describe others, but I can't think of anybody who would be able to imagine them all.

However, she might only be twelve, but she's been twelve for a very long time, more than long enough to have become rather set in her ways. A single natural human lifetime might not be enough time to learn another way What's more, though, is that she would now have a new set of fears. A fear of heights, for example, because she can't just unfurl her wings if she falls, and she won't be able to heal nearly so quickly (if at all) if she hits the ground. She can't just beat people up anymore when they anger her in public pools, and she can't run away from them, because she's not inhumanly strong anymore, or inhumanly fast.

She'd be small. We're used to it because this is just how life has been since forever. For her, the least I know how to say is that she'd be in for a very long period of trying to adapt.
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by dongregg » Mon Feb 15, 2016 8:10 pm

However, she might only be twelve, but she's been twelve for a very long time, more than long enough to have become rather set in her ways. A single natural human lifetime might not be enough time to learn another way What's more, though, is that she would now have a new set of fears. A fear of heights, for example, because she can't just unfurl her wings if she falls, and she won't be able to heal nearly so quickly (if at all) if she hits the ground. She can't just beat people up anymore when they anger her in public pools, and she can't run away from them, because she's not inhumanly strong anymore, or inhumanly fast.
You paint a very clear picture.

I don't want her to be cured. An intriguing part of LTROI is a child compelled to kill to live but who yearns to keep his/her humanity. It's oil and water, but Eli continues to find a way that is suspended between the two incompatible states. Is this what attracts us to Eli? And is it because he/she is a child that allows him/her to avoid confronting the incompatibility? Might an adult either become completely evil or choose suicide?

Nothing new in my post. Just wanted to say it.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by a_contemplative_life » Tue Feb 16, 2016 3:14 am

I think he would need a ton of therapy. Maybe even some hypnosis to help him forget certain memories.
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Ash
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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by Ash » Tue Feb 16, 2016 8:53 am

Before we start about "curing" Eli, we could first consider if Eli is actually still a human that can be cured. Or is now something quite different from a human and beyond any process to return him back into one.
Personally I think that vampirism is a one way street and one becomes a different human sub-genus. Not so much an infection while remaining human but a different animal altogether. And you can't cure a monkey from being a monkey.
These technicalities aside, JAL, if it pleased him, could cure Eli with no memory of the horrors of his previous existence, like Regan in The Exorcist, or left to struggle with those memories for the rest of his life. I'd prefer the former. :D
On the topic of whether or not Eli remains a "person" that can be cured at all, this has been discussed at length before...
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3564

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Re: If Eli was cured

Post by metoo » Tue Feb 16, 2016 11:50 am

Ash wrote:Before we start about "curing" Eli, we could first consider if Eli is actually still a human that can be cured. Or is now something quite different from a human and beyond any process to return him back into one.
Eli considers himself to be human, which I think would close that particular issue. However, if he can be cured is a different subject.

Apparently, the infection induces a major reorganisation of the body of the infected, likely down to the level of the internal working of cells. Curing must include reversing those changes. A difficult task to say the least, even if we disregard the magical components.

That said, there is a more important reason why curing Eli might be impossible, and that is because it has to be that way. The novel will be different if Eli is curable, I think, and therefore it is not possible.
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: If Eli was cured

Post by PeteMork » Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:31 pm

sauvin wrote:It's hard enough to say where she is, mentally or emotionally, after having been what she is for a couple hundred years. She has to be by turns assertive, stealthy and secretive because she's vulnerable when she sleeps. It means she has to be naturally distanced and distrustful because she can't let the truth get around, and she has to (try to) be very manipulative because the kind of help she usually needs, when she really needs it, isn't the sort most people would gladly give. Under the circumstances, it's probably a healthy thing (for her) to be able to dismiss the reality of having to kill people as being "unfortunate" because she has "an unusual illness".
True enough. Any one of these characteristics could also make Eli very difficult to live with, cured or not.
sauvin wrote:I'm guessing that not all "mental illness" has any kind of physical component, causative or consequential. You don't have to be a vampire to grow up naturally distanced and distrustful if the lessons life has taught you aren't what concerned and attentive parents would have wished for, and being distanced and distrustful is not usually considered healthy. If a colonising pathogen that enhances powers of healing can reverse the various kinds of harm that simply having learned the wrong lessons can bring, then how would it know where, when or how to stop?
Of course there are always gray areas where ‘unhealthy’ morphs into ‘psychotic,’ but after looking carefully at the definition of PTSD and its treatment,
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-cond ... n-20022540
I've cherry-picked one handicap which, to me sums up why a vampire would need to 'cure' itself of the (PTSD) condition, if it could be said that our beautiful vampirette had the condition at all:

"Your symptoms cause significant distress in your life or interfere with your ability to go about your normal daily tasks."

I would think that, in order for a vampire to survive for centuries as Eli has, she has to either be indifferent to suffering and the bloody in-your-face violence of death, as Sauvin has suggested, or capable of 'fixing' whatever parts of her mind cause the PTSD. And it would have to be done in time for the next meal.
sauvin wrote:…However, she might only be twelve, but she's been twelve for a very long time, more than long enough to have become rather set in her ways. A single natural human lifetime might not be enough time to learn another way What's more, though, is that she would now have a new set of fears. A fear of heights, for example, because she can't just unfurl her wings if she falls, and she won't be able to heal nearly so quickly (if at all) if she hits the ground. She can't just beat people up anymore when they anger her in public pools, and she can't run away from them, because she's not inhumanly strong anymore, or inhumanly fast.

She'd be small. We're used to it because this is just how life has been since forever. For her, the least I know how to say is that she'd be in for a very long period of trying to adapt.
All good points, which I and many other FF writers (including Sauvin) have tried to address in our attempts to create a reasonably tolerable future for our Eli.
We never stop reading, although every book comes to an end, just as we never stop living, although death is certain. (Roberto Bolaño)

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