Eli and Hakan.

For discussion of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel Låt den rätte komma in
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ltroifanatic
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Eli and Hakan.

Post by ltroifanatic » Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:30 am

What is the nature of their relationship?..I ask because when Eli goes to see him in hospital he kisses Hakan's hands and calls him friend.He seems to have genuine horror as he tells Hakan he'd have to kill him.Is it friendship or some other form of love?..Has it been born out of loneliness or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome ?Eli must know that Hakan's usefulness has come to an end so there's no reason he would keep up a charade.Has it happened because of desperation and a twisted view of what those feelings mean because of her age?My wife says that its an unanswerable question due to the nature of love and friendship (another form of love).Maybe she's right.Has anyone got any ideas or thoughts? :think:
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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by intrige » Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:36 am

Well it is at least pretty clear that in the beginning of the book Eli doesn't really understand love. Håkan confuses it with desire, and Eli confuses it with need and relience. So at least, if not anything like stocholm syndrome, Eli simply confuses such feeling for love. And parhapt an act of tenderness in moments I must assume, Eli knew would be Håkan's last. (kissing his hand and such) Tenderness while someone is about ot or are dying is not uncommon, parhaps it was also an act of forgiveness aswell.

I also like to think that Oskar taught him what love truly was. :)
Last edited by intrige on Tue Oct 24, 2017 9:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by metoo » Mon Feb 20, 2017 7:42 am

Some people have suggested that Eli went to visit Håkan in order to eliminate a possible witness, but I find little support of that in the novel as well as the film. In my opinion, Eli didn't need to go visiting Håkan at the hospital, he did it because he wanted to, or perhaps because he felt it would be the right thing to do.

I think Eli's relation to Håkan developed during the events in the novel. Compare Eli's attitude towards Håkan at their discussion of love early in the novel, and his attitude at the hospital. Maybe Eli's relation to Oskar made it possible for him to see that Håkan, too, was a very lonely human being in great need of of love and compassion. Notwithstanding his faults.
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 and Hakan.

Post by gattoparde59 » Mon Feb 20, 2017 1:38 pm

Eli considers Håkan a friend, and to paraphrase Doc Holiday in Tombstone, Eli simply does not have a lot of friends.

I'll break open the story and tell you what is there. Then, like the others that have fallen out onto the sand, I will finish with it, and the wind will take it away.

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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Feb 20, 2017 4:05 pm

ltroifanatic wrote:What is the nature of their relationship?..I ask because when Eli goes to see him in hospital he kisses Hakan's hands and calls him friend.He seems to have genuine horror as he tells Hakan he'd have to kill him.Is it friendship or some other form of love?..Has it been born out of loneliness or some sort of Stockholm Syndrome ?Eli must know that Hakan's usefulness has come to an end so there's no reason he would keep up a charade.Has it happened because of desperation and a twisted view of what those feelings mean because of her age?My wife says that its an unanswerable question due to the nature of love and friendship (another form of love).Maybe she's right.Has anyone got any ideas or thoughts? :think:
I don't think it's a genuine form of either friendship or love, although arguably it has elements of both. It seems pretty clear from the novel that Eli chose Hakan because she intuited something about his character (a drunk pedophile sitting on a park bench by the playground!) and ergo, his usefulness. Eli took Hakan in and gave him food, clothing a shelter, and some emotional attention in exchange for his undertaking to find blood victims. It seems as though Eli fed Hakan's emotional desires up to the point of actual physical sexual relations, keeping him interested and emotionally fixated on her (him). After they lived together for a while, what was initially a mere business relationship probably gave way to genuine feelings of friendship, or at least companionship, and I think Eli was genuinely grateful for Hakan's willingness to find blood for her and try to keep her alive. I think these later feelings probably explain Eli's actions at the hospital. Hakan, for his part, knew at the hospital that he wasn't going to be of any further use to Eli and his obsessive desire to serve Eli, which he viewed as a form of devotional love, made his final act almost inevitable.
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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by Pissball » Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:39 pm

Here are my two cents on this subject and Eli overall, so I avoid open a new thread..



Eli's main avatars / archetypes to me are these:

Street child, (to Lacke, other adults and kids): he has the experiance of a street child, which is a combination of both kid and adults, mostly in a hostil adult-ruled world. Usually this means that well-intentioned adults would have desire of protection (poor child, needs a guide, an education, a family, contention, etc) to them and rejection as well (they are dangerous, a manace to them and their children) and to other kids, curiosity. Also a street child, like Eli has a different "intelligence" or "wisdom" than a wealthy kid, they also manage in other social standars. Because of their experience they are like adults but still innocents and childish.


Killer Lolita/Nymphet (to Hakan and other adult males perhaps): usually this character are associated to pathetic /pervert / problematic adult males, like Humbert Humbert in Lolita, Leon+Natalie Portman in The Professional (this is different tho) Jodie Foster and the magician in The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane, or in Taxi Driver, the perriette in Dream Story/Eyes Wide Shut, etc, in which the little girl is actually in the control of the situation, while the adult is the "victim" who's devoted to her. With the important and very clever/original exception of being an asexual /desexualizated character.

Here's a definition of a Novokov's "Nymphet" that fit perflectly with Hakan's view on Eli:
Nymphets are the product a male that projects his own image onto particular individuals and the individual engaging in the male's fantasy. While Nabokov asserted his own definition of the nymphet in his 1956 publication of Lolita as being Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic. (vampiric ? )
What differs from the hunter analogy is that nymphets are incapable of being truly caught. While a man may temporarily physically dominate over the nymphet, like when Humbert Humber takes the role of Lolita's stepfather in Lolita, he does not truly possess her. Because nymphets are a result of their male counterpart's projection, the male is incapable of ultimately sating their desire because they cannot possess that which does not exist. Thus the male becomes a victim of his own desire and ultimately destroys not only his psyche, but also his life.

Of course this deffinition could be pedophillia plain and simple, however we see Hakan rejecting other kids (altought I think is more a contex issue than moral) just like HH also is not interesting in average child/girls, however Eli (an angel?) is to Hakan what Dolores and the nymphets are to HH.


A trans-girl (this was already heavily discussed) or simply a girl (To Oskar and other boys like Tommy): I still belivie Eli was not meant to be a mirror to trans-people, but he/she is somewhat a transgender girl, or resulting as such in his "androginity".
Perhaps in his searching for a androgynous character JAL ended up writing a transgender character. The thing is Eli is presented obviously as a female, tomboy if you want, but a female counterpart to the boy-oskar, her prettiness, his dress-code and his interaction with other characters show this, there are no hints of a boy in her, except the fact, that, well.. He IS a boy.
The problem here is read Eli/LTROI with 2010's "gender identity" and PC rules (like that polemic review did) these people could find Eli as a transphobic element, in fact I read many reviews remarking this, however other people just liked the "queer" aspect of that, or simply liked the complex character Eli is with all his shades.
Last edited by Pissball on Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by a_contemplative_life » Mon Oct 23, 2017 11:55 pm

Thanks, there is a lot to think about in your post. Who is the girl you mentioned in Eyes Wide Shut?
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Re: Eli and Hakan.

Post by Pissball » Tue Oct 24, 2017 12:03 am

a_contemplative_life wrote:Thanks, there is a lot to think about in your post. Who is the girl you mentioned in Eyes Wide Shut?
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Also Eli is not sexualized "glamorous" and "angelic-innocent" like these type of characters, at all. She is more like Sadako from The Ring, or Kayako from the Grudge :lol: :twisted:

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