Eli is toxic?

[sauvin]

Do unto others as they have done unto you isn't that bad of a moral code.

So, some people alienated and abused Oskar, so now thousands of people in addition to Eli's future victims need to die?

Think about the girl who works at the burger joint. Her father used to break bottles over her head, and now she's stuck with a boyfriend who likes to punch her in the kidneys. Under this "not so bad" moral code, she'd be well within her rights to make the rounds at the local bars looking for unsuspecting schmucks to use for karate practise. How about the guy who works at the corner convenience store, the one who lost two cars in high school because his former classmates thought it'd be funny to chuck lit matches into the gas tank? You'll find this "not so bad" moral code very comforting after he gets around to bashing your windshield in and remodeling the hood and grille of your car with a sledge hammer.

It's a law of human nature: what goes around, comes around. Most sensible folk don't think about trashing their neighbours if said neighbours are quiet, clean, friendly, helpful and trustworthy, and this is a partial basis of a moral code that works. The tails end of that coin: if you don't want to have to worry about people sticking a shiv in your back, don't go around messing people up.

Morality comes in a few broad-brush strokes, different "colours" if you like, but not necessarily mutually incompatible.

Very young children and most adult moral imbeciles can understand the primitives that I've just described: don't do dirt to others if you don't want dirt done to you (somewhat more accurately, don't get caught doing the dirt).

Many people operate with a laundry list of things to do and things not to do because these are the things Momma taught them without ever having understood (or cared) why they're so important. These are the folks who live by the rules because "we have rules for a reason", and these are the people who build our houses, pave our roads, collect our garbage and put our food on the grocery store shelves.

Some people operate primarily out of concern for people around them. Most probably aren't selfless to a fault, but they refrain from kicking some drooling lout upside the head with a steel-toed boot not because they're worried the lout might hit back and not because they're worried that Momma wouldn't approve. They just hate hurting people when they don't absolutely have to. These are the people who won't lie, steal, set houses on fire or kill people because they truly believe in doing no harm. I don't think this kind of moral thinking is taught so much as learned, and would have a solid basis in a capacity for empathy.

Other people operate on a similar basis but with a much larger area of concern. This last (and smallest) bunch of people identify more with their cities, their states, their countries, their species rather than just the folk they interact with every day. These are the folk who spend their energies - and sometimes their lives - going over to the other side of town to help build a church or run food drives or even flying on their own dimes to some other country to help stamp out some horrific contagious disease. They're not necessarily extraordinarily selfless, either, but they're driven to try to make the world a better place to live in.

If Eli were of the second bunch of people, the rules-followers, she'd have to try to find a way to co-exist with the fact that her very survival depends on not following the rules. She apparently did this, but it seems Virginia found (or feared) she wouldn't be able to. Some folks honestly would prefer death to trying to live outside their clearly defined structures. Maybe this is what happened to Virginia, and maybe she transcended her need for structure when she realised that her survival would potentially mean the deaths of people she loved. Maybe what set her on fire was the combined impact of these two whammies.

It's not a black and white thing. It's not like "either Eli is human, or she isn't, can't have it both ways". She's both the girl (well, boy) and the monster at the same time, all the time. In the novel, she asks Oskar to consider her as just having "an unusual illness", implying that she still considers herself mostly human. Since the human part of her can show empathy (asking Oskar what the Band-Aid on his face was about), she has the potential for considering the things I've just said. Also from the novel: the will to survive is greater than the pangs of conscience - she admits to herself it's wrong to want to keep on living.

I don't think morality means putting others lives before your own. That is more heroism, or just depression. Again Eli doesn't have a a choice not to consume lives, any more than we can refrain from food.

She does have a choice. She just doesn't want it.

[metoo]

I don't think morality means putting others lives before your own. That is more heroism, or just depression. Again Eli doesn't have a a choice not to consume lives, any more than we can refrain from food.

She does have a choice. She just doesn't want it.

Yes. One might hold the opinion that choosing death for the benefit of the general public is too much to ask of anybody. Nevertheless, Eli still has that choice.

As do we, when it comes to eating - if we want to stay alive, that is.

So, like us, Eli chooses to live. Why? His life seems utterly depressing, even without considering the need to rob people of their lives in order to sustain his own.

[intrige]

Anyone who has been in any sort of trauma in a longer period of time knows this, but I figured I'd give y'all my thoughts on morality. I have been in that sort of experience, where it felt like life or death in a way. Not complelety though, but anyway. What happens is that your brain just tunes itself to a different channel of sorts. Survival mode. It's very primal. You do anything to protect yourself because you're scared. I have felt that with food, with people in harms way, I have felt it with voilence, I have felt it with my peers too. It isn't as bad as it sounds like when I say it but I have felt it. Morality, all though still standing is not the number one priority. Following the rules and doing the right thing and helping people you don't really know or care about, all that goes out the window. Morality in many ways is I would say is higher up in Marslov's pyramid than food, shelter and safety. When you eat when you're really hungry it's like your brain isn't awake anymore and you just grab and eat eat eat. It is like that with safety, you claw your way out and do anything to protect yourself. Fight or flight. I was more of a fighter. Thinking about it feels really weird, and I don't really remember all of it because most of all of this happened when I was younger and I was on autopilot. You do what you gotta do no matter how much it hurts.

I see that in book Eli, at least. Letting himself fall prey to grown men who desires him, just to get food. He was skin and bones most of the time, scared, and didn't expect anything else at all, from anyone. He must have lived like that for a long time. Those 200+ years must have felt like a haze. Wanting not to die isn't a breach of human morality. In truth, people kill and rape and plunder and steal and torture just to get out of it alive, so too for their families. When it comes to survival for yourself and often also the people you love, you'd do anything. The survival instinct is very very strong. And Eli is mentally and physically a child. Children especially will do anything to survive. They are really adaptable, their frontal lobe in in their brain is under diveloped so they don't see the consequenses of what they do as clearly as an adult (virginia) would. Eli used anything to suvivie, his looks, his body, his charisma, the little there was. I don't blame him at all. If i was 12 I could have done the same if I was turned 200 or something years ago and had to survive. The human mind is very strong. Of course people fall through the cracks in such dire situations. Slaves being taken, people in captivity, and so on are known to try to kill themselves to end their suffering as soon as possible. While others just can't do that and has to fight to survive. People are different.

If we're gonna talk about Eli's morality we can't just talk about what he had to do in order to survive. He fed on people and killed them yes. But what about Oskar and the pool? Eli could have just got in, picked up Oskar and left. But did he? No, he killed one teenager and one child(according to the book). Wouldn't Eli's morality be mssured on such an action then? Because he didn't have to?

Survival isn't just food, sleep, shelter. Us humans are pack animals and we need what I could call love stimulans to survive. Not love as in romantic or sexual love. More like any kind of deep human interaction. Conpanionship, friendship, emotional and sosial safety and expression. We need it to keep our feet on the ground, no matter how much some of us love to be alone in the woods or whatever. Eli, a child, not fully diveloped has an emotional state that clutches him against his mother and other family members. We even do that as adults before we grow into us selves. Being alone then, or in the company of people that want something from you for themselves would not nearly be enough. It would not maintain the stimulant of bonding and would make Eli, or any person really, loose touch with empathy and understanding. Most people would also get really depressed by this. Depression in itself is a lack of stimulant. Soo..

Then he meets Oskar and even though he tried to find some sort of conpanionship with Håkan it didn't work. But with Oskar it did brilliantly. And the human child awoke in him right away it seems. Because of the safe and social stimulant. Even a little bit does wonders to a person and they open up and let their personality shine through. That light friendship, awakening and stimulant turned not only into a proper friendship but also love. Eli had read Romeo and Juliet, he must have dreamed of something similar at least once. Most people do. Finding someone like that, among low sosial stimulant, trauma, huger, lack of safety, lack of empathy and in otherwise really bad company, forever, that is not just about having someone nice and safe to play with and talk to. No the brain needs it to stay sane, it becomes survival. Happiness, communication, emotional safety, that is also survival of the mind. The better the mind the better the survival of the body. Eli killing those boys in pure anger wasn't just for payback. Oskar had now become a part of li's survival and for that you'd do anything. Even bad things. Morality is felxible, because humans are flexeble.

That's at least how I see it

[JToede]

It sounds like y'all have been reading up on psychology and Maslow hierarchy of needs. This topic could branch off into many directions like PTSD, the long term effects of stress, how far can a person go to survive and what defines a monster or a monstrosity. All from one little book about vampires. ( Too bad I'm done with my English class, we just came up with couple of ideas for a paper thesis)

[sauvin]

If we're gonna talk about Eli's morality we can't just talk about what he had to do in order to survive. He fed on people and killed them yes. But what about Oskar and the pool? Eli could have just got in, picked up Oskar and left. But did he? No, he killed one teenager and one child(according to the book). Wouldn't Eli's morality be mssured on such an action then? Because he didn't have to?

Trige, every word of your post is perfectly true, and you said it with a power that echoes through the bones.

The trouble with morality is that it isn't a quarter you can flip to come up with a "right" or a "wrong" answer so much of the time. It's a continuum, and many of the choices we make are "right" in the light of this line of reasoning but "wrong" in that light: "damned if you do, damned if you don't", "caught on the horns of a dilemma", and so on.

Another problem with the whole idea of morality to begin with is that it seems to mean so many different things to so many different people. The wikipedia page discussing it testifies to this difficulty subtly just by being something that Joe Sixpack probably can't read.

Eli's killing three boys at the pool (in the movie) is a graphic case in point. Lots of people seem to feel it was way over the top because she could have just flown in, grabbed Oskar and flown right back out leaving the boys rubbing sore heads and maybe nursing broken arms. I personally don't find her response excessive because if confronted with similar circumstances, my own boiling blood might not have left any survivors. Blood calls for blood. In a consonant but much colder light, if these boys can be moved to gang up and conspire (or even just permit) the murder of another for no good reason, then they themselves become an enemy to society, and the massacre Eli perpetrated was in practical terms a public service. This doesn't mean I think the people who condemn her massacre are wrong, it just means I can't find it in myself to agree.

We do what we have to in order to survive, and sometimes we do what we have to do because our needs and our passions leave us little choice. This, too, is a law of human nature. It's the first and foremost law of all living things.

On one end of the "moral spectrum" we have some disreputable so-and-so bashing people over the head with a hammer for the money in their pockets. Without knowing why he's doing that rather than just getting a job, it's pretty clear he's a criminal (i.e., morally transgressive) and needs to go to jail for a while. Life is full of head-bashers.

On the other end of that same spectrum are people like cops and firefighters. When their phones ring, they know very well answering them might mean not living to see the sun set. They're not slaves (not in my country, anyway), and they, too, have a choice. They can decide not to answer that phone, they can tell their bosses where to put those phones. Most of the time, they do answer, and they do go running pell-mell into burning buildings and rabid crowds. They get shot, they get beaten up, they get bones broken when buildings fall on them, they spend time in the hospital getting poked full of holes and eating horrible food, and then they scoot right back to their phones, ready to do it all over again. It's just what they do.

For what reason do you suppose they'd value the lives of people they don't even know over their own? I have to believe it's because they believe in something, and they keep doing it even after their jobs have corroded them into something barely recognisable as fully human, because they still believe in what they're doing. These guys will protect themselves, yes, and they'll protect their families and their friends, but they'll also protect their worlds, and their worlds don't end at their living room doors. Life is full of these guys, too.

Most of us are somewhere between the head-bashers and the world-savers, and most of us are never tempted (or forced) into bashing heads or called on to help save the world. We'll still jump behind the steering wheel after we've had a couple too many beers and drive ourselves home, and we'll still do the dishes for Mom even when we'd really rather be upstairs playing computer games. We're not wholly sinners, and we're not wholly saints, we're just regular people.

But we could be forced, and we could be called on. Wouldn't you steal a loaf of bread if you had no other way to feed your starving kids? Would you have unprotected intimacy with your Significant Other if you had HIV and your SO didn't?

This is essentially how I view the concept of morality: "as ye harm none, do as thou wilt". Simply put, not so simply lived: "harm" runs a gamut from hurt feelings to whole fields of graves of murdered people. "Do as thou wilt" is the recognition that we have our individual things to want or need, and we're not going to take any guff from anybody because of it; "As ye harm none" is the conviction that we have responsibilities towards other people just as we expect other people to be bound by their responsibilities towards us. What they "wilt" ain't always so good for us.

People reading about Eli's massacre in the papers might not have the whole story. Assuming the authorities could piece enough of it together to form a coherent and faithful picture of what factually happened in just those few minutes, Joe Sixpack would understand from the newspaper that one of the kids (just one) held another boy's head under the water while brandishing a knife, and the other two kids were just standing around watching it happen. Was this kid really trying to kill Oskar? "Naw", says Joe Sixpack, "them's just boys being boys, happens all the time, nobody ever dies". The authorities probably wouldn't have the time, the manpower or - truth be told - the interest to probe more deeply than that, and wouldn't understand the massacre in the context of the history of steadily worsening abuse Oskar's had to endure. Even if he knew the whold story, as we do, Joe Sixpack would still claim that nobody actually had to die, but he wouldn't be able to say it with the same simple conviction.

We do know the whole story. Well, we know bargeloads more of it than what the newspapers would have told us, and this is part of the problem we have with assessing Eli's moral stature. We see the desperate loneliness - we see Oskar suffocating long before he gets anywhere near the pool. We see the pas de deux the two kids dance, we see them learning about each other, growing closer, and choosing to be together no matter what. It's very sweet, and the movie leaves most of us wandering away with stupid sappy smiles on our faces. We see in them something we'd like to be for ourselves, something we'd like to be doing for ourselves: with somebody as a soul mate.

We want to be those kids at the end of the movie, and if loving them is wrong, then we don't want to be right.

Eli probably doesn't know that she destroyed Lacke when she ate Jocke and set (or worsened) conditions for driving a wedge between Lacke and Virginia. She watched over Tommy, presumably for Oskar's sake but possibly because she didn't really want to cause death when it wasn't needed as a matter of principle, so maybe if she'd known what could happen to Lacke, she might have skipped on over to the other side of town to have somebody else's day ruined - somebody she doesn't know, somebody who can't touch her. Somebody whose pain she doesn't have to see and feel.

We know all about Lacke's pain, though, and if my personal example is any indicator, it's just a remote blip on a radar, something to talk about when we talk about exactly this kind of thing. It be (the English language has no narrative!) not something to be bothered by or concerned with otherwise. In effect, Lacke's whole arc was just a series of events meant to lead up to the confrontation in the bathroom to force Eli to skip town. He was just a prop on a movie set.

In this way, I can see what Eli is talking about when she says that "yes, that's unfortunate" when Oskar comments on all the people who have to die for her. I should be able to identify with Lacke much better because I'm also an old man, and I shouldn't be able to identify with Oskar or Eli at all because childhood was literally in another millennium for me. I don't, and I do, and I can't be a "fair and impartial moral judge" for this reason.

Eli ate Jocke and Lacke, and tried to eat Virginia. Abby ate Larry (I think was his name) and the cop, and tried to eat Virginia. In the cases of Jocke, Larry, Virginia and Virginia, this was the beast needing to feed and not Eli or Abby committing some morally indefensible crime - at least, not directly, and not immediately. In Lacke's and the cop's cases, this was straight up self defense, and I attach precisely zero moral substance to these cases because if you invade MY bathroom with a knife or gun, you'll be sailing out the window in broken little pieces (if I catch you invading my daughter's bathroom, your demise will be considerably less comfortable).

Seriously, no single specific thing in either the novel or the movie that I can remember that Eli or Abby actually did makes me think she's morally irredeemable. When seen in a particular way, nothing either girl did is actually wrong. Her needs simply outweighed the needs of the people she destroyed.

That's the short term view, and it's in the context of the law of the jungle. Eli's (and Abby's) view isn't "short term" - she's old enough to be my maiden great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great AUNT, for crying out loud, and even if she's only twelve years old, she's had plenty of time to consider where she is and ponder if this is where she really wants to be.

And, we don't live in a jungle.

Joe Sixpack would say that she's either human, or she's not. If she isn't, we have no more responsibility towards her well-being, feelings, rights, health, safety or peace of mind than we would towards any other rabid dog. If Joe Sixpack agrees that she is human, things get stickier because we have to recognise her right to expect we'll treat her as such, but we'll also have the right to demand she'll recognise the same in and for us. Conflict! - this, precisely, is what she can't do.

It's been said that one of hallmarks of human intelligence is the ability to entertain paradox without being destroyed by it. I'm guessing I'm not very intelligent.

"Yes", she says, "that's unfortunate". She also implicitly admits to herself that her continued survival is fundamentally wrong, that she can't have anything (because you should be dead). She keeps on doing it, and she keeps on running away when things start looking a little hot. This almost necessarily assigns to her the moral status of "small child or adult moral imbecile" in that the constraints placed on her existence don't allow her the luxury of thinking in larger moral terms than just "don't get caught".

[SpartanAltego]

It sounds like y'all have been reading up on psychology and Maslow hierarchy of needs. This topic could branch off into many directions like PTSD, the long term effects of stress, how far can a person go to survive and what defines a monster or a monstrosity. All from one little book about vampires. ( Too bad I'm done with my English class, we just came up with couple of ideas for a paper thesis)

Heh, I actually directly referenced that in LtLNE. It's a useful idiom.

There's an importance distinction to be drawn between a person as a destructive force and a person as a morally unjust entity. To quote a certain beloved series of mine - "Evil is just destructive? Storms are evil, if it's that simple. Then there's fire, and there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'acts of God.'"

Is Eli destructive? Inarguably so, he's a supernatural predator. Is he 'evil?' No, he possesses a normal range of human emotion, empathy, and the capacity for compassion. So I'd say morally he is about as clean as any of us right up until the pool massacre. Actions born of absolute necessity cannot be counted against a person, since there's no moral difference between the 'right' thing to do and the required thing to do. But is it required that Eli survive and persist in living at others' expense? I would say no - but I would also say that as individuals it is our responsibility to place whatever value we choose on our own lives. Eli wants to live, therefore he does have the right to exist. It's not a very heroic stand to take but you can not be a hero and still not be the villain.

But here's where it gets interesting, because I draw a distinction between Eli before Oskar and Eli after Oskar in moral terms. Killing the boys at the pool could frankly be seen as a righteous act, given the circumstances and context. Eli may have the power to spare the boys' lives but is certainly not obligated to do so. I'd say that is a justifiable use of lethal force. However, when it comes to acts that are just or necessary, neither element can be found in his turning of Oskar - or Oskar's complicity in that. Eli remained morally clean, pool sequence aside, because his destructive nature was forced on him and he went out of his way to ensure it wouldn't be forced on anybody else.

But he's turned Oskar. That's twice as many countless lives that will be burnt as offerings to their hunger, people whose deaths Eli just signed away not for necessity but for the luxury of happiness. Morally, is this unjust? It's certainly selfish. This is actually one element in which I see the character of Abby as being morally superior, if only slightly, to Eli - Abby's storyline indicates she does not want to turn Owen just as she did not turn Thomas, because to do so would be to unleash another beast on the world for no reason except her own personal joy.

On a conventional moral scale I would say that Eli is difficult to navigate, because he is a person whose capacity for good or evil varies based on his situation - just like any other person. For my own part, as a philosopher I don't see Eli as having done anything particularly offensive to my sensibilities apart from turning Oskar, which I see as a morally unjust deed. Even his continued survival is just, because I don't believe in advocating anyone's suicide as being for the betterment of all. That's a road I do not want to travel no matter how true it may ring.

[dongregg]

Anyone who has been in any sort of trauma in a longer period of time knows this, but I figured I'd give y'all my thoughts on morality. I have been in that sort of experience, where it felt like life or death in a way...

Trige, your post is your best ever, and one of the best I've ever read.

[cmfireflies]

That was very beautifully written intrige.

[intrige]

Thanks guys I'm glad you liked my little post

[cmfireflies]

So, some people alienated and abused Oskar, so now thousands of people in addition to Eli's future victims need to die?

Sadly, yes. I mean, that's the kind of world we live in right? I mean we can easily imagine a world where people accept Eli; in a better world Eli would show up at any hospital, and be treated like a sick kid. She'd not only be given donated blood, but her condition could be studied, possibly cured or even be turned into medicine that would end death itself. Eli would never kill anyone ever again.

But I can't believe that would happen in JAL's world, or the real world. If Eli tried that here, it's even money who gets her first, the men in black or the mob with pitchforks. And the mob wouldn't have anything to do with justice, or morality, or vengeance or even fear: that mob will be made of people who want to kill something and be called heroes for it (Edit: and it has nothing to do with Eli being human either. Mobs have happily killed humans before, they just want a sufficient excuse.) And the normal people, the regular folk, they would stand aside and let it happen. If Eli were to be at the mercy of the mob, who would risk their lives to save her, a stranger? Would anyone die protecting her? Why would they? Logically speaking, one person can't hold back a mob, and Eli's probably not human and she deserves to die anyway. Would anyone fault the bystander who just stood by and watched?

Why should Eli die to save people who hate her, who don't consider her human and if given the chance would either actively try to kill her, even if she posed no threat to them--especially if she posed no threat to them--or stand by and silently let it happen? If her life isn't worth thousands, isn't it at least worth anything?

What I mean is, it's easy to condemn Eli for killing thousands, but no one would condemn thousands for killing Eli. That's not morality or justice. That's just the populace using amoyonity to avoid moral responsibility through sheer numbers and willful apathy. If regular people don't care about the lives of others until they are personally affected, why would Eli commit suicide to save anyone of the faceless mob?

Do unto others as they would do unto you, that's closest to my moral code. There's so many ways for the world to justify Eli's death, surely Eli is entitled to justify her own life and to live and seek her own happiness like billions of others. We have no obligation to roll over for a predator and die, but Eli has the right to life as well.