Oskar hugs Eli behind the candy store

[covenant6452]

I have no idea if Lindqvist ever considered or tried to find out how an 18-century Swedish peasant child might think and talk.

I don't think anyone has any idea how the vocabulary of someone who has lived through 220 years would sound. I think it is inferred in the novel that Eli is a bit behind the times. Oskar finds some of the things Eli says to be slightly anachronistic. There is a point in the novel where Eli uses the phrase "last one there is a rotten egg!" and Oskar seems to find the phrase old and strange, however I've heard it used before when I was a child and a few times since then.
When I am writing my fanfictions I consider the words they are using and try to keep them in character with what a 12 or 13 year old might use. Then again, Eli has the "12, but 12 for a long time" factor to think of, but I figure she may have picked up modern slang through observation. Many predators lure prey by imitation like many prey animals adapt by mimicking their predators colouring and so on.
It's interesting to think of how Eli's speech patterns may have evolved and what mannerisms of 18th century speech she might retain in her speech, but I don't think she would sound like a 18th century farmboy/girl.

[drakkar]

Then again, Eli has the "12, but 12 for a long time" factor to think of, but I figure she may have picked up modern slang through observation. Many predators lure prey by imitation like many prey animals adapt by mimicking their predators colouring and so on.
It's interesting to think of how Eli's speech patterns may have evolved and what mannerisms of 18th century speech she might retain in her speech, but I don't think she would sound like a 18th century farmboy/girl.

Eli also has a radio, so she should be picking up things. Eli's problem is that she rarely talks to other children - until now - so she's always lagging behind.

Some say that your personality is formed during your childhood, but since Eli exist in a perpetual childhood this will not apply on her, or else she is being perpetual formed. Anyhow I doubt there is much left of the 18th century farmer child in Eli.

[Lacenaire]

I think there are more complex issues involved here than just Eli’s modern jargon. It seems to me that Lindqvist himself never clearly decided how much Eli should belong to her own human age and how much of her personality should have been formed since she became a vampire.

Sometimes he seems to be suggesting that her mind should essentially be as it was when she was 12. That would mean her way of thinking would have been very different from 20 century kids like Oskar.

A 12-year old peasant child of the 18-th century, particularly from Northern Europe, would have almost certainly been brought up in a religious environment, with much more traditional concepts of good and evil, with much greater attention to things like proper manners, status and so on. She certainly would have believed in God since secularism that started to spread from France in the 18-th century certainly had not yet reached the lower social strata of the countries of Northern and Central Europe.

In the book we do not, I think, find any indication that Eli is like that, although there are also no clear indications to the contrary. I am not sure that Lindqvist even thought about this. Did Eli loose her religious faith, which she surely must have possessed, during her vampire days? That would seem to contradict the entire “regeneration” process. If she had not, I would imagine as thinking of her condition not in modern terms (“disease”) but more likely in religious ones. How she would see her own vampirism? In fact, it’s a complete mystery, she refers to it as a disease at least once, but it’s not clear that that is how she actually sees it. If she was religious and believed herself innocent - she might expect that this condition will eventually be lifted, she might think of herself as being subjected to some terrible test of suffering which she must bear until she is released. Or maybe as punishment for something of which she was not aware. Or maybe she feels she has taken over by Satan. All of that would have been much more natural for an 18-century 12 year old than thinking in terms of a disease.

Did she learn so much biology to know about bacteria and viruses since her childhood? Is she supposed to learn such things? If she does, what does it tell us about her?

If she the religious faith she must have before she became a vampire, that would explain her refusal to contemplate suicide more convincingly than just saying that her instinct of preservation is stronger that her moral sense.

Or maybe the sense of the unfairness of her condition is what made her loose her faith. That would also be very realistic and interesting, but again we have no indication of any such thing.

I think these are fascinating issues but ones that Lindqvist chose not to explore and does not really make it easy to do so. Instead Eli sounds a little like a modern child brought up in a secular world, so different from her early formative years (a great deal of your personality is formed before 12) but with some hints that she might not be quite that. She says certain things but we have no clear idea if they reflect the way she really sees the world or just her adaptation to her new role in it.


Things such as manners, ways of viewing oneself in relation to others and so on, would also be reflected in Eli’s behaviour if she remained an 18-century 12 year old. Even her reaction to Oskar embracing her - one can explain it by her being shocked that any one may like her, but this would be exactly the normal reaction of almost any Japanese girl in my wife’s childhood.

The whole issue of pedophilia is also left very ambiguous. As I have written before, I once took it as a very central theme of the film and thought that the very origin of Eli’s vampirism would lie in that. I assumed that that was the reason for her being into a vampire. If that were so it would obviously affect how she saw the whole matter and her subsequent actions. But again Lindqvist seems not to provide any answers.

Overall, I find this rather typical of the book: many inspired ideas which often seem not fully thought out or are suggested but not pursued further. This of course gives readers more scope for their own speculations and “fan fiction”, but to me it looks like a lot of opportunities missed by the author.

Sauvin’s interpretation of Eli’s feelings seems to me a very plausible picture of Eli’s inner struggle as we see it in the film, but when I think of the book everything becomes much less clear not just because Eli does not eat the sweet, but also because the books seems to ask and leave unanswered many questions about Eli that I feel would have to be answered to make a convincing picture of her inner self.

Later reflection. The more I consider this issue the more dissatisfied I feel with Lindqvist's treatment of it. Between the year 1789 and the second half of the 20-th century the population of Western Europe and in particular Sweden had undergone perhaps the most profound cultural transformation in history: from a deeply religious one to a almost completely secular one (particularly in the case of Sweden). And this is not the only kind of transformation - there were many other, in social relations, manners, and all sort of other things. And Eli, seems to have also undergone something like this transformation, "sitting on the sidelines", so to speak. A transformation that took several generations, revolutions, wars etc, all happening in one socially disengaged individual. Would it not be fascinating to know at least a little of how this happened? Or perhaps it didn't?

[lombano]

If Eli is neurologically frozen at twelve, then Eli would retain the malleability of a child. Things like social norms and hierarchy could I think be dropped relatively easily in such a case, since she would no longer be part of normal humanity and these norms would not be reinforced - in fact without dropping a lot of that socialisation I don't see how Eli could have survived.
I would expect Eli to retain the accent and grammar of his early childhood but not the vocabulary. Vocabulary seems to be easily learned (children not taught not speak by a certain age can learn words, but not language) and also easily forgotten (when forgetting one's native language, vocabulary seems to be the first thing to deteriorate). I knew someone who left Mexico at the age of twelve and, after some years, had serious vocabulary problems in Spanish, but her grammar was essentially undamaged and her accent remained intact native chilango.
Eli was born in an age in which serious infectious illness was far more a part of everyday life than in Oskar's world, so her own view of her condition as an illness, rather than something explicitly supernatural, doesn't seem strange to me. There is nothing that suggests Eli knows anything about biology, she uses the words 'infection' and 'illness' but nothing else.
The issue of religion seems less clear to me, essentially because I know nothing about religion in Scandinavia. I've seen groups nominally highly religious, but in which religion is empty ritual, an empty shell more to do with custom and tradition, and social conformity, than anything else; I've also seen groups in which it's far more heartfelt. If Eli's early childhood world was more like the former, then it makes sense that she'd drop religion entirely (as portrayed in LTROI); if the latter I'd expect to see herself as cursed or 'unblessed' at least.

[sauvin]

If Eli is neurologically frozen at twelve, then Eli would retain the malleability of a child. Things like social norms and hierarchy could I think be dropped relatively easily in such a case, since she would no longer be part of normal humanity and these norms would not be reinforced - in fact without dropping a lot of that socialisation I don't see how Eli could have survived.
I would expect Eli to retain the accent and grammar of his early childhood but not the vocabulary. Vocabulary seems to be easily learned (children not taught not speak by a certain age can learn words, but not language) and also easily forgotten (when forgetting one's native language, vocabulary seems to be the first thing to deteriorate). I knew someone who left Mexico at the age of twelve and, after some years, had serious vocabulary problems in Spanish, but her grammar was essentially undamaged and her accent remained intact native chilango.
Eli was born in an age in which serious infectious illness was far more a part of everyday life than in Oskar's world, so her own view of her condition as an illness, rather than something explicitly supernatural, doesn't seem strange to me. There is nothing that suggests Eli knows anything about biology, she uses the words 'infection' and 'illness' but nothing else.
The issue of religion seems less clear to me, essentially because I know nothing about religion in Scandinavia. I've seen groups nominally highly religious, but in which religion is empty ritual, an empty shell more to do with custom and tradition, and social conformity, than anything else; I've also seen groups in which it's far more heartfelt. If Eli's early childhood world was more like the former, then it makes sense that she'd drop religion entirely (as portrayed in LTROI); if the latter I'd expect to see herself as cursed or 'unblessed' at least.

I'd never considered the malleability of the extremely young. A telling argument. Malleability is adaptability, and Eli, if nothing else, must have been adaptable enough for two centuries to survive her own internal civil war as well as the constant danger that somebody might interrupt her slumber with a torch or a stake.

Accent? Maybe. Accents disappear. My stepson's French and English are both flawless, but the Spanish he'd had to learn when he was six or so has disappeared entirely. Such Spanish as he might still contrive to speak has a very heavy French accent. People can't locate my place of birth geographically on the basis of my accent, either, because it, too, has disappeared with time. (That's too bad, too - sometimes, being a redneck is nice...)

Eli's stasis apparently didn't include intellectual stasis. I feel it'd be unlikely she'd be able to navigate a modern world with its radios and TVs and trains - and Rubik's Cubes. If this were the case, her losing Hakan wouldn't just be "sad", as I see it being for her, it'd have been nearly disastrous.

Here, though, I'm not overly concerned with being faithful to the details of Eli's phyiscal existence so much as with her inner state. Her religious views, if any, would be interesting to me only insofar as they might influence her perception of herself, the world she lives in, the nature of her existence, Oskar himself, and/or her relationship with her. In other words, the details of her stasis would interest me in this story only where they might impact the essence (and not "language", "vocabulary" or "grammar") of her largely nonverbal inner voice as the story unfurls from her point of view.

[lombano]

I was more writing my thoughts on Lacenaire's comments than criticising your writing (sorry for the hijack). Writing a character with modern vocabulary but otherwise two-centuries old language is a feat I could not pull off even if I made Eli a Mexican child. Luckily there's no need for you or anyone else to try, since the accent we can just ignore in writing and the grammar probably hasn't changed all that radically, and in any case as you point out there are more critical aspects.

[Lacenaire]

The issue of religion seems less clear to me, essentially because I know nothing about religion in Scandinavia. I've seen groups nominally highly religious, but in which religion is empty ritual, an empty shell more to do with custom and tradition, and social conformity, than anything else; I've also seen groups in which it's far more heartfelt. If Eli's early childhood world was more like the former, then it makes sense that she'd drop religion entirely (as portrayed in LTROI); if the latter I'd expect to see herself as cursed or 'unblessed' at least.

Well, my point was that an 18-century person, even one with the highest level of intellect and education, a Voltaire, would still be enormously different from any modern man. The process of transformation takes many generations and even inter-genrational conflicts. But Eli comes comes clearly from a peasant background from a poor and backward country (Sweden was one in the 18th century) not affected by what later became known as the Enlightment. Outside the salons of France 18 century Europe was deeply religious and deeply superstitious. It was certainly nothing like the superficial religion that one finds in certain parts of the world in the 20 th century. It it not so much Sweden the place, but the time - the 18th century that is the issue here.
Eli is of course pretty isolated from the society at large. She won't be listening to her radio for at least a century and a half. For well over a century her idea about herself, about what she has become, and so on must have been shaped by her childhood beliefs. And then she somehow becomes a modern child not, one that does not seem to be in any fundamental way different from Oskar - a quintessential 20 century child.
I find the the way Lindqvist presents quite unconvincing. The personality of a 12 year old Eli must have been deeply imbedded in her own times. All her knowledge, including spiritual and religious aspects must have been those of her own times. She lives in isolation, this was not a period of radio, television and even newspaper and yet she changes with the times, without any of the convulsions that society around her undergoes. All the ideological (and physical) struggles of the human world around her bypass her and yet she changes along with them.

All this seems to me quite unbelievable and it's not just again a matter of "suspension of disbelief". I suspect that the author simply does not understand the scale of the problem that he is ignoring here. Even people born and brought up in the second half of the 20th century will have difficulties adjusting to the realities of the 21st, but Eli passes through centuries seemingly untroubled. Does she have or ever had any beliefs about anything? Saying that she is just 12 is not an answer at all, When I was 12 I had many beliefs very earnestly held. Later, having to abandon some of them was a huge shock. She appears to have had none. I find this completely unbelievable and a serious weakness in the novel. (Not really the film since Eli's history and even the fact that she is supposed to be over 200 years old is actually unknown to the viewer).
As I wrote before - I think Sauvin's presentation fits well what we know of the Eli of the film, but to me the book Eli is far more enigmatic and problematic.

Of course all these problems disappear if Eli is just a product of Oskar's imagination. Eli's historical background would not matter because in Oskar's imagination Eli would be a child just like him, a little weird perhaps, due to being born 200 years earlier, but not in any fundamental ways. Since Eli is certainly a product of Lindqvist's imagination and he is a writer who, by his own admission, writes about things that he knowns by direct experience, what we get is in effect an Eli that could have come from Oskar's imagination but has been given an independent existence just for the sake of those readers who don't identify with someone who exists only in someone else's dream. But, for me, this total lack of any reflection of history in Eli's personality makes the idea of her independent existence (not as part of Oskar's imagination or something like that) pretty much impossible to accept.

[sauvin]

The issue of religion seems less clear to me, essentially because I know nothing about religion in Scandinavia. I've seen groups nominally highly religious, but in which religion is empty ritual, an empty shell more to do with custom and tradition, and social conformity, than anything else; I've also seen groups in which it's far more heartfelt. If Eli's early childhood world was more like the former, then it makes sense that she'd drop religion entirely (as portrayed in LTROI); if the latter I'd expect to see herself as cursed or 'unblessed' at least.

Well, my point was that an 18-century person, even one with the highest level of intellect and education, a Voltaire, would still be enormously different from any modern man. The process of transformation takes many generations and even inter-genrational conflicts. But Eli comes comes clearly from a peasant background from a poor and backward country (Sweden was one in the 18th century) not affected by what later became known as the Enlightment. Outside the salons of France 18 century Europe was deeply religious and deeply superstitious. It was certainly nothing like the superficial religion that one finds in certain parts of the world in the 20 th century. It it not so much Sweden the place, but the time - the 18th century that is the issue here.
Eli is of course pretty isolated from the society at large. She won't be listening to her radio for at least a century and a half. For well over a century her idea about herself, about what she has become, and so on must have been shaped by her childhood beliefs. And then she somehow becomes a modern child not, one that does not seem to be in any fundamental way different from Oskar - a quintessential 20 century child.
I find the the way Lindqvist presents quite unconvincing. The personality of a 12 year old Eli must have been deeply imbedded in her own times. All her knowledge, including spiritual and religious aspects must have been those of her own times. She lives in isolation, this was not a period of radio, television and even newspaper and yet she changes with the times, without any of the convulsions that society around her undergoes. All the ideological (and physical) struggles of the human world around her bypass her and yet she changes along with them.

All this seems to me quite unbelievable and it's not just again a matter of "suspension of disbelief". I suspect that the author simply does not understand the scale of the problem that he is ignoring here. Even people born and brought up in the second half of the 20th century will have difficulties adjusting to the realities of the 21st, but Eli passes through centuries seemingly untroubled. Does she have or ever had any beliefs about anything? Saying that she is just 12 is not an answer at all, When I was 12 I had many beliefs very earnestly held. Later, having to abandon some of them was a huge shock. She appears to have had none. I find this completely unbelievable and a serious weakness in the novel. (Not really the film since Eli's history and even the fact that she is supposed to be over 200 years old is actually unknown to the viewer).
As I wrote before - I think Sauvin's presentation fits well what we know of the Eli of the film, but to me the book Eli is far more enigmatic and problematic.

Yes, and without meaning the slightest bit of attack, I read the book only because I wanted to know more about the characters in the movie. When and where the novel and the movie seem to disagree, for me, the movie's presentation has more weight. Is this wrong? Maybe so, but it's what I'm stuck with.

The Eli I tried to describe, and am continuing to try to understand, is the one I saw in the movie.

[Lacenaire]

The issue of religion seems less clear to me, essentially because I know nothing about religion in Scandinavia. I've seen groups nominally highly religious, but in which religion is empty ritual, an empty shell more to do with custom and tradition, and social conformity, than anything else; I've also seen groups in which it's far more heartfelt. If Eli's early childhood world was more like the former, then it makes sense that she'd drop religion entirely (as portrayed in LTROI); if the latter I'd expect to see herself as cursed or 'unblessed' at least.

Well, my point was that an 18-century person, even one with the highest level of intellect and education, a Voltaire, would still be enormously different from any modern man. The process of transformation takes many generations and even inter-genrational conflicts. But Eli comes comes clearly from a peasant background from a poor and backward country (Sweden was one in the 18th century) not affected by what later became known as the Enlightment. Outside the salons of France 18 century Europe was deeply religious and deeply superstitious. It was certainly nothing like the superficial religion that one finds in certain parts of the world in the 20 th century. It it not so much Sweden the place, but the time - the 18th century that is the issue here.
Eli is of course pretty isolated from the society at large. She won't be listening to her radio for at least a century and a half. For well over a century her idea about herself, about what she has become, and so on must have been shaped by her childhood beliefs. And then she somehow becomes a modern child not, one that does not seem to be in any fundamental way different from Oskar - a quintessential 20 century child.
I find the the way Lindqvist presents quite unconvincing. The personality of a 12 year old Eli must have been deeply imbedded in her own times. All her knowledge, including spiritual and religious aspects must have been those of her own times. She lives in isolation, this was not a period of radio, television and even newspaper and yet she changes with the times, without any of the convulsions that society around her undergoes. All the ideological (and physical) struggles of the human world around her bypass her and yet she changes along with them.

All this seems to me quite unbelievable and it's not just again a matter of "suspension of disbelief". I suspect that the author simply does not understand the scale of the problem that he is ignoring here. Even people born and brought up in the second half of the 20th century will have difficulties adjusting to the realities of the 21st, but Eli passes through centuries seemingly untroubled. Does she have or ever had any beliefs about anything? Saying that she is just 12 is not an answer at all, When I was 12 I had many beliefs very earnestly held. Later, having to abandon some of them was a huge shock. She appears to have had none. I find this completely unbelievable and a serious weakness in the novel. (Not really the film since Eli's history and even the fact that she is supposed to be over 200 years old is actually unknown to the viewer).
As I wrote before - I think Sauvin's presentation fits well what we know of the Eli of the film, but to me the book Eli is far more enigmatic and problematic.

Yes, and without meaning the slightest bit of attack, I read the book only because I wanted to know more about the characters in the movie. When and where the novel and the movie seem to disagree, for me, the movie's presentation has more weight. Is this wrong? Maybe so, but it's what I'm stuck with.

The Eli I tried to describe, and am continuing to try to understand, is the one I saw in the movie.

I meant no criticism of that. I think your description of the movie character cannot be faulted, and my arguments obviously do not apply to that. I have just read or re-read the book so it is now more on my mind. Perhaps I should not have intruded this way into this thread, but it is your description of Eli's inner personality which made me that about what happened to the original 18-century child, that of course really exists only in the book.

[lombano]

Eli's situation has no parallel in human experience - normal humans do not easily shake off mores learned before the age of twelve, but then normal humans age and become neurologically 'set in their ways.' An Eli that would have say, aged normally until the age of 25 and then 'frozen' would have indeed surely never adapted to Oskar's era and would have remained a young adult from his era. But with the flexibility of a child, 200 years seems long enough to me to change just about everything - not core personality traits perhaps, but certainly beliefs and mores.
Another point is what was Eli's place originally: as a peasant child, Eli was at the bottom of the food chain - his place in society was surely essentially that of low-quality slave labour. Yet as a vampire he must survive by essentially taking an opposite role - that of a powerful, predatory outcast. His very survival depends on ditching just about everything he was taught about his place in the world - the will to survive overcoming socialisation. That, and the lack of reinforcement of such mores (anybody that 'socialised' with Eli afterwards would have to be an outcast himself) make it more credible he would retain little from his own era. It's like forgetting a language through lack of use (and one can forget even one's native language).
To me it seems that the most natural way to view her own situation would be like that of a leper - a 'monster' cast out of society, lest he infect others. Viewing her condition as a horrific, incurable, untreatable infection that makes her very existence a threat to society to me actually seems less 'modern' than viewing it as a curse.