Håkan and Eli’s Gender

[lombano]

Oskar wanted to live before meeting Eli, a crucial difference with Haakan. And Oskar preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli, which isn't the same as not wanting to live.

[PeteMork]

Oskar wanted to live before meeting Eli, a crucial difference with Haakan. And Oskar preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli, which isn't the same as not wanting to live.

I'm not sure I see the superiority of Oskar's position. As you say, he preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli. Håkan, unlike Oskar, actually did give his life for Eli; not only for sustenance, but quite probably to make sure the authorities would get nothing from him.

Are you saying then that, if someone's life has no meaning, and they are fortunate enough to meet someone who gives it meaning, their sacrifice of their own life for that person has no value?

[sauvin]

Oskar wanted to live before meeting Eli, a crucial difference with Haakan. And Oskar preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli, which isn't the same as not wanting to live.

I'm not sure I see the superiority of Oskar's position. As you say, he preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli. Håkan, unlike Oskar, actually did give his life for Eli; not only for sustenance, but quite probably to make sure the authorities would get nothing from him.

Are you saying then that, if someone's life has no meaning, and they are fortunate enough to meet someone who gives it meaning, their sacrifice of their own life for that person has no value?

What "meaning" did Eli give Hakan's life?

[cmfireflies]

What "meaning" did Eli give Hakan's life?

He helped her survive. He is her provider. And was until his death.

That's the problem with seeking meaning isn't it? Sometimes the meaning is unsatisfactory. Hakan clearly wanted to be Eli's soulmate, he had to settle with being her servant/dinner.

[EEA]

I don't think Eli gave any meaning to Hakan's life. He just wants to die, but he doesn't have the guts to end his life. And as to sacrificing himself, he doesn't, is just that he thinks he is sacrificing his life for Eli.
I don't think that either Eli or Oskar would sacrifice their lives for each other. I think it would be wrong for them if they did. It would seem as a selfish act.

[metoo]

What "meaning" did Eli give Hakan's life?

Do you really need to ask?

The issue, of course, isn't if one of us find Håkan's life with Eli meaningful or not, but if Håkan did.

Han slutade dricka och trädde i Elis tjänst.
Eli hade gett honom pengar att köpa kläder och hyra en annan lägenhet för. Han hade utfört allting utan att överväga om Eli var "ond" eller "god" eller någonting annat. Eli var vacker, och hade givit Håkan hans värdighet åter. Och i sällsynta stunder … ömhet.

He quit drinking and entered into Eli's service.
Eli had given him money for buying clothes and renting another apartment. He had done everything without contemplating if Eli was "evil" or "good" or anything else. Eli was beautiful, and had given Håkan his dignity back. And in rare moments … tenderness. My translation.

A different issue: I'm not convinced that Håkan was intent to take his life before he met Eli. The passage in the novel that might give that impression is ambiguous:

För sina magra besparingar hade han tagit tåget bort, hyrt ett rum i Växjö. Där hade han börjat jobba på att dö.

For his meagre savings he had taken the train away, rented a room in Växjö. There he had started working on to die. My translation.

It isn't perfectly clear that that Håkan was actively seeking his own death by that heavy drinking. If Håkan had wanted to end his life, he would have had many quicker and more reliable options. To me this passage looks like a paraphrase, Håkan's drinking would eventually had killed him.

I think that Håkan wanted to live, but he felt that people denied him that. I understand Håkan's desire to expose his misery as a revenge. He wanted "the humans" (Swedish: människorna) to witness, to suffer the grisly sight of a man slowly disintegrating.

[sauvin]

What "meaning" did Eli give Hakan's life?

He helped her survive. He is her provider. And was until his death.

More I'm thinking about how Hakan saw himself and his relationship with Eli, less I'm sure I know much of anything. He loved her completely and loved her not at all both at the same time, but even given the brevity of their time together, Hakan made a brief comeback to something resembling life only to move into a more profound (if less dramatic) funk. I'm still more or less convinced his real tie to Eli was what he might eventually be able to get from her.

That's the problem with seeking meaning isn't it? Sometimes the meaning is unsatisfactory. Hakan clearly wanted to be Eli's soulmate, he had to settle with being her servant/dinner.

He wasn't dinner. He was a sick pet who had to be euthanised.

What indeed is the meaning of "meaning"?

While I've just admitted I don't have a clear notion of what to make of the "meaning" of Hakan's life as Eli conferred it, but will state adamantly it has an essentially different character from that given Oskar. Hakan was clearly suicidal when Eli encountered him, whereas Oskar was desperately and cluelessly looking for a way to survive. I agree with whoever it was who'd said that Oskar's will to live left him when Eli had apparently abandoned him (this is a movie POV, not supported by the novel).

The value of the sacrifice in this context depends on the value the sacrificer attaches to what's being sacrificed. If it had been Eli's life being sacrificed instead of his own, it could be argued that Hakan had indeed sacrificed a great deal, losing something that meant much more to him than his own life. If Oskar had lost his life in the swimming pool, he'd have sacrificed nothing because it seems Oskar didn't want to live without Eli (again, movie POV). As it stands, Hakan's death was actually rather empty.

[a_contemplative_life]

A few more musings...

Hakan isn't much different from most people in that he wants unconditional love. He is rejected by society and loses hope of finding that sort of love because of something inside of him that he cannot get rid of. (In this regard, I think there's no small measure of symbolism in his willingness to disfigure his face.) Thus he is suicidally depressed before Eli takes him in because he thought himself unloveable. In Eli, he saw a hope that he could find unconditional love. In his inner life, he consistently views himself as loving Eli unconditionally. The reality is, though, that Eli hasn't taken that step--Hakan knows that Eli does not love him, let alone in the deep way that Hakan craves. But Hakan probably feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has nowhere else to go. So he remains, and attempts to bargain or coerce Eli into something that would at least approach a facsimile of genuine love. Like many of us, probably, he accepts something less than unconditional love because he feels as though his options are limited, and because he has an unrealistic hope that someday, things with Eli might improve.

[gattoparde59]

Håkan's sacrifices for Eli reminds me of the trope where the unrequited lover takes a bullet for the Hero/Heroine, like like Éponine in Les Misérables.

[lombano]

Oskar wanted to live before meeting Eli, a crucial difference with Haakan. And Oskar preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli, which isn't the same as not wanting to live.

I'm not sure I see the superiority of Oskar's position. As you say, he preferred to die rather than to live maimed and without Eli. Håkan, unlike Oskar, actually did give his life for Eli; not only for sustenance, but quite probably to make sure the authorities would get nothing from him.

Are you saying then that, if someone's life has no meaning, and they are fortunate enough to meet someone who gives it meaning, their sacrifice of their own life for that person has no value?

I don't think Eli gave Haakan's life meaning, but merely an aim, an objective. With Eli, Oskar could believe in himself, etc, and was in love; with Eli, Haakan merely had a reason not to kill himself, and could delude himself into thinking he was in love.

Hakan was clearly suicidal when Eli encountered him, whereas Oskar was desperately and cluelessly looking for a way to survive.

Exactly.

It isn't perfectly clear that that Håkan was actively seeking his own death by that heavy drinking. If Håkan had wanted to end his life, he would have had many quicker and more reliable options.

There was no particular hurry, and as Evelia says, he probably lacked the guts to end it in a quicker way.