I read the blogs, too. Well, I tried to.
Ofelia, the opinions and feelings you expressed in this matter more nearly resemble my own than anybody else's in this forum I've seen to date.
I also reject the notion that either Eli or Oskar are openly or willingly sexual in the time frames presented in the novel, except where any possible "sexuality" shown by either child would be commensurate with the kinds of "sexuality" one could expect of "normal" kids of the same age. It'd be a bit early to say that Oskar is or isn't potentially homosexual or bisexual when he himself obviously has never considered any such possibility seriously before looking to a teacher for information and guidance.
I have an impression that Eli's sexuality is artificial (I literally do mean "contrived" here). A couple of the scenes in the novel where Eli has to plead and barter with Hakan to go hunting are what make me think this - left to her own devices and without need for someone to procure for her, I doubt this kind of thing would normally occur to her.
My own thinking into their sexual relationship goes a bit further downstream from the novel's setting, as an unturned Oskar continues to mature.
Even with recent re-reading and an imminent reading again, I don't recall that Hakan had any particular feelings towards girls. As I understand it, truly homosexual men respond to the idea of sexual contact with women with reactions ranging from mild distaste or discomfort to outright antipathy. Hakan's passing up a girl in favour (as I recall) of a larger and apparently healthier boy may have been more a practical matter (stronger, healthier blood and in greater quantity) or had a chivalrous element (women and children must be guarded and preserved) rather than sexual. There may even have been a recognition that murdering a young girl would garner more police attention that murdering a young boy. He
does very definitely react to boys and very young men sexually, but it's not clear that he can't and doesn't occasionally experience similar reaction towards girls or very young women.
Hakan's sexuality isn't completely unamiguous. We just have a strong impression that Hakan is a homosexual pedophile.
Ofelia is also correct in pointing out that sexual elements in the novel are mentioned, briefly and matter-of-fact, and in the movies are hinted at rather than actually mentioned. A great many other things are also mentioned in the novel without expansion; I get the impression a great deal of JAL's compact and often terse writing style includes simply noting that such elements are present and leaving it to us to connect the dots to form our own pictures. Any sexuality contained in the novel simply forms part of a larger mosaic and is not a central theme by itself unless we can engineer a retrofit blood symbolism into it.
I am myself neither gay, bisexual nor homophobic; I'm sometimes not even aware of who's gay and who isn't, but I often
will pick up on homosexual subtext. Where I sometimes wind up glossing over blogs like the ones that are the topic of this discussion is where people sometimes seem to have a penchant for making Eli and/or Oskar poster children for this kind of sexuality or that. The support for such positions is just too thin in the source material.
ofelia wrote:Hold on a minute everyone, I think we're being a little unfair.
(snip!)
I don't think Eli and Oskar can be classified as gay because it's just way more complicated than that, and that it's less about sex or sexual attraction than friendship, love and protection. But it's still valid to bring up the presence of sexuality because it's definitely there and Oskar does have some brief concerns over the concepts of gender and romantic partnering that he's seen in adults.
It's about another thing, too: acceptance.
