Which scene in the book creeped you out the most? (Spoilers)

[lombano]

I found it powerful precisely because it involves nothing supernatural or fantastic and it feels overall realistic. To me, for horror to have any effect it must touch upon something real - eldritch abominations leave me cold, and I have little interest in fantasy as anything other than a thought experiment - a way of exploring the human condition in extreme situations. This particular scene kind of puts Eli's murders in context - though they are objectively worse than anything Hakan ever does, Eli is clearly not the most monstrous denizen of the LTROI universe.

[sauvin]

the three most horrific scenes were for me:

-the library scene - I came very close to stopping reading it altogether.

That one was just awful, i have no idea what was the point of having that there.

Not all monsters have claws or fangs. I agree 100% with what Lombano says in the post preceding mine, the best (or worst) horror, if you will, is firmly rooted in reality, and the unfortunate reality is that monsters like Hakan do exist.

So... which is more truly the monster? Hakan, or Eli?

[a_contemplative_life]

Or the pimp at the library.

[bore]

Or the pimp at the library.

Is only a monster until his story is told.

[rgh]

Or the pimp at the library.

Is only a monster until his story is told.

I suppose that's true. He is only 15 himself and was likely just the kids' handler for the real pimp. When he was more 'marketable', he was probably sold as well. Another victim helping perpetuate the abuse.

[lombano]

So... which is more truly the monster? Hakan, or Eli?

Depends on how we define it, how we choose to interpret the question. In terms of objective harm done of course Eli is worse, though in terms of being revolting Hakan is worse - actually I don't find Eli revolting at all (which is different from saying I think her wholly innocent). Of course a_contemplative_life is right and the real pimp is more revolting than either, but he doesn't appear in the novel.

[TigerEyes]

So... which is more truly the monster? Hakan, or Eli?

Hakan. Heh, i personally don't see Eli as a monster because that would be like calling me a monster for eating cows or calling a lion a monster for eating a zebra. We may not like being eaten, but that is the way life is, we eat or get eaten. As for Hakan, people like him are truly undesirable and yet really are unfortunately real. I would rather have the vampires than pedophiles.

Ok, i can understand. I'm writing a story myself. Need i say, an inpiration from LTROI? But that can be in another thread.

[sauvin]

So... which is more truly the monster? Hakan, or Eli?

Hakan. Heh, i personally don't see Eli as a monster because that would be like calling me a monster for eating cows or calling a lion a monster for eating a zebra. We may not like being eaten, but that is the way life is, we eat or get eaten. As for Hakan, people like him are truly undesirable and yet really are unfortunately real. I would rather have the vampires than pedophiles.

Ok, i can understand. I'm writing a story myself. Need i say, an inpiration from LTROI? But that can be in another thread.

OK, we can't call a vampire a monster because it can't help needing human blood in order to live. We can't call a lion or a tigre a monster for the same reason. So, if it's true that paedophilia is hard-wired in some people, can we by this line of reasoning also call them not monsters?

Sorta depends on what you're calling a "monster", n'est-ce pas? You can't call a lion a monster anyway because it's a perfectly natural creature operating in a perfectly natural way in the environment that fostered its evolutionary path towards being precisely what it is. Ditto great white sharks, komodo dragons and other creatures we might find terrifying or repulsive.

Most real monsters, however, have nothing to do with natural creatures. Real monsters are men who've somehow been set apart in some destructive way. Real monsters include such petty engines of destruction as Theodore Bundy and as larger-than-life as the son of a border customs agent who would, along with his chicken farmer buddy, go on to perpetrate the wholesale slaughter of millions. I've heard that their contemporary, the son of a cobbler, is responsible for even worse horrors.

It's easy to point fingers and say Bundy was a murderer, therefore a monster. It's easy for me to say this, anyway, because if he'd done to anybody I cared about what he'd done to his other victims, and I found him first, there's a distinct possibility he'd have never faced a judge. The things he did are what make him what we say he is, and I, for one, am satisfied that the crimes for which he'd been fried were rightfully his to be fried for.

Some people could argue, logically and convincingly, that he wasn't mentally able to accept responsiblity for his actions, that some defect of the brain caused or drove him to these crimes. Fair enough - but the question still stands: "OK, he can't control these drives that make him kill poeple. What the [deleted] do we DO with him?" I maintain a similar attitude towards vampires, werewolves and other supernatural nasties that by very happy fortune I can expect never to meet and have to deal with: even if they can't help being what they are, doing what they do, we still have a responsibility to remove them from positions of being able to harm others.

Monsters, in other words, are men (or women, and often enough children) who breach the social contract substantially. Willing or no, witting or no, they're traitors. This is what makes us see them as monstrous.

We can argue that child molesters are monsters, and evidence exists to suggest that they, too, are driven to commit acts we see as abominations because of some messed up brain chemistry or physiology. They might be perfectly decent people in all other regards, but I wouldn't knowingly allow any child anywhere near such a man. This means that I interpret Hakan as a latent monster for the simple fact of the impulses many might claim he can't completely suppress, and an actual monster for the murders he commits in the course of his pursuit to satisfy said impulses.

I'll agree with whoever it was in another topic who made the distinction between a paedophile and a child molester: the former is an unrealised form of the latter. Maybe it's possible to be a paedophile the same way it's possible to be an alcoholic - "Hi, my name is George, and I'm a alcoholic. I've been dry for ten years." In such cases, if he's being honest, then the monster has successfully re-integrated himself into society - he's now observing the social contract. As one very sharp cookie told me once: "If you're a drunk, but you've not had anything to drink in so long, you're just a man who can't afford to drink anymore, but you've not been a drunk in a very long time now". A paedophile who can't help looking, and can't help wanting, but never gives in to the temptation to touch or to make inappropriate advances, then he's just a man with a weakness that needs to be watched, but he's not doing anything harmful to anybody, and deserves to be left alone.

Hakan is not such a man.

Would I rather have vampires than child molesters (men who actually seek to satisfy their urges)? Hard to say. Either can wreak unimaginable havoc. The latter, it seems to me, just wreaks less immediately visibly dramatic but much more far-reaching than the former, and possibly on a much larger scale. Eli's victims, after all, tend to perish on the spot, and so long as she continues in this vein, there'll be no vampire epidemic or apocalypse. A repeat victim of such monsters as Hakan, on the other hand, have the potential to inflict the resulting emotional harm done them on hundreds of others.

I wouldn't be so quick to make a statement like the one highlighted in the quoted post.

Edit: 5 Novembre 2011, replaced a "bad word" with [deleted] to comply with renewed restrictions on language.

[lombano]

Monsters, in other words, are men (or women, and often enough children) who breach the social contract substantially. Willing or no, witting or no, they're traitors. This is what makes us see them as monstrous.

Careful. In Nazi Germany it was normal to be a Nazi; for most of history genocide has been the means of resolving tribal and religious conflict. Admittedly both Hakan and Eli have broken the social contract and are monsters inherently because of what they do.
A difference between the victims of a paedophile and a vampire is that the living have some hope of recovery or improvement; the dead do not. And while Eli normally finishes off his victims, he's forever just a few mistakes away from starting an exponentially growing vampire population.

[sauvin]

Monsters, in other words, are men (or women, and often enough children) who breach the social contract substantially. Willing or no, witting or no, they're traitors. This is what makes us see them as monstrous.

Careful. In Nazi Germany it was normal to be a Nazi; for most of history genocide has been the means of resolving tribal and religious conflict. Admittedly both Hakan and Eli have broken the social contract and are monsters inherently because of what they do.

Yes, in Nazi Germany, it was normal to be a Nazi.

Or... was it?

What percentage of German population was truly Nazi? I have difficulty believing that all of Germany, from the oldest creaking geezer right down to the last little squalling baby, was a card-carrying Party member. I'm having even more trouble believing that the majority of the German people of the time even had any idea what was going on, save that their country was the aggressor in a war to build an empire.

Is this evil? I have no idea, but empire-building does seem to be something of a recurrent passion throughout the ages, and if Germany was evil for having felt this passion, my feeling is we'd have to indict most of humanity.

I think it's very easy to judge the German people of the time as a whole for the atrocities commited in their name, and I think we'd have to have been there and lived it ourselves, or lived under very similar circumstances, in order to understand where their heads were.

It may have been "normal" for a Nazi to be German, but I don't necessarily agree that it was normal for a German to be Nazi.

Even with all this talk of German Nazis, though, don't you think that the average German living and working the same kind of hand-to-mouth day-to-day life I'm living with hundreds and thousands of people in my own little corn patch wouldn't still have their own social contract to live with - their own version of street law to abide by irrespective of what their government might tell them?

A difference between the victims of a paedophile and a vampire is that the living have some hope of recovery or improvement; the dead do not. And while Eli normally finishes off his victims, he's forever just a few mistakes away from starting an exponentially growing vampire population.

He's forever away from a single such mistake - potentially. Didn't the hollow woman say so few of their kind survive because of the guilt? Didn't Virginia underscore this point?

It seems to me the damage wrought the victims of paedophilia may vary by culture and by time, and may well be a matter of context. Some of the victims I've known would quite literally rather be dead than face the possibility of continuing to live under a stepfather whose idea of "family relations" diverge sharply from what most folk consider the norm. Suicide among such people is far from unknown.