Eli’s unclassifiable gender and age state

Eli’s unclassifiable gender and age state is expressed not as a new category but as a refusal of the categories available to other people. In conversations with Oskar, Eli first asks whether affection would survive the possibility of not being a girl, then describes the self as neither child nor adult, boy nor girl. Oskar’s response, and his later attempt to understand the question through a conversation with his teacher, make Eli’s identity a measure of whether intimacy can exist without a settled social label.

Identity and First Disclosure

Eli’s first direct test of Oskar’s feelings is conditional: “If I turned out not to be a girl… would you still like me?” The question is not framed as a request for a different label. It asks whether Oskar’s affection depends on Eli being a girl. When Oskar asks what Eli means, Eli repeats the condition more plainly: “Would you still like me even if I wasn’t a girl?” Oskar answers, “Yes. A lot,” though his qualification that he guesses so leaves a little uncertainty in the reassurance. Eli follows with a further question—whether Oskar is sure—keeping the emotional stakes on the reliability of his answer.

The exchange reveals that Eli does not take the assumptions behind Oskar’s affection for granted. The possibility of not being a girl is important enough to raise before the relationship is named more explicitly. Yet the scene does not supply a history or explanation for this state; its emphasis is on what Eli can tell Oskar and what Oskar will continue to feel after hearing it.

Refusing the Available Categories

When Oskar later asks about being together, Eli says, “I’m not a girl.” Oskar immediately tries to resolve the statement by asking whether Eli is a boy. Eli rejects that alternative too. Asked what Eli is, the answer becomes a carefully repeated negation: “I’m nothing. Not a child. Not old. Not a boy. Not a girl. Nothing.” The sequence joins age and gender in one declaration. Eli does not offer an intermediate position between the labels; the sentence refuses the premise that one of them must apply.

Oskar does not turn the exchange into an argument about what Eli should be called. With The Rats in hand, he asks whether Eli will go out with him or not. Eli says that this is something Eli would like, but asks whether they can remain together as they already are. The response does not settle Eli’s identity; it shifts the immediate question toward the relationship. Oskar offers a kiss if Eli is sad, making room for closeness without requiring the conversation to end in a classification.

Oskar’s Questions and the Limits of Explanation

At school, Oskar brings a question to his teacher: “What if it’s two guys?” The teacher distinguishes friendship from romantic love, saying that two boys can love each other in either way. Oskar’s follow-up—how they do it—leads the teacher to describe a covenant, a union between two people, regardless of whether they are a boy or a girl. In this conversation, Oskar is trying to find terms for a bond that the ordinary boy-and-girl framework does not fully explain.

He then asks, “Can you be … both girl and boy at the same time? Or neither?” The question closely echoes the alternatives Eli has refused. The teacher answers that people cannot be both, or neither, and begins to mention some kinds of animals; the conversation is interrupted when a girl runs up to report Jonny’s behavior. The exchange offers no explanation of Eli’s state. Instead, it shows Oskar carrying the question beyond his private conversations and testing whether an adult framework has words for it. The interruption leaves that inquiry unresolved.

Intimacy Without a Settled Label

By the time Oskar asks his teacher about love between two boys, he and Eli have been going steady for five days. They meet every evening, while Oskar tells his mother that he is going out to see Johan. Eli has also come through Oskar’s window; on the night before the school conversation, the two stay awake telling stories that continue where the other leaves off, then fall asleep with their arms around each other. Their closeness is concrete and reciprocal even while Eli’s identity remains outside the classifications Oskar is trying to understand.

That contrast gives the state its significance in the relationship. Oskar seeks definitions, first by asking Eli directly and then by asking a teacher; Eli, meanwhile, states the limits of the available labels and proposes that the two remain together as they are. The narrative does not present affection as proof that Eli’s uncertainty has been resolved. It presents a bond that continues in the presence of that unresolved difference, with Oskar’s willingness to ask—and to stay close—forming his response.