Hakan’s devotion and caregiving for Eli

Hakan’s devotion and caregiving for Eli take shape under a terrible practical condition: Eli needs help to stay alive, and Hakan is willing to provide it even when the work horrifies him. Their relationship is therefore neither simple service nor uncomplicated love. Hakan’s care carries bodily risk and emotional need; Eli recognizes that need, but their exchanges leave open whether Hakan is valued apart from what he can do.

Care Under Necessity

In one tense exchange, a question about whether there is another way receives Eli’s answer: “Do you think I would expose you to this if there was another way?” The reply frames Hakan’s role as something Eli would avoid imposing if an alternative existed, but it does not make the task less frightening. The scene emphasizes his nervousness, while his question registers the possibility of refusal before he proceeds. Their arrangement depends on a grim distinction: Hakan can help Eli survive, but the means of helping are themselves deeply distressing.

Afterward, Hakan says, “I won’t do it again,” and calls the experience horrible. Eli answers, “I know,” but Hakan rejects that reassurance: “You don’t know. It’s different for you, it is …” The exchange makes their dependence asymmetrical in a precise way. Eli may understand the necessity, yet Hakan insists that understanding the need is not the same as bearing its cost. His caregiving is not presented as effortless devotion; it leaves him confronting an experience he cannot simply accept as part of loving Eli.

The Question of Love

The two eventually put the emotional terms of their bond into direct questions. Hakan asks whether Eli loves him even a little. Eli asks whether Hakan would do it again if Eli said that he loved him. Hakan answers no. That answer separates the act from the promise of affection: he will not make the decision to endure the horror conditional on being rewarded with love.

Yet the exchange also exposes how uncertain Hakan is about what their care means. Eli says, “You only love me to the extent I help you stay alive,” and Hakan agrees before asking, “Isn’t that what love is?” The question gives practical dependence the shape of a definition: Eli’s survival needs Hakan’s help, while Hakan’s attachment is bound up with being needed. But Hakan immediately reveals the limit of that definition. He wishes he could believe Eli would love him even if he stopped helping. The hope is not that the need will disappear, but that affection might outlast it. Their bond thus contains both a genuine willingness to care and a painful uncertainty about whether care is the only reason either of them stays.

Jealousy and the Fear of Replacement

Hakan’s devotion does not protect him from possessiveness or jealousy. On 29 October, he sits on the floor in the narrow corridor, knees drawn up, listening to splashing from the bathroom. The narration gives his jealousy a bodily image: “a fat, chalk-white snake in his chest.” He thinks himself replaceable, and the thought has a particular source. The previous night, he heard Eli say goodbye to Oskar; their high voices and laughter carried a lightness Hakan believes he cannot offer.

The contrast is not merely between two people competing for Eli’s attention. Hakan sees himself as bringing leaden seriousness, demands, and desire, while Eli and Oskar seem to share ease. His jealousy therefore grows from the very intimacy he longs to secure: he knows the sounds of Eli’s conversations and listens closely enough to compare their emotional texture. At the same time, his sense of being replaceable shows the vulnerability beneath his caregiving. He may be indispensable to Eli’s survival in practical terms, yet fears that this will not make him irreplaceable as a person.

A Plan as Proof of Devotion

When Hakan crouches beside Eli, his palms burn and he wants to caress Eli but cannot. The moment holds tenderness and restraint together: he is physically close, yet unable to turn that closeness into the gesture he wants. Eli thanks him, then raises the danger that people who have seen the newspaper may know where Hakan lives. Hakan says he has considered it and takes Eli’s hand before leading the way to the kitchen.

There he opens the pantry and takes out an old jam jar with a twist-on glass lid, half-filled with clear liquid. He explains what he intends to do; Eli objects, saying, “You can’t.” Hakan insists that he can, and asks whether Eli now understands how much he cares. The scene makes devotion concrete without making it uncomplicated: the jar and the plan are not abstract professions of loyalty, but a response to the danger of exposure and a demonstration Hakan offers as evidence of feeling. Eli’s objection also matters. Hakan can present the plan as care, but Eli does not simply accept it as a proof that must be carried out. Between Hakan’s readiness to act and Eli’s protest, their bond remains caught between protection, dependence, and the question of what love requires.