As a kid, I was an avid
reader of all things fantasy, and later young adult fiction. However, I always
sort of shied away from the books dealing with supernatural beings. I wasn’t
really a fan of vampires and werewolves. However, this week’s discussion in
class really made me think of vampires, what the appeal is and how much they
changed.
In class, we made a list
of thoughts that come to mind when one thinks of vampires. All of the typical
ones appeared (garlic, crosses, wooden stake, drinking blood, bats,
immortality), but thinking deeper brought to mind a vampire’s loss of humanity,
but not their loss of civilization. I feel like this is why people are drawn to
vampires. They represent a creature who is still civilized; something that
speaks, has intelligent thoughts, and has his own culture, while at the same
time this creature follows his base instinct for blood. It is a melding of
instinct and civilization. I feel that in society, both when the vampire was
created and now, humans must ignore some urges so as to be accepted. The
vampire is someone who follows those urges, without being completely wild (unlike
the werewolf).
Another reason people
are drawn to the vampire is because humans are both terrified and fascinated
with death. A vampire is a creature that lives forever, however, to conquer
death, he must murder others. This combines humanities desire to live after
death, as well as our fear of death all into one creature of the night.
And the truly sad thing
is that this once proud, terrifying, noble representation of humanities’ wants
is reduced to a creature that shines like diamonds in the sun. That’s right,
I’m talking about Twilight.
In all seriousness though, how did the vampire come
to this. Personally, I feel like the addition of vampires and werewolves
created an element of danger and drama that carried the entire saga. Think
about it, without Edward being a vampire, the entire love story would fall flat
and it definitely wouldn’t get 5 movies and the undying love of a ridiculous
amount of fans. Stephenie Meyers successfully uses the vampire to automatically
create danger and excitement in an other wards cliché love story.
This week, I will close with a vampire kitten.
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