An Argument: Do Vampires Exist?

The myth of the vampire existed in a multitude of civilizations and cultures under various names such is strigoi (for the Romanian territory), Apotamkin, etc. But no matter the name, vampires will always refer to gothic creatures that drain the blood of humans, thus being monstrous.

They shun the light and crave the taste of blood. The mere thought of them could make a grown man tremble. But what if a vampire wasn’t just a horrific creature of the night? What if they were completely human, enabling them to hide in plain sight? Wouldn’t that make them more dangerous? Due to popular Gothic literature, vampires are commonly romanticized to be pale bloodsuckers that hide in the dark, waiting for their next meal. This version of a vampire makes them easy to spot in literature, but is also very limiting in that it only lends itself to that specific genre. However, a different version, laid out by Thomas Foster, shows how anyone, whether they be fictional or nonfictional, can be considered a vampire through analysis of

One of the oldest and well known mythological monsters throughout history are blood sucking immortals known as vampires. They transgress the boundaries that humans are always trying to establish. Vampire lore has reflected the values and social structures of the culture it has existed in, but over the past century the values have transformed. From the classic story of Stoker’s Dracula where he is presented as sinister and non-human, the vampire aspect of literature has evolved drastically to a more heroic immortal.

Butler’s vampires do not embody the fears and anxieties of the society they infiltrate; rather, Butler shifts the monstrosity from the vampiric figure to the social ills those figures face. The reader is not inspired to reject the vampire as villain but rather to demonize the systematic oppression which, in the case of Fledgling, the protagonist struggles against. The vampire then, in Butler’s work, has evolved beyond its current literary form. Science is as integral as myth in the text, and Shori, Butler’s dark-skinned, female, sanguinarian protagonist is not only a progressive creature of legend but a manufactured being blending the technology of the human body with that of the Ina. Shori cannot simply be categorized alongside many other vampires because of this distinction – she stands above and beyond, blending race and transcending concepts of creation and origin in order to forge a new identity for the vampire in literature. She truly stands as a stepping point toward the elusive cyborg – a new biological citizenship being crafted by her very existence in Butler’s universe, and what else is the cyborg but an attempt at that very determination of self?

“The word vampire (or vampyre) entered the English language in 1732, according to The Oxford English Dictionary” (Skal 200). One can’t go living life without knowing about the vampire because they’re everywhere! Someone can

Vampire have been made out to be a lot of thing over the years of history. Vampires are evil mythological beings who roam the world at night searching for people whose blood they feed upon. They may be the best-known classic monsters of all. Most people associate vampires with Count Dracula, the legendary, blood-sucking subject of Bram Stoker’s epic novel, Dracula, which was published in 1897. But the history of vampires began long before Stoker was born. (History.com Staff A+E Networks, 2017). Many people also believed that vampire’s legends came from bats “vampire bats” but the legends and myths go much deeper and older.

The first record of vampires’ undead activity was in Sebia (Butler 77). The local inhabitants’ lives were uneasy, because they were confused about their identities and what they should follow (Butler 77). In this circumstance, vampire myth appeared to express the society’s anxiety by their irregularities, such as upsetting healthy sexuality and destroying normal patterns of reproduction (Butler 78). Places like back alleys and hidden recess provide opportunities for vampires to gain their powers and their exotic influence

In the late nineteenth century vampires started to evolve into to what is the modern day vampire. Although they were still seen as “evil”, the vampires of the late twentieth century were no longer creepy creatures that would crawl out of their coffins to seduce women and feed from their blood. This was the start of a new period of

Vampire legends and myths are thousands of years old and find homes in most cultures around the world. From the chiang-shih of China to the Lamia of Greek legend, a mix of a woman and winged Serpent (Richardson, 2007). These myths, however, have little in common with modern tellings of the vampire, which are based on European myths. The European vampire myths originated in places like China, Tibet and India and was taken back to the coast of Greece and into the Balkans, which include the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania (Richardson, 2007).

What are vampires? Well there are many myths out in the whole world of vampires. Vampires are creatures that are dead yet still walk among the living; all vampires have fangs, they are afraid of the sunlight, they can shape-shift and they drink the blood of their victims. People say vampires are human corpses that return from the grave to harm living and others say they are not humans at all that vampires are supernatural, demonic creatures and not human form. What is evil? Evil is what is morally wrong, sinful, or wicked. Vampires can be categorized as evil as said in the article “What’s Evil, Anyway?” by Cole Bowman. Vampires

Throughout history, many reports of vampirism were told in Eastern Europe. Beresford (2008) Writes that the vampire folklore and superstition

The generalization for vampires has been displayed in films and literature for hundreds of years. The stereotypical versions of vampires are that they have long fangs, sleep in coffins during the day, and suck the blood out of humans. Both novels contradict those stereotypes in different ways. To understand the diversity of the vampires described in both novels, one must examine the characteristics that the vampires display and the meaning and purpose behind them. David D. Gilmore’s book “Monsters” analyzes monsters and other mythical creatures. Gilmore describes why humanity invented the idea of

Vast misconceptions regarding the existence of the vampire seem to possess myopic perceptions; for example, these creatures drink the blood of a human and resists sunlight in order

The legend of the vampire in history is boundlessly frightening to all and fascinating to people world-wide. Vampires are creatures of the night who live by feeding on the blood of human beings. Stories of vampire creatures have been told around the world from nearly the beginning of time itself. The way they look, their tendencies, purposes, and other characteristics of vampires, appear to differ based on the time period in which the vampire folklore originated or what culture it derived from. These cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and the Romans all have various folklores that explain how the vampire came to be.

The legend of the vampire has emerged countless times within human imagination over the past few centuries. The first available representation of the mythical creature in prose fiction can be found in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1810). It was not until eight decades later that Bram Stoker popularized the existence of this figure with the publication of “Dracula” in 1897. The folklore of the vampire has come a long way since and can be found in today’s popular media more frequently than ever before. However, with due course of time, the representation of the creature has taken alternate routes and today’s vampires are noticeable different – socially and physically – from their predecessors. One effective path to trace this