Claudia D. Zawa's Short Story 'Vampire Pleasure Train'

There has been a flood of folklore and popular myth on the subject of supernatural beings capable of sucking the life out of their victims. One can find a mention of these creatures throughout the centuries. From a Succubus in the Bible to the Vampires of today’s Twilight Sagas, the short story “Luella Miller” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman is no different. This story, unlike many other tails, did not just come out and say that the creature was present for sure; it more or less hinted to it possible existences. Also the hypnotic state that the victims were in brings the reader to believe that something unnatural is at hand. With a closer look through the eyes of our narrator, Lydia Anderson, we can

The book is laced with emotionally and erotically boosted encounters. A person who would enjoy reading about vampires, the urge to keep reading comes within the first few chapters; in this story early as chapter three. The novel is a new vampire paradigm that casts a steady

Stoker’s novel Dracula, presents the fear of female promiscuity, for which vampirism is a metaphor. Such fear can be related to the time in which Dracula was written, where strict Victorian gender norms and sexual mores stipulated

The story of Dracula is well documented and has stood the test of time since it’s Victorian age creation. More times than not, literature writings are a reflection of the era from which they are produced. In the case of Dracula, Vampire literature expresses the fears of a society. Which leads me to the topic I chose to review: sexuality. The Victorian Era was viewed as a period diluted in intense sexual repression and I believe that Dracula effectively exploited this as the fear of sexuality was commonplace in the society. In this paper I will examine Bram Stoker’s Dracula and highlight his use of sexuality. I will analysis the female sexuality that is prevalent throughout the book, the complexities are at work within the text, and the

Madelyn Ravy Mrs. Schmidt Pre-AP English 10, Period 3 9 February 2015 Reading Log #3 Part 1 Stephenie Meyer, The Host, page 448 “He wrapped both arms around me, as if we were embracing rather than locked in a killing struggle. Then he grabbed my waist from both sides and heaved with all his strength against my hold. His hair started to come out in my hands, but he just grunted and pulled harder. I could hear the streaming water rushing close by, right below me, it seemed. The steam billowed up in a thick cloud, and for a minute, I couldn’t see anything but Kyle’s face, twisted with rage into something beast-

Brutality, humor, religion, and violence are a few themes portrayed throughout many of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories. In many of her short stories, O’Connor exposes the dark side of human nature and implements violent and brutal elements in order to emphasize her religious viewpoints. In the short stores “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Revelation”, O’Connor explicitly depicts this violence to highlight the presence and action of holy grace that is given to a protagonist who exudes hypocritical qualities.

First came the pride, an overwhelming sense of achievement, an accomplishment due to great ambition, but slowly and enduringly surged a world of guilt and confusion, the conscience which I once thought diminished, began to grow, soon defeating the title and its rewards. Slowly the unforgotten memories from that merciless night overcame me and I succumbed to the incessant and horrific images, the bloody dagger, a lifeless corpse. I wash, I scrub, I tear at the flesh on my hands, trying desperately to cleanse myself of the blood. But the filthy witness remains, stained, never to be removed.

To the uninitiated, the writing of Flannery O'Connor can seem at once cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent. Her short stories routinely end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character's emotional devastation. Working his way through "Greenleaf," "Everything that Rises Must Converge," or "A Good Man is Hard to Find," the new reader feels an existential hollowness reminiscent of Camus' The Stranger; O'Connor's imagination appears a barren, godless plane of meaninglessness, punctuated by pockets of random, mindless cruelty.

    Perhaps no work of literature has ever been composed without being a product of its era, mainly because the human being responsible for writing it develops their worldview within a particular era.  Thus, with Bram Stoker's Dracula, though we have a vampire myth novel filled with terror, horror, and evil, the story is a thinly veiled disguise of the repressed sexual mores of the Victorian era.  If we look to critical interpretation and commentary to win support for such a thesis, we find it aplenty "For erotic Dracula certainly is.  'Quasi-pornography' one critic labels it.  Another describes it as a 'kind of incestuous, necrophilious, oral-anal-sadistic all-in-wrestling matching'.  A

“Vampire Religion” is an article written about Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” The article is one that was found very useful in reading and understanding the story. Christopher Herbert, the author, argues of the importance that religion and events of the world played on the writing of “Dracula.” There are two parts to the article, one is “Religion/Superstition” and the second part is “The Vampire in the Church.” Both parts are vital to the article.

First came the pride, an overwhelming sense of achievement, an accomplishment due to great ambition, but slowly and enduringly surged a world of guilt and confusion, the conscience which I once thought diminished, began to grow, soon defeating the title and its rewards. Slowly the unforgotten memories from that merciless night overcame me and I succumbed to the incessant and horrific images, the bloody dagger, a lifeless corpse. I wash, I scrub, I tear at the flesh on my hands, trying desperately to cleanse myself of the blood. But the filthy witness remains, stained, never to be removed.

Author Anthony Di Renzo notes the effectiveness of O’Connor’s use of thematic revelation.Rather than opposing one another, good and evil instead exist as “equally odd, equally absurd, and equally shocking” (122).The good and evil ironically converge to relay the message of grace, common throughout her works. O’Connor wanted her stories “to reach the unbelieving reader,” and the shocking aspect of the grotesque was the most effective way to reach him/her (Hawkins 28-29).

Throughout the short story, everyday events occur, but there is a magnificent dash of fantasy which happen to be the angels and their chaotic behavior. As the reader

Have you ever imaged that you have a baby whose father is Satan? People around you, even your husband, are members of a Satanic coven, and they need your baby to immolate to the Devil. And your husband, in order to achieve more success in his career, had agreed to sacrifice the baby, so would you like to exchange your infant? Otherwise, your husband never achieves his goals in his life. Indeed, it happens in a horror novel, “Rosemary’s baby,” written by Ira Levin. Its publication date is March 12, 1967, and it was the best-selling horror novel in that year. To be sure, the book is eldritch, concupiscence, and animalistic. The book centers on a young couple, Rosemary Woodhouse and Guy Woodhouse, who just moved into an apartment in New York, which has an ominous

Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan chiefly explores the themes of horror through the characteristics of the Greek god Pan. As a classic of horror, the novella is filled with religious allusion, powerful symbolism, and sexual content. Moreover, it can be interpreted as a parody of the Bible. The novella portrays Helen, a woman born to a Pan-possessed mother named