The Mystery Of The Vampire

Since the beginning of time vampires have been categorized into different "types” and are portrayed in different ways throughout several books. This paper will focus on three vampires from the following books: Dracula by Bram Stoker, and I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Dracula is considered to be the traditional vampire, where it all started, and the vampires in Matheson’s book, follow somewhat Stoker’s concept, but is more of a modern “type” of vampires. Certain vampire elements have been presented, but others have been completely removed or altered. In addition, elements along with appearances are used to infer if the vampire is a form of “the other”. There are two types of vampires; the traditional or modern vampire which can be distinguished based on the elements present in their storyline.

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.

Fear is something we all crave, well at least the excitement factor of the fear. Take haunted houses for instance, they bring in millions of dollars a year. People clamber to get to the scariest most terrifying haunted houses each Halloween. But why? Why would someone want to be intentionally scared? Or take an amusement park. Each summer people stand in long lines, in the heat of the summer all to ride a less than 30-second roller coaster that whips them around like a rag doll. It is because humans are naturally thrill seekers in some shape or form. We love the adrenaline high we get from chasing the next big wave.

which has the upper body of a woman and the lower body of a winged

The authors do an excellent job in showing how vampires are much like the human. They adapt as the human evolves through the scientific evolution. “The vampire is as flexible and polyvalent as ever” It shows how the vampire arose from imagination yet without it, it would be difficult to remind oneself that there are other things in the world unexplainable and unknown to the human

This is the main aim of this investigation - to identify and discuss the factors which influenced the constantly changing literary and cultural depiction of vampires. What turned the symbol of threat and horror into a mysterious outsider?

The vampire is not by any means a new manifestation of the fears of a society. Their presence in human culture can be traced back for centuries in human folklore. The first Anglicized representations of the creature in literature date back to the English poetry of the early 1700s, and were then followed in the fiction genre by such works as John William Polidori’s The Vampyre, Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. For the audiences of the 18th century, vampires embodied many of the following common fears shared between the people: of illness, both mental and epidemic, of an embraced sexuality, particularly that of women’s and homosexuals’, and of foreigners. As the archetypical vampire evolved throughout the

Prisilia: The pod people’s goal and ways of obtaining it are similar to those done by Dracula. The pod people begin converting the entire town of Santa Mira. This is successfully done because Miles, the town doctor was gone from the town on a conference. This gives the aliens enough time to get the towns people turned. However, when the pod people find out that Miles and Becky are still human and refuse to cooperate, they send in their friends and previous allies in the form of Danny and Jack. If it were not for them, Miles would have never opened the door. In a similar way, Dracula uses Lucy and later on Mina to try and deflect Jonathan and his friends from successfully guarding off and eventually finishing Dracula’s master plan of taking

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 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

Gothic literature originated in the 19th century, having diverged from the larger Romantic Movement. Like the Romantics, Gothic writers embraced the sublime nature and endeavored to evoke deep emotions in their readers. However, their motives were manifested in a fascination with the exotic and eerie human nature and the effects of guilt, evil, isolation and terror on a human being. Authors employ isolated and grotesque settings, supernatural beings and events, combines horror and romance as well as highlighting overwrought emotions. The ability to captivate reader’s emotional experience through the exploration of human weakness has allowed the Gothic genre to continue into the twenty-first century, modifying to reflect current societal concerns.

As one of the most attractive and enduring figures in the Gothic literature, the vampires have moved from being a peripheral element with the genre to a place near the center and are capable of generating its own massive tradition now. In the recent literary history, they have already been adapted to play a role of a rebel against the moral, social, religious, and even sexual taboos. Put simply, the vampires are now a metaphor of human beings in the modern society and life.

The origins of the female vampire in literary fiction of Victorian period arise from male anxiety of the ‘Other’, epitomized in a form of powerful and authoritative, thus dangerous, woman threatening the patriarchal power and domination. The vampire genre provided appropriate literary platform for writing about these anxieties and sexual desires through allegories of vampirism without specifically defining its subversive ideas; delivering them as ambiguous and cryptic. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu even furthered the idea of vampire genre by presenting the first lesbian vampire, Carmilla. The vampire text became a medium for exposing the 'forbidden and unmentionable ' perceptions undermining the heteronormative discourses of Victorian society.

As summer was coming to an end, I was still a vampire and worried my friends wouldn't accept me. When vacation was over, me and my father try to have some fun before school has started. I practice my vampire tricks with my father that didn't really know he just that was playing pretend. While school was just a week away I started to overthink and started to change. My skin was greenish whitish and my fingers started getting long and pointy comparable to my fangs.

Discuss possible answers to this question with reference to at least two critical or theoretical essays and at least two tellings ' of the Dracula story._______________________________________________