Vampires And Zombies : Monsters

After decades of cheesy horror movies, the image of vampires has been misconstrued as sparkly, angsty teenage boys or handsome men that lure in girls for the fresh blood of a virgin. Many of these stereotypical vampires are influenced by the story of Dracula, held in the Victorian era. Yet, many of the stories published about vampires diverge from the message that Bram Stoker is trying to make. During the Victorian period, sexuality is repressed by society, as sexual behaviors from women are viewed as unacceptable. In the Gothic horror novel Dracula, Bram Stoker uses the traumatic experience of Jonathan Harker at Count Dracula’s castle and the invasion of vampires in Great Britain to create a social commentary on the sexual repression occurring in this era and its detrimental effect on the men.

The book “Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality” by Paul Barber discusses the scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends we here all the time. Barber focuses on pre-literate cultures and how their lack of knowledge helped spark the vampire folklore. From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker whose ghost terrorizes everyone in the city of Breslau, to the testimony of a doctor who “conducted a exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires,” Barbers book is a fascinating read. One of the main point of this book is to remind us how far we have come in our ability to explain the world around us and how this has released us from terrors.

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

When people combine their fears and imaginations, they end up with some fascinating, yet horrifying, creatures. Killers of the night, such as vampires, or the extinction of the human race, usually due to a zombie outbreak. Vampires and zombies are both fictional beings who have made their way into society through years of storytelling, novels, and media. However, what sets them apart from each other? While they are both products of our eerie imagination, which one’s existence is more believable?

Throughout time, many cultures around the world formed different monstrous images to illustrate the fears and horrors in the society, such as Godzilla represents the horror of radiation that caused by atomic bombs. The zombie, the werewolf, and the vampire are the three typical monstrous figures that represent many kinds of deadly disease that people suffered in the past. They stand for the downfall of humanity, and even today we use them as the image for an apocalypse. They embodied the fear of contagion throughout centuries because of the infection that they give upon biting their victims. In other words, the zombie, the werewolf, and the vampire are monstrous figures that represent the fear of disease because they are being used to illustrate the horror of a plague scenario.

When people think of monsters, the first thing that pops into their head is Frankenstein, zombies, creatures of the night. Monsters are scary. Monsters in society reveal peoples fears and anxieties, their preconceived notions of normality, and represent the unknown.

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.

“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.

Vampires and Zombies are common in today’s modern world through the use of the media. In this essay, I will be talking about how each of these beings say something about society, how vampires have been portrayed across time and how zombies have been portrayed. By doing this, I will use two references from TV shows.

This essay will attempt to discuss the two gothic tales ‘Carmilla’ and ‘Dracula’ in relation to cultural contexts in which they exist as being presented to the reader through the gender behaviour and sexuality that is portrayed through the texts. Vampire stories always seem to involve some aspect of sexuality and power.

Orlomoski, Caitlyn, "From Monsters to Victims: Vampires and Their Cultural Evolution from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century" (2011). Honors Scholar Theses. Paper 208.

Together, zombies and vampires seems to occupy opposite extremes of the spectrum. Zombies demonstrate the greatest fears of humans, death, whereas vampires reflects human’s greatest desire, to love and to be loved. However, combined they find a happy medium, mankind’s view of an afterlife. To be reanimated as either a vampire or a zombie, one has to die. The thought of the dead coming back to life is unfamiliar territory for humans, and this unknown is a fear in itself.

Vampires have aroused a perennial fascination within humanity since their fictional materialization into history. However, it is over the course of the last century that these creatures have become an iconic symbol of mystifying horror and inexplicable desire. Recently, the vampire has undergone a significant reconstruction of physical appearance, behaviour, and surroundings, along with, extensive modifications to its super-natural disadvantages. These distinct character adaptations are imperative when considering two of the most notable vampires ever fashioned: Count Dracula and Edward Cullen. The dissimilarity between Bram Stoker’s 19th century, Count Dracula, and Stephenie Meyer’s 21st century, Edward Cullen, is a complex reflection of the contrasting societies from which these vampires emerged.

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 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