Folklore Vampires

Folklore vampires come in two basic forms, male, and female. Each have certian charachteristics that all follow. The men often only attack grown men or women. The ways of becoming a vampire are follow a general trend. It is either caused by an imporper burial, or a trajic death, leading the soul to be trapped here. Other ideas that remian constant are the ways of killing the vampire. One of the most common ways is through holy water or staking them through the heart. These ways of killing vampires remained long after these folklore.
In folklore, the women often attack other women or children. This has to do with the idea of woman and childbirth. These woman that have become vampires dispise women who have not because they can no longer have children of their own. That is why they go around and kill them or their children.
The reason these folktales came to be was the problem with grave robbers and the lack of sanitation. These were used as a means to detur people away from grave robbing and making sure people were properly buried.

Let The Right One In

There are many themes in Let the Right One In. The most obvious one that occurs throughout the novel is the idea of connection. The idea that it’s almost impossible for anyone in this novel to truely connect with someone, especially in a positive way. There are many connections through out the novel that are seemingly successful but never truely so.
In the beginning Oskar has a connection with bullies but it’s only negative because they beat him up and tease him. When he goes home it becomes immediatly clear that he does not have a good connection with his mother. Although on the surface it appears to be good, watching movies together and things like that, Oskar hides a lot from his mother.
Haken has a connection with Eli that is of the most sinister. He is her slave who serves her thrist for blood. He servers her because she is embodied as a female child. You come to find out that Haken is a pedophile, but is unable to connect to the children because of his own concence. He is also unable to even connect to people through death, being unable to sunccesfully kill.
Eli and Oskar are the ones with the only real connection. This is portayed early in the novel when Oskar gives Eli the rubix cube and she is able to figure it out. It symbolizes that they are meant to connect to each other even if it is a strange connection. Eli is a vampire but not only that, she is a male vampire. Beyond that he has no sexual organs, taking sex out of the equation. Mean that Eli and Oskar bond on a truely personal level which is so impossible to come by.

Varney the Vampire

This is the Godfather of classic vampires. Varney is what influenced Dracula and all fanged, garlic and cross hating vampires. This interesting thing about Varney is that he is a self loathing vampire. He wants to be human again, and rid himself of these urges to feed on others. He eats and drinks with people so he will fit in but cant ever truely do so.
Many of the sub-characters are used again in Dracula. The damesel in distress “Flora” is much like Lucy in Dracula. Again the male charachters are much the same as in Dracula where they are trying to save the damsel.

The Vampyre

Well this must be the most depressing vampire story we read all year. Poor poor, Aubrey. The story begins with Aubrey meeting this distinguished gentlemen Lord Ruthven. He is one of my favotire vampire figures we have read about. He is so suave, and has great control over people without it seeming supernatural, convincing them to gamble away their money and things of the sort. After meeting Ruthven Aubrey agrees to travel with him. After traveling to Rome Ruthven seduces a girl Aubrey wanted aswell. The go their seperate ways and Aubrey travels to Greece. There he meets a girl he falls inlove with. Ruthven soon kills the woman, but Aubrey doesn’t even think that Ruthven being their is strange and goes back on travels with him. Ruthven is then killed by a gang of bandits and makes Aubrey promise he won’t tell of their travels. After Ruthven dies Aubrey returns to England. And so does Ruthven, only to marry Aubreys only sister. Aubrey eventually goes into hysteria because his sister is going to marry this vampire. Ruthven eventually has his way with Aubreys sister. Leaving him with everything lost, his love, his sister, and even his sanity.

Moral – Don’t make friends with Vampyres

Essay 3

This should be the most interesting essay to write given we can go in any direction we would like. I’m going to write about how the vampire hunter has changed over time. In early novels like Dracula for the most part was normal people trying to outsmart the vampire eventually leading the the slaying of him. Now the vampire hunter has become very specialized, like in Blade or Buffy. I think I will compare specially the vamprie slayers in Dracula and Salems Lot vs. the vampire slayers in Buffy and Blade.

Que paso Esse Dos

My second essay is about the infulence of homosexuality in vampire literature. There seems to be more than enough evidence of this in the texts to be able to write a substantial essay.
Vampire novels have always been popular for many reasons. The most obvious is the inclination that people wish to read about what goes bump in the night. As time has passed, what exactly is the “bump in the night” has changed vastly. There are numerous underlying fears that occur in vampire texts ranging from foreign invasion all the way to homophobia. Homoeroticism and its fears have influenced vampire texts from Bram Stokers Dracula all the way to modern novels such as Stephen Kings Salem’s Lot, and Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark. Each society has its own fears of gays infiltrating and destroying their culture with theirs. All three of these books have strong tones and undertones of homophobia, which means it is an issue that has remained in society since the Victorian Ages.

Dead Until Dark: And then we have sex?

This is the first even remotely romancesque (if thats even a word) novel I have ever read. It really took me off guard at first. I liked the beginning before it became flooded with sex, and every chapter ending in a sexual vampire encounter. Then I realized theres more to it than just that. This entire book is made to be hypersexualized for many reasons.
The vampire culture of this novel is very different than almost all others. The vampires have been integrated into society through synthetic blood thus relieving them from feeding on humans. With that comes inter…species relationships. These vampires although not entirly harmless seem to turn “feeding” into an extremely sexual encounter, so much so that it often takes place during intercourse.
I really like the development of Sookie and Ben. I like how their relationship grows, and goes back and fourth, good to bad. It’s so nice that Sookie finally finds someone she can be happy with. I was so surprized that she stays with Ben all the way through the book, even though it doesn’t have a picture perfect ending.
The whole idea of the vampire bar reminded me of Blade or Constantine, where while the main charachter is able to go there, they are in a great amount of danger but also has a sort of safeguard. I was able to strongly picture these encounters at the vampire bar.
This turned out to be quite a good read, and found myself reading faster just to find out what happens. I can see why it was so easily turned into a television series because it’s so easy to picture whats happening.

Emperor of Ice Cream

So I had to go to wikipedia for this one. From what I can understand even after reading the wiki on this poem is that it’s about a woman whos died and is funeral is being prepared. It seems that the author had a cynical view of death and the burial process.
Now the hard part is trying to figure out why King used this in his book. What I think is, he used it to symbolize the massive amount of death that is going to occur in the town. It will be taken over and people will go missing, without any sort of burrial. They will die, and turn into something else, their soul will not be at rest. The only way for the towns people who arn’t properlly buried is to be killed in again, in a ritualistic way, (staking or burning), and thus setting their soul free.

Dra-kool-ah: The Movie

I enjoyed watching the Dracula movie in class. I liked that it was an older film, so it gives that sort of classic “Victorian” feel. The movie was much more true to the book than I had imagined. Although some of the charachters were changed a bit the main idea was still there.
It’s cool to think that my grandparents grew up watching this movie. To that generation, this I’m sure is what they think of when they think of vampires. Differnet from our generation which imagines vampires, more in the form of vampire slayers such as Blade or Buffy. Now they are much more sexualized, although there given the type period this movie was produced it must have had very permiscuious connotations. Hugo Lugasi was made to be very hadsome and alluring to women. When he would stare women in the eyes they would be overcome by power and be in his control.

Salem’s Lot

What an amazing book. This is the first Stephen King book I have read. It’s so wonderful how he gives the town itself life. My mother comes from small town American (Galva, Illinois), I can so simply imagine this book taking place in that exact town. It seems that Stephen King based a lot of this book around Dracula. It is written in the same style, jumping from charachter to charachter. He also takes the them of “the hunt,” much like in Dracula.
These two men Barlow and Straker come and inflitrate the Lot, much like Dracula infiltrates England. With them they bring nothing but evil. There are the vampire “hunters” just as in Dracula. King does a great job showing the hunt within the novel just as Stoker did. In the end the vampire hunters win just like in Dracula.
What I found interesting is that King used child vampires, even baby’s becoming vampires which is something not always seen in vampire stories. I believe he used these as a way to sort of shock the reader into the grim reality of vampires actually happening, that not only men and women but children too would be infected.