Final Project Draft

Delaney Abajian
Final Project
Cline
11-4-11

Vampire’s vs. Human Emotions

Pitch black night, dark alleys with dead ends, blood splattered on cobblestone ground, and the piercing screams of the innocent. Look up to the shinning moon and see a bat hanging from a lamp post or telephone wire, its eyes staring right at the next victim. Vampires have been seen as creatures of the night for many centuries and many believe have passed themselves off as humans, never to be found out about. Vampires now seem to appear in everything, movies, books, Halloween, music videos and TV shows. Most of them come out being stereotypical but others dive into the true development and give their own spin on vampires. Using vampires and their actions is a form of personification based on the human emotions system. The emotions that we experience everyday are portrayed through vampires, the most prominent way being through words.

There are many novels that have vampires being the main character or in some cases all the characters entirely. A book that not only has the stereotypes but puts a different spin from the others is Vampire Kisses. This is a book series that surrounds the life of a teenage girl named Raven and her town of “Dullsville”. Being surrounded by people that constantly made fun or ridiculed the way she looked; she was made to have a thick, closed in shell until one Alexander Sterling moves into the mansion on top of Benson Hill. “His long black hair lay heavy on his shoulders. His eyes were dark, deep, lovely, lonely, adoringly intelligent, dreamy. A gateway into his dark soul. He, too, stood motionless, breathing me in. his face was pale like mine and his tight black t-shirt was tucked into his black jeans, which were tucked into monster-chic punk-rock combat boots” (Schreiber, 55). Raven is meeting Alexander formally for the first time, and from seeing the title of the book, the reader assumes that Alexander is the vampire and that Raven will find out eventually but the descriptive words that Schreiber uses, such as “dark” “deep” “lonely” “intelligent” and so on, the readers for now only see him as a Goth boy. This fits in with vampires taking on the form of humans and blending in. The character of Alexander represents the human emotions of sadness and longing. The wanting of human beings; how we are always trying to find that one thing that will complete our souls and make us whole.

To go into more depth with the common knowledge that humans have of vampires, the next quote explains something that Raven finds when searching the mansion basement, “I found a dusty rolled parchment with a faded family tree. There were long unpronounceable names of duchesses and barons going back centuries. And then at the bottom-Alexander. But no dates of births-or deaths!” (Schreiber, 96). Vampires are most commonly associated with having aristocratic family backgrounds where the family trees would have usually only dates of birth and not of deaths but Schreiber has it so this parchment has neither. This piece of information was to strike the reader with a bit of confusion because it is something they are not used to seeing when they think of what knowledge they have about vampires. This human emotion would be confusion and doubt, with a slight bit of anger at not knowing the answer to something. Humans are quite competitive, so when something does not go their way, they tend to become confused and angry and then start to doubt their intelligence. This is something that a vampire would never do and thus, they use this as a power against their human prey. Portraying this form of emotions through a vampire shows that humans have many forms of weakness and are not perfect.

Towards the end of the story though, Raven makes this startling realization, “As I turned to leave, I noticed Ruby’s monogrammed compact on the doorstep and picked it up. I opened it to smooth my lipstick. I saw the Mansion’s open door reflected in its glass. “Sweet dreams,” I heard Alexander say. But he didn’t appear in the mirror. I turned around. Alexander was clearly standing in the doorway. But when I checked the mirror again, he was gone!” (Schreiber, 193). Fantasy is powerful and in many ways can be used in forms of manipulation to get what is desired. In this case, they desire was that Raven wanted Alexander to be a vampire and just as she was settling into the fact that he wasn’t one, finds out that he actually is one. Vampires in books and movies have been shown using fantasy, usually against female victims, as a tool in getting what they desire which is the blood. Luring the girls into thinking that they are something wonderful and that the sweet sugar of words pouring from the vampires lips is only for them, and then are under the vampires spell in which their blood is then taken from them, leaving the girls for dead.

There are catch phrases that are used when people talk about relationships. Such as, “I just want them to love me for who I am” or “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me”. The following is one that can only be used in describing a vampire, “I want a relationship I can finally sink my teeth into” (Schreiber, 120). As cliché as it may sound, it gives the most obvious but funny hint that Alexander is indeed a vampire but it also eludes to something else as well. How Alexander wants a true relationship, for someone to see him for who he is and not what he is. This is so similarly related to humans and their wants for a relationship, that there truly is no difference. This is pure and comes from the heart. This is where both humans and vampires can be seen as the same, both want to be seen for who they are, not what they are.

Fleur Adcock’s poem, Instructions to Vampires, brings out the old fashion side to the vampire and how humans visualized them. The last two lines of the poem are as follows: “and on the soft globes of his mortal eyes/etch my name” (Adcock, lines 11-12). The poem as a whole is about a vampire drinking the blood out of its victim be seeing that there is more to the victim than the vampire saw before. So the vampire decides to make him either his underling or a vampire like himself. Using words like “desiccation” and “cauterize”, shows where she wanted the time period to be, maybe 17th or 18th century; possibly even earlier.

Though not many human emotions are present, the only one that can be seen on the surface is a small amount of compassion. Though this poem can be taken in one of two ways; one could be that the compassion is for the fact that the vampire is letting the human victim just die and not have to live an undead life. The following quote explains this, “I would not have you drain/with your sodden lips the flesh that has fed mine, /and leech his bubbling blood to a decline” (Adcock, lines 1-3). This could be the compassion of either wanting to give the victim eternal life or letting them die in peace.

While on the topic of vampires in poetry, there is another one by Hermine Pinson named All-Around Vampires. This brings up vampires and shows that they are a problem but then show that they are nearly impossible to find, “Vampires come out in the daylight now and shop at Bergdorf's or the flea market or that greasy barbecue place. They hold down nine-to-fives, three-to-elevens, eleven-to-sevens at Exxon, Penney's, City Hall…” (Pinson, lines 18-22). Vampires integrating into the human world and society but still deep down inside true to the beast that lies within; this is what the rest of the poem gives the reader but it leaves it void of one thing, emotions. What are the emotions of the humans; of the vampires? If it went in deeper to see that vampires show many forms of human emotion, just in a different way, then there would be more feeling than just hard, cold facts. But maybe, that is the emotion; being hard skinned and cold toward others. These are not very likable human emotions but emotions nonetheless. Vampires will do what humans cannot, “Vampires face up to actual ugliness” (Pinson, line 31). Strength, is not a human emotion but an action that humans possess and many times, they do not want to face something that they will not like or are too afraid to do so. Vampires though have the will to do so, since they live for centuries on end and have seen many a bloody thing, so not only do they have the stomach for it but the strength in order to get through the “ugliness”.

Vampires portraying humans are not only in writing but on the screen as well. There are many movies that show vampires where the emotions of greed, anger, and lust play a dominate role but somewhere love and the want to belong also come out in the open and probably more openly than a human being would do so because they don’t want it to be known, where a vampire is going to come right out and show it. Books and poetry are going to be the most dominate places where the reader will have to see the situations of vampires vs. human emotions; then see what is real and what is being personified to portray what humans won’t show.




Works Cited
Schreiber, Ellen. Vampire Kisses. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Adcock, Fleur. Instructions to Vampires. The Eye of the Hurricane. Bloodaxe Books Ltd. 2000.

Pinson, Hermine. All-Around Vampires. Callaloo. The John Hopkins University Press. 1988.