Vampire Themes: Reading, Writing, and Analyzing the Vampire

Vampire themes add to the depth and richness in any story!

Author’s usually place an underlying theme in their novels, stories, and poetry. This holds as true in Vampire works as in “normal” works. The theme is a nice place to begin your analysis for your essay. Ask yourself: If you had two sentences to tell a friend about the piece, how would you summarize it? Then look at your sentences and see what they are actually about on a global level. Are they about love lasting beyond death? Are they about the fighting the good fight against overwhelming odds against winning against a virus that changes the characters into the undead? Are they about humanity (in the form of the featured group) banding together against the vampire (other/outsider)? Are they about issues with ageing or dying?

Given the essence of the Vampire, some of the following can inevitably be noted in anywork including them:

• Death and the after-life will be included in the theme. This is inevitable, since most author’s vampires (although not all) will have once been human before they died (again, usually) and they returned as the walking dead.

• Questions about what happens to the soul at the moment of death will be raised. While Byron’s “Giaour” features a vampire that arguably still possesses his soul; this is pretty rare except in modern vampire romances.

• What defines life and being alive? What does medical science say about “life?”

• Who is the insider group – humans or vampires? This is usually a function of Perspective choices. How does the inside group treat the outside group?

• What does it say about the “victim” when he or she asks to become a victim? It raises questions of how society at large defines victimization, as well as who gets to make the standing definition, society or the personal choice of the protagonist?

• Patriotism: Who belongs to the human society when membership in the new group [the undead] is assumed by the new vampire? And need the vampire still portray the morality and ideals of its former society?

• Darwinism and the Society of the fittest: What happens to humans when they are no longer at the top of the food chain, but instead are food for vampires?

• Love: Can one love and have intercourse with ones food supply?

• Love: Is love always a symbiotic relationship?

As you can see, the themes are many and varied, and these are just a few of the possible that wander through an author’s created story world. The wonderful thing about Vampires is that by their very nature they add new dimensions to the “normal” themes of works.