Children as Vampire Victims & Children as Vampires

Innocent children are supposed to be protected by society, by their parents and assorted adult figures. Hence when children become the victims of vampires, or are displayed --post-bite as vampires, the reader will find themselves doing just a bit of squirming. This is even more true when it is an adult vampire preying upon the child victim. Adult figures are suddenly portrayed as being not so all-powerful as they like to view themselves, but instead are portrayed as the possible source of destruction.

Interestingly enough, only one of the early vampire stories offers any young children to be victimized by vampires; none of the poetry deals with children.

I find this dearth of early child appearance surprising, given that the vampire of folk-lore is most likely to attack a close family member first, and that children in their total innocence are more likely to let the "lost" or "dead" loved one into the house (give an invitation), they are all too easy prey to the vampire.

So lets examine the ideas behind this sort of portrayal. This section of the site contains:

• Discussion Questions for the young adult novel Cirque Du Freak

  Discussion Questions for Cirque Du Freak (click here)

• The characteristics of vampires as they appear in children and young adult literature

  Characteristics of Vampires as they appear in Childrens' and Teens novels

• Study of the vampire in children picture books (The Little Vampire[French] and Mona the Vampire Slayer[America]).

• Consideration of the sexual implications if the bite is viewed, as most critics read it, as a metaphor for sexual penetration.

• Children as vampires and the ease for them to acquire victims.

• What psychology says happens to children when they read/view horror.

As with most of my site, it is being constructed gradually, so please bear with me. I am teaching a new beta version of my Vampires in Literature class for the first time, which is taking more of my attention than I had expected.