The Eternal Vampire

It used to be believed that something of a person, something physical, could remain after death – a sort of hedge against being forgotten for all eternity. For a writer, it is the words they write in a book; the parent lives on in through the children (both genetically and behaviorally), a Christian (or the faithful in many other religions), gets to spend eternity in some sort of heaven. Vampires spend eternity with themselves, changeless in the bodies they have lived within during their lives.

Philosophers posit several ideas of what eternity would look like, but time is like a river flowing one direction – past into present, present into future – but a person can inhabit only the one moment they are in, at least consciously. Thus, carpe diem (seize the day)! Having just finished the newest Charlainne Harris Sookie Stackhouse novel, I argue that vampires, while eternal, also lack more than the moment they are in. Erick Northman “lives” each moment as it passes in the same way that Sookie Stackhouse does. In spite of his dead state of being, he doesn’t have any more ability to exist in the future than she does. What she does have; however, is an ability to be saved, in the Christian or religious sense, existing forever in the one moment which the eternal provides. Erick Northman just has more moments in his earthly shell (his body).

So what of the eternal heaven where the soul goes to praise God forevermore (Christian version)? Can the vampire get into this version of eternity? It does depend upon the writer and their decision on whether the vampire keeps his soul after “turning.” Because, arguably, it is the soul that enters heaven not the physical body driven by the intellect (if it is the physical body, I’d like a new one please. I have used this one up!). But with many vampires in stories, they no longer have a soul having made the personal decision to give it up in order to remain physically unchanged and themselves as they have always been (the human sinful nature must be given up) for all the moments they exist. They stop existing when slain, and their sinful nature being intact, they don’t get into heaven. If you think about this relationship of soul to heaven to eternity, you can easily see why so many of the literary vampires declare that they still have souls.

Before you think about becoming a vampire, think how boring it could become. You would have the same dinner every day (Hamburgers for every meal eternally). And really, even if you were creative and painted a picture, wrote a book, built a pyramid, they wouldn’t be living after you, they would be living with you.