Week 2: Vampires

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Throughout the course of time, vampire stories have changed to symbolize the context between the supernatural grotesque characters to real life human nature. There’s more to vampirism than sucking blood, sleeping in coffins, or fleeing away in bat form. We have to think of how vampirism connects itself with the day-to-day life of a normal human. Even Though early novels show vampirism in a way that is more complex in theory, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight brings vampirism in the norm, which humanizes vampires in a different way that has been done in the past.

In Twilight, the vampires are hidden internally, instead of externally. For example, all of the normal characters can see them, they know who they are as people, and they develop acquaintance with them without being the prey. These are not the type of vampires to hide during the day, then hunt through the night. Instead, the vampires withhold the secrets of their mortality from others around them. This context humanizes the vampire to the readers instead of us believing that they are monsters. The book also gives the vampire's a more sex appeal imagery, instead of the disturbing monster look.

Romanticism also carries a different value when it comes to Twilight. Bella and Edward’s encounter relates to audiences who have lust over mysterious attractive strangers especially in their teenage years. The reader would encounter this theory when Bella starts to think about Edward more after; he rudely avoids her during their first encounter. Later on in the story, we see Edward as the hero when he saves her from being raped. We are introduced to Edward’s fountain of truth when he walks into the sun and sparkles to show that he is a vampire. This context symbolizes how we as humans open up to our significant others honesty and to prevail our hidden truths.

The main course of love subtext that one could see in this novel is that Edward refuses to imprint Bella, even though she accepts him and wants to join him in the essence of immortality. We see how Edward is miserable with being immortal, and does not wants to Bella to be in internal pain with him, but we also see that Bella wants to be with him forever.

Week One: Beginning with Frankenstein

Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein carried strong sub textual elements of gothic nature that relates to grotesque figures, religion, and death. The theme of the novel is that the pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein as the protagonist, Victor, attempts to push beyond accepted human limits to and access the secret of life. Along with the horror tone that goes along with the story, it does carry some characteristics of beauty in nature and rebirth.

     Victor’s character is set around gothic aesthetics due to his curiosity on creating life around death. He forms this human-like monster by taking dead body parts from corpse and putting them together to form a new source of life that is not formed of nature. This illusion is dark based on the gothic interpretation on death, but beautiful in a way due to a form of resurrection. Victor’s recreation on life also symbolizes gothic subcultures such as rebirth and suggests immortality or eternal life.

     Religion is also tied to gothic culture, so there are also an element that portrays God and human mortality. Gothic culture also embeds the cross as a symbol. Victor is looks beyond the mortality of nature by creating life to obey him, just like in Christianity, God created life for a reason and purpose. The most effective context of religion was the symbolism of light and fire. The light symbolizes knowledge, discovery, and enlightenment in which, natural world is a place of dark secrets, hidden passages, and unknown mechanisms; the goal of the scientist is then to reach light. The dangerous and more powerful cousin of light is fire. The monster’s first experience with a still-smoldering flame reveals the dual nature of fire. He discovers that it creates light in the darkness of the night, but also that it harms him when he touches it.