Jennifer Walker
English 102
Cline
What Vampires Represent in Today’s Society
Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels are some of today’s most read novels on vampirism. They have even been turned into a very popular HBO television series, “True Blood”. Though both the novels and the series are very entertaining and contain much sex, blood and gore underneath there are some hidden messages regarding society. As Michael Van Cise states in his article Book Review: Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Novels, “The novels, no doubt, contain love-interests, sex, and eroticism, but they also explore personal and societal issues such as abuse, greed, murder, and racism.” You can see throughout both series the fight for acceptance, the greed in people, and how racism is much more than about color. What can we learn from a popular book and television series about our own society and how to overcome it?
The fight for acceptance has been present throughout time and will probably never go away. We see this throughout the series in many ways with vampires, shape shifters, fairies and witches. In “Dead Until Dark” the first novel in the series we learn that vampires have just recently been accepted in daily society. Even though they are out in the open we still ostracize them and treat them as lepers. You could almost look at it as a religion that we do not understand and can not accept. While some vampires attempt to fit in with society and show that they are not the dangerous creatures we assume they are others just do not see a reason to and terrorize at will.
Greed is also a problem that is looked at in the novels and television show. People have figured out that if they ingest vampire blood it gives them a thrill like none other and start kidnapping vampires to drain them of their blood to sell. We can look at this almost as a drug problem and the people doing the draining want to make money and are the drug dealers. They do not consider the vampires as people with feelings so have no regrets about killing them for the blood they can sell and make a profit off of.
Racism is the biggest societal issue that we see in these stories and can relate to through most of the characters. As Michael Van Cise states also in Book Review: Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Novels, “By having characters who are vampires, shapeshifters, and maenads, she can consider racism in a less overt manner than if her characters were members of a real minority or oppressed group.” The vampires are outcasts because they have to survive on blood and are not actually alive. The shape shifters are afraid to show who they are for fear of being hunted by people who do not like what they can do. The fairies cannot come out of hiding for fear of the vampires who would kill to feed off their blood. And the witches are looked at badly because of their ancestors and what they did to vampires in the past. In many ways this is all racism. We look at many people badly because of color, religion, and way of life which is what every character in these series also goes through.
Of course there are others out there that will argue that though the author does write about modern issues that she does not go far enough into those issues to make it worthwhile to read. In Chally Kacelnik’s article Housework and Horror: Charlaine Harris’s Dead Reckoning she states, “That is, in fact, my main frustration with the series: Harris sets up the potential for some fantasy-style treatment of political and social issues, and never quite chases them up. For instance, Sookie’s supernatural boss, Sam, responds to attempts to shut his bar down with ‘I can’t believe this is happening in our country, and me a veteran. Born and bred in the USA
If we consider all of the stories that are written about vampires and other monsters I believe you can see in every one some sort of modern day issue. These writers hide it in their fiction as to not name specific people or ways of life and to get through to more people. Maybe this is the only way to get through to others and state how easily it is to judge someone else based on how they live their lives. Vampires have been prominent throughout history and I would hate to think that if they were real that we would treat them like lepers and make them wish they had stayed hidden forever. Maybe modern stories like the Sookie Stackhouse novels and tv shows like True Blood can show us how wrong we are sometimes and we will learn from it.
Bibliography
Harris, Charlaine. Dead Until Dark. New York : Penguin Group, 2001.
Kacelnik, Chally. “Housework and horror: Charlaine Harris’s Dead Reckoning.” Global Comment 25 June 2011 . 6 Nov. 2011 <http://globalcomment.com/2011/bisexuality-and-bloodsucking-housework-and-horror-charlaine-harris-dead-reckoning/>
Van Cise, Michael. Book Review: Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Novels. 6 Nov. 2011 <http://michaelvancise.com/index.php/trueblood>
Hi Jen,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like quite an interesting group of novels. Until reading some of these recent blog post I have never heard of True Blood. It almost seems like the different groups are like the clicks that form in high school lunch rooms. But clicks can be very similar to different "types" of people grouping together and maybe not liking other groups just because they are different.
I think you had a very straight forward thesis and you supported the ideas in your thesis in a very organized fashion. Good luck on your final draft :)
Respectfully,
Rebekah
Jen
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job for the most part. I have a hard time ctitising other peoples papers because I feel like i am not the best writer. The only thing that I can suggest is that you focus more closely on one main issue of the vampires, for example the drug dealer issue or a different one you talked about. I think the paper is really good but there is just alot of different ideas in there to me and if you maybe focus more on a single idea it could go into further detail. Hopefully you take this a creative criticism. Good luck! Joe