Bella Swan, a 17 year-old girl, comes back to the town Forks and falls in love with her schoolmate Edward Cullen, who turns out to be a vampire. Later she surprisingly discovers that her best friend Jacob is a werewolf, the enemy of the vampires. What is her choice and who is her true love?
Recently vampire becomes one of the most popular fiction around the world with the film twilight and new moon played on the screen. They are mysterious fearful creatures: young, beautiful, powerful and immortal. Over thousands of years, vampire occupied a very important position in western culture. what is its origin?
We all know that blood is the symbol of life, and it features a large part in Christianism and European culture. The God punished Eve for her tempting Adam by letting her suffering monthly period, in Homer’s Odyssey Chapter 11 Ulysses sacrificed blood of freshly rams to his soldiers, or Harpy as a bird with the head of a woman, would suck the babies’ blood. All of the stories show that blood was a symbol of evil and mystery at the very beginning, which made preparations for the arising of vampire.
There are several versions of its origin.
First, Cain, the child of Adam and Eve, who is said to have killed his brother Abel and lied to the Lord. Thus he was cursed by God and thereby transformed into a vampire. It is said that Cain wandered until he found Lilith by the Red Sea, while Lilith was not only the first wife of Adam but also the lover of Satan according to Jewish texts. She took him in and showed him the power of blood. As the mother of vampire, Lilith transformed Cain into the cold one.
The second folklore is about Judas. He betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. He and his family were cursed. The Bible holds that Judas committed suicide because of his guilt; while suicides in vampire folklore were very likely to come back as vampires. And it’s also the reason why vampires are afraid of silver things.
The third one is from Transylvania, the center of Romania. In the medieval Europe, Count Vlad IV, was notorious for his cruelty. His two nicknames are Tepes and Dracula. Tepes means impaler. During his main reign, “Vlad the Impaler” is said to have killed from 40,000 to 100,000 European civilians by impaling them on a sharp pole. And he liked to enjoy his meals in the body’s wood. That’s why people call him “dracula”, meaning evil or dragon. He is also the prototype of Bram Stoker’s famous novel about vampire, Dracula.
The fourth is the legend of bloody Bathory from Hungary. Countess Bathory learned black magic from her maid and prisoned a lot of young girls in the castle. Because of more and more girl’s missing the King sent someone to investigate Bathory’s deeds. The soldiers came upon a pile of dead or dying women in the Castle, who had been tortured and drained of blood for Bathory to drink or bathe so as to keep herself young forever. Then rumors had it that Countess Bathory became a true vampire after her death.
The fifth one is the most convincing and scientific-based. In the medieval Europe, a large Bubonic Plague swept the whole Europe. At that time fears spread, people would bury the patients without ensuring whether they were really dead or not. The buried people struggled in the agonies in the coffins and tried hard to climb out. When people re-open the coffin after a few days, they saw the body with blood, and it seemed the body had moved. Few people escaped the tomb yet died soon. The living ones are afraid, they couldn’t explain why the corpse would change or wandering around the tomb outside. Then the vampire superstition became popular and the term vampire was popularized from the early 18th century.
In the 18th century of Europe,a lot of scholars and priests researched into the vampirism and a lot of argues and controversy arouse in many fields.
With years of development, there are some common characteristics about vampires. They need blood to survive, they have strong energy and superpower. They only come out at night because they fear sunlight. They look pale. They are immortal except few ways of terminating them,etc. There are rulus,commandment,different parties in the world of vampires.
Also, the western literary field loves vampire so much. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and which provided the basis of modern vampire fiction. We can find all the features and weaknesses of vampire in this novel. As the time develops, the image of the vampire changes. In the early literature and films, vampires are ugly, old, cruel and blood-thirsty. For example, in 1922, a landmark silent film Nosferatu. Also, in the movie Dracula, the vampire is very old and terrifying. Gradually, the vampires are becoming elegant, charming, beautiful ones. In the movie Count Dracula, Bela Lugosi shows us a gentelman vampire. His accent, appearance, the sick of sunlight seems perfect. Also, in the movie Interview with the Vampire adapted from the novel of the same name by Ann Rice, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt have breath-taking beauty and charm.
From the ancient to the modern society, from the Europe to the United States, the fiction of vampire is still mysterious, waiting for us to get into their world.
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