论文总字数：42100字

摘 要

吸血鬼在西方文化中有着悠久的历史,在现代社会广受欢迎。它起源于欧洲大陆，在英美文化中得到了进一步的发展。以吸血鬼为题材的文学经久不衰，并且成为了大众文化的重要组成部分。其中最著名的是由爱尔兰作家布兰姆·斯托克于1897年所著的小说《德库拉》，其中的吸血鬼形象更是成为了经典。时隔多年，《暮光之城》系列小说的出版又一次引发了吸血鬼狂潮。随着人类社会的发展，吸血鬼形象越来越丰富。《暮光之城》系列中的吸血鬼形象明显不同于其他吸血鬼小说中的吸血鬼形象，并且这其中的吸血鬼形象和主题都被赋予了新的内涵。本论文在《暮光之城》系列小说的基础上研究吸血鬼文化的演变，以便人们更好的理解当代吸血鬼文化的内涵。

关键词：吸血鬼文化；《暮光之城》；吸血鬼形象

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 The Significance of the Study 1

1.2 The Organization of the Study 2

2. Literature Review 2

2.1 The Origin of Vampire Culture 2

2.2 Vampires in Early Literature Works 4

2.3 Vampires in Modern Literature Works 5

3. Vampire Culture in The Twilight Saga 6

3.1 The Introduction of The Twilight Saga 6

3.2 The Love between Edward and Bella, Jacob and Bella 8

3.3 The Contradiction between Reason and Desire of Edward 9

3.4 The Racial Conflict between the Vampires and Werewolves 10

4. New Development of Vampire Culture in The Twilight Saga 11

4.1 The Transition of the Vampire Image 12

4.2 The Transition of the Theme 14

4.3 Summary 16

5. Conclusion 16

Works Cited 18

1. Introduction

French philosopher Rousseau once said that if there exists a well-documented history, then this is the history of vampires. (Zhou Yimou, 2000: 286) A vampire is a spiritual product created for a long time by human beings, as well as the accumulation of social history. Vampire culture, obviously, is not the culture that belongs to vampires; because the vampire is a fictional group that not exactly exists in the world. Vampire culture is people’s understanding and thinking of the vampire, a spiritual product of human beings, and the behavior under its influence. It is generally considered to belong to the category of popular culture and often active in literary works.

1.1 The Significance of the Study

Vampires frequently appear in various literary works, not only because they come with mysteries, but also they can reflect the value of the times. If we make a deep analysis on them, it can be easy to find the role of the vampire culture. The contradictions in vampire works can reflect some social problems. Vampires in literature are created by people, thus their images can also represent people’s inner world to some extent.

Vampire images in different times can express various themes. The Twilight Saga, a famous novel written by Stephenie Meyer, an American writer, was released in 2005. It tells us a love story between Edward, a vampire, and Bella, a human girl, which attracts many readers. Making a deep analysis on it, we can find the connotations behind the vampire images. And compared with other vampire works, The Twilight Saga shows some new characteristics of vampires. It also embodies the vampire culture of the new world and is also an epitome of the contemporary vampire culture. What’s more, the overburdened people in modern society are tired of the monotonous work day after day, thus they need a kind of spiritual comfort or spiritual sustenance to break away from stress in modern life. Then, the new type vampires in The Twilight Saga, who are beyond death and fabulously charming, coincide with their needs. Therefore, the global popularity of vampire culture comes into being in a worldwide sense.

By comparing The Twilight Saga and other vampire works in the early time, this thesis gradually reveals the development history of vampire culture, further discusses all kinds of human conflicts and social problems that are reflected in these works, and analyzes the new characteristics of contemporary vampire culture, which can help people better understand the meaning of vampire culture in real life.

1.2 The Organization of the Study

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter one gives us a general view of this thesis. Chapter two tells us the origin of vampire culture and a brief review of previous relevant literature. Chapter three introduces the main characters and plots in The Twilight Saga and deeply analyzes the contradictions and conflicts in this work, including the love between Edward and Bella and the love between Jacob and Bella, the contradiction of Edward’s reason and desire in the face of love, as well as the racial conflict between vampires and werewolves. With the comparison between The Twilight Saga and other vampire works in the early time, chapter four reveals the changes of both vampire images and themes. The last chapter makes a summary on the above views and concludes with the real meaning of vampire culture in contemporary society.

2. Literature Review

A vampire, a corpse that rises nightly from its grave to drink the blood of the living, is a famous monster in the western world. It seems that the history of the vampire is as long as the history of human beings. As a devil that closely related to human image, its legend is full of fantastic and terrifying color. As to its origin, there are many different versions. And it has experienced a long development in literary works.

2.1The Origin of Vampire Culture

2.1.1 The Version of The Bible

According to The Bible, Cain was the first child of Adam and Eve, as well as the third man in the world. He was a farmer and lived with his younger brother Abel who was a sheepherder. Once they routinely offered a sacrifice to god. Because of their different work, Abel was able to offer god hearty meat, but Cain only offered some vegetables, which extremely discontented the god. Therefore, out of anger, Cain killed Abel, and as a punishment he became the first vampire in the world because of the curse of god. He was immortal and had to suck blood of the living all the time, which meant that he was afflicted by the curse from generation to generation.

Another argument is that Judah betrayed Jesus due to a bag of silver coins. However, after that, he was very regretful for his behavior and finally committed suicide. In order to punish him, god turned him into a vampire, who was immortal, lived in the darkness, and would always be lonely.

This version is greatly influenced by religion. Christian believes that there exists life after death; the body is only physical, but the soul can continue to live in another world. And the souls are exactly vampires who are selfish, bloody and disloyal to god. By making up vampires’ desire and ambition, religious literature of that era also propagates that human desire can lead to various evils. Therefore, people must refrain from lust and be loyal to god for the purpose of going to heaven after death. At that time, the will of god suppresses people’s inner emotion.

2.1.2 The Version of Medicine

At present, more accepted explanation about vampires is that the porphyria patients are probably the prototype of the vampires. Porphyrin is a phytochrome and it will be gathered in a person’s skin, bones and teeth. Most of the porphyrin is benign in the dark, but once exposed directly to the sunlight, it will translate into toxins and finally devour people’s muscles and organization. (Wang Zhenhu, 2008: 31) Thus porphyria patients only can live in the dark, just like vampires. What’s worse, as a result of the action of toxins, the ears and noses of porphyria patients will be corroded and their skin is pale, teeth are sharp like wolves, which are correspond with descriptions of vampires.

It is also said that the legend of vampires is related to the ancient large-scale outbreak of Black Death. In the 14^th century, the Black Death eventually led to one third of Europeans’ death. At that time, corpses can be seen everywhere in Europe and people were fallen into extremely panic. (Jiang Xue amp;Yan Xiaochuan, 2012: 91) In order to eliminate the fear, vampires are regarded to be the chief culprit of the plague. It follows that the prevalence of vampire legend is due to the plague and some illness in history. Based on those patients, vampires are described as ugly, cruel, horrible, and bloodthirsty devils in the literature works without exception at that time.

The ancient people typically had difficulty in understanding blood, disease, death and other physiological phenomena, so they created an imaginary world of various bloodthirsty creatures, which reflected human ancestors’ fear of nature and death. Due to the undeveloped science and medical treatment, ancient people can only use vampires to explain these horrible phenomena.

2.2 Vampires in Early Literature Works

The early vampire works were filled with horror and mysteries. Vampire, written by John Polidori who was a private doctor of Byron, was recognized as the ancestor of vampire novels. It created a ruthless noble image—Lord Ruthven，who traveled around the world, luring and killing innocent women to suck their blood. This story portrayed a mysterious and noble image of vampires.

Camilla, written by an Irish writer—Sherry Dan li. FeiNu, was created on the basis of the true story of Erzsebet Bathory in Hungary. Erzsebet Bathory was accused of hijacking the girls who lived in the village that near her castle and these girls were treated as animals in the slaughter house. She killed more than 600 girls, drinking their blood and bathing in the blood, in the hope of eternal youth and beauty. Her cruel behavior had caused all sorts of rumors in Hungary. It was said that the countess, becoming a veritable vampire, still harmed innocent people even after her death.

Another vampire work based on the real historic figure was Dracula written by an Irish writer Bram Stoker. Dracula was a national hero in Romania, as well as an extremely bloody tyrant. He was known as his cruel treatment of the enemies on the battlefield. Regarding Dracula as the prototype, Bram Stoker wrote the book Dracula, and soon Count Dracula almost became synonymous with the vampire. Count Dracula was the most classic image of vampire in the early time:

He was either dead or asleep. I could not say which, for his eyes were open and stony, but without the glassy of death, and the cheeks had the warmth of life through all their whiteness. But there was no sign of movements, no pulse, no breath, no beating of the heart. I bent over him, and tried to find any sign of life, but in vain. (Stoker, 2009: 68)

The Count Dracula, born to the purple class, was very elegant at ordinary times. But when he did evils, his two tusks would be exposed and stab into the bodies of victims to suck their blood. He would turn into a bat, wolf or other animals, breaking through the clouds and fog, trotting swiftly, without leaving any traces. Dracula came out during the era of western industrialization highly developed. The conflict between vampires and humans in Dracula symbolized the final struggle of dying European aristocracy against the rising bourgeois in the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was also the struggle between endless illegal desire and sober self in people’s subconsciousness. Therefore, the public’s craze for vampires came into being.

In this period, natural science had achieved great progress and the industrial revolution had gradually changed people’s lifestyle. Besides, the renaissance movement accelerated the development of humanism and the religious reform successfully overthrew the Roman Catholic. All these emancipated people’s minds to some extent. Because of these turbulent elements in society, people became lost and crazy. The exploration of the mysterious world was full of uncertainty, and if reflected in vampire culture, that is the combination of horror and superstition.

2.3 Vampires in Modern Literature Works

In recent years, the vampire images have some common features, having considerable wealth, high social status and high quality life. These features are recognized and respected by the middle class values.

The middle class are mostly engaged in mental labor, relies on wages and salaries to make a living, well educated, with strong professional knowledge and household spending power. With some leisure time, the middle class pursues the quality of life, having a good sense of morality. From the aspects of economic status, political status, social and cultural status, people in the middle class are in the intermediate level at the present stage. As the largest class, the middle class values get the most extensive and profound recognition.

Reviewing the vampire works in this time, either Louis in Interview with the Vampire or the Cullen family in The Twilight Saga, they are all the typical representatives of the middle class, driving expensive cars, having comfortable luxury villas. For vampires, money is never a problem that they need to worry about. The endless life enables vampires to have enough time to understand and experience the world. Vampires’ attraction to people partly comes from their profound knowledge, which coincides with the middle class values that pursue the civilization, freedom and personality. What’s more, vampires have strong abilities, with which they always overcome evil forces and get the final victory. It embodies the affirmation and praise of the individual and the heroism complex of western culture is implemented in the vampires. The vampire culture occupies a certain position in the pedigree of the mass culture, and the western middle class values carried by the vampire images are gradually recognized by the world.

With the development of politics and economy, the world situation has also changed. Religion has had less and less influence on vampire culture and the vampire images are becoming more humanized and diversified. Deeply influenced by the middle-class values, a growing number of vampire images appeared in the form of ordinary people.

3. Vampire Culture in The Twilight Saga

3.1 The Introduction of The Twilight Saga

The Twilight Saga is a series of novels, including Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, which tells us a romantic love between a human and vampire.

In Twilight, Bella, whose parents are divorced, moves to Forks to live with her father when her mother remarries. Bella attracts much attention at her new school and is quickly befriended by several students. When Bella is seated next to Edward Cullen in a biology class on her first day of school, Edward appears to be disgusted by her, which makes Bella confused and become interested in him. A few days later, when Bella is nearly struck by a van in the school parking lot, Edward inexplicably moves from some feet away and stops the vehicle with his hand. He later refuses to explain this act to Bella and warns her against befriending him. After many researches, Bella eventually discovers that Edward is a vampire from a vegetarian family named Cullen. Different from other brutal vampires, the Cullen family only sucks animal blood. Despite the different ethnics, Bella and Edward still fall in love with each other and Edward even introduces Bella to his vampire family. When the Cullen family takes Bella to play baseball outdoors, the Crane family who suck human blood appears and one of them named James wants to hunt Bella. Edward and his family risk their lives to protect her and fortunately save her in time from James’s harm. After this disaster, they love more deeply with each other.

In New Moon, Bella accidentally cuts her finger at her 18 birthday party, which makes Edward’s brother become overwhelmed by the blood’s scent and attempt to kill her. Realizing the danger that his family pose danger to Bella, Edward ends their relationship and the Cullen family leave Forks. Edward’s departure leaves Bella heartbroken and depressed for months. And accidentally, Bella discovers that all thrill-seeking activities evoke Edward’s preserved image. So she tries to be involved in dangerous things in order to see Edward again. In Bella’s most painful time, Jacob appears in her life, giving her a lot of comfort. When Jacob suddenly begins avoiding her, Bella discovers he’ has become a werewolf, an age-old enemy of vampires. Through a series of miscommunications, Edward believes Bella has killed herself by jumping off a cliff into the ocean. Distraught over her supposed suicide, Edward travels to Italy to provoke a powerful vampire family named Volturi and violates the provision to expose his vampire identity in the sun. Fortunately, Bella arrives in time to stop him, and Edward promises to Bella that he will change her into a vampire after their marriage.

In Eclipse, Victoria creates an army of newborns in order to revenge on Edward for James, who has been killed by him. The newborn vampires are more brutal than other vampires and kill people arbitrarily, which draw Cullen family’s attention. In order to protect Bella, the Cullen family cooperates with werewolves. After many trainings and making full preparation, they finally kills the newborns, but Jacob is injured. Facing the love from both Edward and Jacob, Bella still chooses Edward and decides to marry him, even knowing that she has to be transformed into a vampire.

In Breaking Dawn, after the honeymoon, Bella is pregnant and finally gives birth to a half-human and half-vampire daughter named Renesmee. However, Bella is almost at death’s door after the childbirth. In order to save Bella, Edward has to inject his own blood into Bella’s heart, fulfilling her desire for becoming a vampire. Knowing that Bella has been transformed into a vampire and given birth to a daughter, other werewolves become violent. For protecting Bella and her daughter, Jacob prefers to be the enemy of other werewolves. Renesmee’s birth violates the provision of vampires and the Volturi family decides to punish Bella and Renesmee. In order to protect them, the Cullen family convenes their friends to support them and cooperates with werewolves again. After many efforts, eventually the Cullen family gains a great victory.

3.2 The Love between Edward and Bella, Jacob and Bella

Bella, an ordinary human girl, is kind, smart and beautiful. But different from other girls, she doesn’t follow the fashion and is a little lonely. Edward, a vampire with a handsome face, has magic power to read people’s minds except Bella’s, which causes his interest in Bella when they first meet. The loss of his special power makes Edward get close to Bella and want to know her more. During this process, they gradually fall in love with each other, although Bella knows clearly that Edward is a vampire. In Twilight, it says:

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.

“What a stupid lamb,” I sighed.

“What a sick, masochistic lion.” He stared into the shadowy forest for a long moment, and I wondered where his thoughts had taken him. (Meyer, 2005: 274)

It seems that the love between vampire and human is not allowed, and there are a lot of obstacles in their path of love. Edward needs to restrain his desire for Bella’s blood and Bella must have the courage to face all kinds of vampires. What’s more, they also need to face the challenges from other vampires. Difficult as this process is, they still don’t give up but love more deeply. And after experiencing all kinds of difficulties, they are married and have their own daughter.

Knowing Bella from his childhood, Jacob loves Bella from the bottom of his heart. His love for Bella is pure and loyal. Although he knows clearly that Bella’s heart only belongs to Edward, he is still willing to accompany Bella when she is trapped in the pain of being away from Edward. In order to protect Bella, Jacob even persuades other werewolves to cooperate with their natural enemies—vampires. With the company of Jacob, Bella, a girl loves Edward very much, even forgets her pain caused by Edward’s leaving. However, she still decides to run after Edward even though Jacob tries his best to persuade her.

In Eclipse, in order to stop Jacob from taking risk for her, Bella asks him to kiss her, saying that he is so important and don’t want to lose him. Then Bella explains to Edward who knows what happened: “I don’t know what happened.” “You love him.” Edward says. Bella’s answer is “But I love you more.” From their conversation, we can find that Bella really loves Jacob to some extent. But her love for Edward is stronger, which determines Jacob can only be her best friend. This triangle love among human, vampire and werewolf makes this story more romantic.

3.3 The Contradiction between Reason and Desire of Edward

The love between vampire and human is destined to be extraordinary. For Edward, his love for Bella is full of challenges. It is not only because there is a boundary between humans and vampires, but also he must restrain his own bloodthirsty instinct. There is a fierce struggle between reason and desire for Edward when Bella begs him to suck her blood to make herself a vampire. However, his true love for Bella makes his reason overwhelm his desire for blood. He doesn’t want to deprive Bella of the right to be a human in order to live with her forever in the name of love. He makes a rational judgment: love means sacrifice and commitment; love is not just possession.

Every time, when he is attracted by the smell from Bella’s body, he can still control himself. This is shown more obviously when he has to suck the poison out of Bella’s body because of the hurt caused by another vampire James. For vampires, human blood is a temptation that is hard to resist. Although Edward no longer feeds on human blood, facing the intense temptation, it is still hard for him to resist. During this process, he is almost out of control. But fortunately, in the face of love, he finally succeeds in suppressing his own nature and saves Bella’s life.

In fact, the struggle between blood and love in this novel corresponds to human’s contradiction between material and spiritual pursuit. At the most time, our material and spiritual pursuit can not be met at the same time and we have to choose one of them. Faced with this problem, we are often as painful as Edward. The struggle between reason and desire can help people reflect on their own in the aspect of life values.

3.4 The Racial Conflict between the Vampires and Werewolves

The legend of werewolves is as long as the legend of vampires. People believe that werewolves will turn into crazy wolves, addicted to eating raw meat and drinking blood, at the full moon night. In literature, they often appear as the opposition of the vampires. Without noble identity as vampires, werewolves usually live in the jungle or sewer, shabby in dress.

In The Twilight Saga, the Cullen family lives a life which is so unattainable to others that almost everyone is envious of them. Driving luxury cars and well-dressed, they show their superiority in the manners of speech. However, the images of werewolves are in obvious disadvantages when compared with the vampires. When they gather together, they are often bare-chested and have muddy feet, showing no elegance. What’s worse, they can’t control mood very well. In this novel, it is said that the ancestor of the werewolves is the Quileute people, the Native American and a branch of the old Indian who live in their own reserved land. The Indians themselves have profound wolf culture and they are identified with the unity, loyalty and bravery. However, the ancestors of the Europeans are nomads and they are afraid of wolves. Therefore, in the eyes of European settlers, the American Indians are savage pagans. Even nowadays, the racial discrimination still exists in most American’s minds and is ingrained.

On the beach, Jacob tells Bella about the covenant between his Quileute ancestors and the Cullen family: if the Cullen family don’t hunt in the reserved land of Quileute people, they will not tell the white race about the secret that the Cullen family members are vampires. It can be noticed that Jacob classifies the Cullen family as the ‘paleface’, from which, we can find that the fundamental difference between his family and the Cullen family is not the difference of werewolves and vampires, but the difference between the Indians and the white race. (Cao Yafeng, 2010: 81)

The racial discrimination and conflict between them can be easily found in the novel. For example, Alice hates the smell of a dog that exudes from Jacob very much and insults him, which also enrages Jacob. In vampires’ eyes, werewolves are only beasts like dogs. What’s more, the factors that influence Bella’s choice between Edward and Jacob are not just love, but also racial identity to some extent. Although Jacob is straightforward, brave, ingenious and even more real compared with vampires, Bella still chooses Edward, because the distance between them is just the change between a vampire and human, and both of them are still the white people. However, Jacob was born as a werewolf, which can never change. Namely, the discrimination can also never be eliminated.

But the conflicts between vampires and werewolves are eased to some extent when Bella is chased by Victoria and when the Volturi family decides to kill Renesmee. Because of Jacob and Edward’s common love for Bella, they put their prejudices aside and fight together against the enemies, which saves Bella and Renesmee successfully. What’s more, Jacob even imprints on Renesmee, which further resolves the conflicts between vampires and werewolves.

As a whole, by the images of the vampires, the author not only tells us a beautiful love story between the vampire and the human girl, but also exposes some social problems for us, which further enriches the vampire culture.

4. New Development of Vampire Culture in The Twilight Saga

The images of vampires in early vampire works are comparatively simplex. However, the popularity of the vampire culture owes much to the change of vampire images to some extent, which makes the vampire culture have a qualitative leap. Comparing The Twilight Saga with other vampire works in the early time, we can see that the images of vampires change little by little, as well as the themes, showing us different era characteristics.

4.1 The Transition of the Vampire Image

4.1.1 The Change of Appearance

In the early time, vampires were known as their horrific and bloodthirsty images. They are synonymous with demons. “With pale skin color, sinister in appearance, he lives on fresh human blood.” (Barber, 1988: 23) The vampire in Dracula had pale face, bent back, pointed ears, deep-set eyes, dry hands and sharp nails. Sleeping in the coffin, he was afraid of sun and still bloodthirsty. Later, in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, the vampires got completely out of horrible, ugly and evil image. “But then the vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon.” (Rice, 1991: 1) “He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost feline quality to his movements.” (Rice, 1991: 9) Instead, they became perfect creatures that possess elegance, beauty, intellect and eternal life. In the 21^st century, the images of vampires in The Twilight Saga have transcendental change, becoming more and more idolization. “I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine, or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful—maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.” (Meyer, 2005: 20) Instead of being middle-aged images in other vampire works, the Cullen siblings appear as high school students who are handsome and fashionable, driving luxury cars and living in a villa. In other vampire works, vampires are afraid of sun, because they will explode into smoke in the sunlight. However, in The Twilight Saga, rather than disappearing, the vampires just shine like diamonds when they are exposed to the sun. “Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn"t get used to it, though I’d been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday’s hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds embedded in the surface.” (Meyer, 2005: 260) These changes make the vampire images keep pace with the times and many people are crazy about it.

4.1.2 The Change of Heart

At the early stage, vampires were regarded as sinners and evil men, who were rejected by god. Therefore, at that time, vampires were just like cold-blooded animals. The vampire in Dracula is the typical one, who sucked Mina’s blood and also forced her to drink his blood, turning her into a vampire. This kind of vampire is just a real monster without knowing who he is and even having no thought and emotion, just moving by instinct.

Later, in Interview with the Vampire which was released in the 20^th century, the writer, Anne Rice, endued the vampire with human nature and human emotion:

“Killing is no ordinary act,” said the vampire. “One doesn’t simply glut oneself on blood.” He shook his head. “It is the experience of another’s life for certain, and often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again and again the experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I sucked the blood from Lestat’s wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is again and again a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the ultimate experience.” He said this most seriously, as if he were arguing with someone who held a different view. (Rice, 1991: 21)

As a vampire, Louis searches for the meaning of life, behavior standard. He still retains the human conscience and he will be regretful for his behavior after killing people for their blood. This kind of vampire is half human and half monster, as well as a compound of contradictions.

However, The Twilight Saga, from the aspect of vampire temperament, has its breakthrough. In this novel, instead of sucking human beings’ blood, vampires represented by the Cullen family just choose animals’, thus they call themselves as vegetarians:

He paused. “I can’t be sure, of course, but I’d compare it to living on tofu and soy milk; we call ourselves vegetarians, our little inside joke. It doesn’t completely satiate the hunger — or rather thirst. But it keens us strong enough to resist most of the time.” His tone turned ominous. (Meyer, 2005: 188)

Also, in stead of staying away from human beings, they act like ordinary people, going to school and having a job. It is worth mentioning that Carlisle is even a doctor, who can succeed in resisting the desire for blood and save people’s life. Under the leadership of Carlisle, the whole family lives harmoniously with human beings from age to age. These vampires’ deeds accord with their words. This kind of vampire is more human than monster and is the perfect unity of appearance and heart.

4.2 The Transition of the Theme

4.2.1 The Traditional Theme of Good and Evil

Most of the early vampire works reflect the theme of basic opposition between good and evil. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire is an evil devil, wanting to revenge on human and conquer them. The evil force represented by Dracula and the justice power represented by Van Helsing launch a fierce battle. In order to cater to the psychological needs of readers and the moral norms of the society at that time, in the end, the reason beats the indulgence and the justice prevails over the evil. In Nosferatu, a work that adapted from Dracula, the vampire is totally a monster and kills people everywhere. When Thomas find Nosferatu’s true identity and runs away, the vampire runs after him and spreads the plague along the way. Facing the fact that more and more people are killed, Thomas and his wife decide to fight with him. And after a tough fight, the vampire finally turns into a stream of smoke in the sun. The good prevails over the evil again.

4.2.2 The Theme of Reflection on Their Own

In Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice shows us the vampire’s inner world from the perspective of women. As vampires disconnect from people, Lestat, Louis and Claudia, they yearn for getting rid of loneliness at the bottom of their hearts, and they are eager to find out their values of being in human society. Lestat, a ruthless vampire, is complacent about his current status, considering himself immortal, free from the suffering of the earth, overlooking the earth like god. However, Louis, who still retains the human conscience, he doesn’t want to kill people for their blood, but he can’t control himself and lost in endless suffering. Claudia, a vampire child, always looks like six years old and never grows up. Although the way she looks never changes, her mind changes over time, after the passage of time, she begins to have a mature woman’s desires and feelings:

She was crazy about rings and bracelets that were not suitable for children. Her confident, straight-backed walk did not like a child’s, and she often bought perfume or gloves in small boutiques. I was never far away, and always uncomfortable--not because I feared anything in this vast city, but because I feared her. She’d always been the ‘lost child’ or the ‘orphan’ ’to her victims, and now it seemed she would be something else, something wicked and shocking to the passers-by who succumbed to her. (Rice, 1991: 158)

Therefore, the contradiction of her is so obvious. “Immortal” becomes a kind of inexpressible despair for Claudia because of her child’s face that never changes. By comparing the three of them, what we can realize is not just the supernatural ability of the vampires, but more about the discussion of human nature.

4.2.3The Theme of Love

Love is the eternal theme in literature. We can also find it in some vampire works and The Twilight Saga is the representative one. We seek our value of existence and essence of love with difficulty in the mechanized and informationized urban jungle. That is so similar to the vampires in The Twilight Saga who long for seeking kindness and true love, in order to get rid of solitude. (Wang Shuzhen, 2011: 46)Almost all of the vampires in The Twilight Saga have an inherent human nature - falling in love. But the main line in this novel is the love between Edward and Bella. It depicts a sweet but tough love between vampire and human. On the one hand, Edward knows that he could kill Bella easily with his uncontrolled thirsty for Bella’s blood; on the other hand, he loves Bella with his life, and it is a paradox that torments him very much. (Liu Fangxin, 2011: 13) In order to be with Edward forever, Bella even requires him with strong will to change her, but Edward doesn’t want to harm Bella, not to mention that turns Bella, his beloved, to an undead monster:

I looked down at my dress, fidgeting with a stray piece of chiffon. He waited in silence.

剩余内容已隐藏，请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：42100字