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Twilight Essay

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The Myth of the Vampire in Twilight

The myth of the vampire existed in a multitude of civilizations and cultures under various names such is strigoi (for the Romanian territory), Apotamkin, etc. But no matter the name, vampires will always refer to gothic creatures that drain the blood of humans, thus being monstrous.
The first writer to introduce the vampire in literature was Lord Byron in the eighteenth century, but the most significant writer to develop the myth was Bram Stoker. He is the „father” of the vampire as he gave a complete description of the vampire in his most famous book” Dracula”. After the release of the book, the myth of the vampire became extremely popular amongst writers and as a consequence the books whose main …show more content…

Another particularity of the eyes of a vampire is that they show whether a vampire feeds on human or animal blood. This is best shown in the baseball scene when James and the other vampires come and disrupt the Cullen’s game. The camera focuses on the eyes of every new vampire( which , as we were previously shown, attacked humans) and we can clearly notice that their eyes are scarlet red. So the redness of the eyes is an indicative of the fact that these vampires are not” vegetarians”.
The similarities stop here. There are definitely very few elements which are kept from all the previous books that present vampires, and to sum everything up we know that they have cold and pale skin, the fact that they drink blood and the fact that they are very fast and strong.
The differences are way more numerous that the similarities and in this part of the essay we are going to present just that.
Stephenie Meyer also introduces a lot of new elements. For instance the most important entirely new element is that blood has a distinguished smell, a smell which can trigger the vampires hunting instinct. Edward calls the smell of Bella’s blood „ a drug” and „his personal brand of heroin”.
First of all there is nothing that indicates Edward as a vampire apart from his cold and white skin( and the fact that he shines like diamonds but only in the sun). But if this were a novel written by let’s say Anne Rice, the vampire would definitely have fangs. Stephenie

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