Comparison between Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Charlaine Harris's
Dead Until Dark
By, Reshma Varughese
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark are about vampires and the human women who love them. There are several interesting similarities and differences between Twilight and Dead Until Dark. Earlier movies and novels portrayed vampires as scary, unattractive, evil creatures and as the representation of death. In contrast, both True Blood’s Bill Compton and Twilight’s Edward Cullen, are attractive, chooses to make thoughtful decisions, becomes good citizen and dreams to be a husband to mortal women. They are both displayed as mainstreaming vampires that are trying to assimilate into society. The vampire Bill in Dead Until Dark depends on the synthetic blood and doesn’t feed off of humans other than volunteers. Similarly, Edward is referred to as a “vegetarian” in the movie Twilight. Another obvious similarity is that Sookie in Dead Until Dark and Edward in Twilight can read minds. Also, Bill and Bella have minds that are unreadable. Moreover, there are shape-shifting in both Twilight and Dead Until Dark. In True Blood, Sam is portrayed as a shapeshifter. In parallel, Twilight portrays werewolves as shapeshifters. The female characters in both the Twilight and True Blood are described as virgins and unlike other humans, both Sookie and Bella are above the influences of vampires. Similarly, in both the movie and the novel the head group of vampires is interested in the main female characters. In the movie, Volturi wants Bella to change and in the novel, Eric is interested in Sookie. In both the series the protagonist is a woman who finds love and comfort with a vampire. Furthermore, in Twilight there are both good and bad vampires however; the most important vampires are the Cullens and they chose to live with humans and not feed off them. Similarly, in Dead Until Dark, there are both good and bad vampires, however; two important vampire characters are Bill Compton and Eric Northman.
The biggest difference between the Twilight and Dead Until Dark is that the Twilight is aimed at a teenage audience and the characters in Twilight are high schoolers. Whereas, Dead Until Dark is aimed at adults and therefore, there are more sex and actions displayed. In the novel Dead Until Dark sex is something that the reader is introduced since the beginning when Sookie’s brother Jason enters the bar Merlotte’s: “Even Arlene tucked in her T-shirt when 26 Jason came in, and after four husbands she should have known a little about evaluating men” (Dead Until Dark, 6). Another difference is that the female character, Bella in Twilight is very dependent on the male vampire. In contrast, in True Blood, the male vampire is less dominating in his relationship with Sookie and Sookie is more independent and is employed. Furthermore, both the novels have female narrators; but the difference is that Sookie is a telepath and can read minds. Similarly, The age of the female narrators in both the novels is different where Bella is a student in high school and Sookie is a barmaid. Also, the world that Twilight’s Bella and True Blood’s Sookie live in are different. In Sookie’s world mainstreaming vampires are common whereas, in Bella’s world is not aware of vampires. As seen at the beginning of Twilight when Bella first met Edward she thinks “Was it because the day was finally coming to a close, or because I was waiting for his tight fist to loosen? It never did; he continued to sit so still it looked like he wasn’t breathing. What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behavior?” (Twilight, 21). Another difference is that Sookie doesn’t want to be a vampire whereas, Bella dreams for eternal life. Moreover, the fact that Bella and Edward have a child together makes Twilight different from all the other vampire series.
In conclusion, although there are several differences one thing that is common in both Twilight and Dead Until Dark is that the vampires are desired by the protagonists. The vampires in these series do not follow the traditional look and act of vampires which makes them interesting.
I like the parallels that you draw between the two new age vampire works. In both, vampires are very much romanticized. It is also interesting that the good vampires are always the ones that don’t feed on humans at all and instead hope to assimilate with them. After all, what they’re trying to get across is how can they be monsters if they act as human as possible, choosing to “mainstream”. I also think that it is interesting that the ability to read minds except for romantic interests plays a key role in the main relationships of these works. The inability to read their partner creates a fascination which of course has to turn into more because it is a man and a woman in each situation.
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