Comparison between Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark

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. 

What Makes a "Good" Vampire?

According to Charlaine Harris in “Dead Until Dark” a good vampire appears to be white, heterosexual, dressed in basic clothing (shop at Dillards), live alone, are monogamous, date humans, drink synthetic blood, and hopefully have ties to the confederacy, at least during the Civil War (“‘You fought for the Confederacy,’ I said wonderingly. ‘If you still had your uniform and wore it to the club the ladies would faint with joy,’” (60)).

Typically vampires are displayed in two ways in the novel:

“Mainstreamers” like Bill	“Nesting” vampires
Drink synthetic blood	Drink blood from fangbangers or glamour humans to take blood when they want.	Drinking blood appears to very much be a sexual nature because Bill often drinks from Sookie after he has sex with her and the first time she really sees his fangs is when she first goes to the Compton house and meets the main nesting vampires. A man, Jerry, is offered to Bill and begins rubbing up against him. As Sookie notes, “The strain in my vampire’s face was terrible to see. His fangs slid out. I saw him fully extended for the first time. The synthetic blood was not answering all Bill’s needs alright,” (73).
Bill is far from openly sexual and is pretty careful about not being too forward with Sookie. His sexuality is in question because he does have sex with Sookie plenty, but that doesn’t mean he has no interest in men at all. When Jerry rubs against him (as mentioned earlier), he does fully extend his fangs. While he doesn’t explicitly show a sexual interest, the phrases “fangs slid out” and “fully extended” do imply a sexual innuendo.	Nesting vampires are repeatedly shown to be open about their sexuality, to the disgust of the main character, Sookie. “Malcolm pulled the human male to him and gave him a long kiss. I began to feel sick. That kind of stuff is private,” (72). “The male vampire with the tattoos put his arm around Janella and rubbed her breasts. I could feel the blood drain out of my face. I was disgusted. It got worse. Janella, as lost to decency as the vampire, put her hand on his crotch and massaged,” (72).	Speaking of sexual activities, nesting vampires appear to be far more open about their sexuality and sexual activities. When Sookie visits the Compton house for the first time and meets the main nesting vampires of the novels, she is disgusted with how openly the vampires do sexual things, especially if it is homosexual in nature.
Live on their own (“‘Vampires like me, who live alone, are a little better reminded of their former humanity,’”(78).)	Live in groups (“‘When vampires live in nests,’ he said suddenly, ‘they often become more cruel because they egg each other on. They see others like themselves constantly, and so they are reminded of how far from being human they are,’” (78).)	The argument is made that vampires should live alone because the solitude makes them better, makes them more human. Vampires that nest are described as losing their humanity because they spend so much time with other vampires and see how different they are from human beings.

Courtney Sellars

Comparison between Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Coppola’s Dracula

Bram Stoker’s Dracula portrays the popular thoughts and beliefs of the conservative Victorian era whereas, Coppola’s film Dracula depicts the views of the liberal time. The characters and the plot in Bram Stoker’s Dracula contained hidden sexuality as men and woman in the Victorian era had to follow certain expectations. However, the film based on the novel Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola created in the liberal time emphasized on expressing the sexuality that was hidden in the novel.

The most significant difference between the Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Coppola’s film Dracula is in the relationship and interactions between the Dracula and Mina. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, there is no love or affection between Dracula and Mina. Whereas, in Coppola’s film Dracula and Mina love each other because they believe Mina is the reincarnation of Dracula’s dead beloved, Elisabeta. The theme of the original novel is the fight between the good souls and evil power. However, the alteration of the story to a love story in the film to impress the audience resulted in the loss of the original theme. Similarly, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mina is forced to drink Dracula’s blood and is portrayed as helpless and terrified. However, in the movie, Mina is given a choice to decide whether or not to drink his blood and she chooses to drink Dracula’s blood. Moreover, Dracula reveals that he loves Mina so much to let her be condemned to live the life he does. Thus, the movie shows the unconditional love between Dracula and Mina. Furthermore, Mina is portrayed as easily seduced in the movie. On the other hand, the novel portrays Mina as loyal to Jonathan and she hated Dracula for what he did to Lucy.

    Moreover, a woman kissing or having a sexual desire with more than one man was unacceptable during the Victorian era. Bram Stoker displays Mina as a devoted and loyal wife who studies shorthand to help Harker and helps Harker recover from his illness. Mina uses her natural maternal instinct to make the men around her feel better. Bram Stoker also portrays Lucy as one who desires to marry three men but is only legally allowed to marry one as seen “Why can’t they let a girl marry three men or as many as want her, and save all this trouble? But this is heresy, and I must not say it” (Stoker 91). Whereas, Coppola portrays both Mina and Lucy as women with sexual desires with more than one man. Mina is shown to have an affair with both Harker and the count. In one scene, Mina’s extreme sexual desires were displayed when she says “Yes my love, you’ve found me. I have wanted this to happen, I know that now. I want to be with you always.”

    Victorian readers wouldn’t have accepted Coppola’s ideas. They would’ve considered both Mina and Lucy as unfaithful. However, Coppola’s audience of the Liberal time will accept both Mina and Lucy from the film as women who has their own opinions and act on their will.