Force of Habit

One topic I was thinking about writing in my blog last week was the similarities between the vampires and Robert Neville. I know I had discussed how Neville was a hero in my opinion, but I have read my peer's comments and thought back to this topic and started to rethink my original claim. It occurred to me while I was reading, this week and last week, that Neville shares some qualities with his blood sucking enemies. Both Neville and the vampires of Matheson's novel are creatures of habit. Neville has lived alone fighting off the vampires by himself for quite awhile and his day to day activities turn into a daily routine of “carrying away of bodies, the repairing of the house exterior, the hanging of garlic” (Matheson 50). “After breakfast he threw th paper plate and cup into the trash box and brushed his teeth” which Neville saw as his “one good habit” (Matheson 23). While he stayed cooped up in his house at night because of the vampires outside, the monotony continued. “Every night it was the same. He'd be reading and listening to music. Then he'd start to think about soundproofing the house, then he'd think about the women” (Matheson 19). He would try to break up the routine but in frustration he'd give up almost immediately. “He'd go to bed and put the plugs in his ears. It was what he ended up doing every night anyway” (Matheson 21). Once in bed, “his mind spoke the words it spoke ever night. Dear God, let the morning come. He dreamed about Virginia and he cried out in his sleep and his fingers gripped the sheets like frenzied talons” (Matheson 22). Day after day he did the same things and more than the vampires, he realized “monotony was the greatest obstacle” (Matheson 111). Neville never realized how much alike him and the vampires were. He would ask himself “why didn't they leave him alone? Did they think they could all have him? Were they so stupid they thought that? Why did they keep coming every night? After five months, you'd think they'd give up and try elsewhere” (Matheson 20). Neville thought they were stupid but they were just doing the same thing he was doing. They were trying to survive and the way they knew how to do that was to do the same things every day. Part of their survival comes from “staying inside by day” (Matheson 27). Neville goes out during the day and hunts and then spends his nights inside. The vampires are the exact opposite of that; they spend their days inside while their nights are spent “outside on the lawn, [their] dark figures st[and] like silent soldiers on duty” 'hunting' him (Matheson 22). Lastly when Neville goes out to collect the bodies the next day of the vampires that were sacrificed, “they were almost always women” (Matheson 23). The vampires in Matheson's novel are just as habitual as Neville is.

What makes a hero?

“What do you think of Robert Neville as our 'hero'? Is he a hero at all?”

At first when I read this question, the answer that came to me immediately was no, Robert Neville is not a hero. I thought, who has he protected/saved other than himself? I guess I could say that he was his own hero but not anybody elses. But then I started to think about what it is that makes a hero. To me, a hero is someone who is brave in the face of imminent danger. A hero is someone who is strong and never gives up. And lastly, although not always successful, a hero is someone who tries to protect others. And when I thought about what it takes to be a hero, I decided that Robert Neville is in fact one of them.
Robert Neville is brave. Day after day, Neville goes “from house to house... us[ing] up all his stakes” by killing all the vampires he can find before sunset (Matheson 28). There were times when he would “ha[ve] to go to the burning pit everyday for weeks at a time” to dispose of the ones that died in front of his house (Matheson 26). He has even had to face those that needed his blood; those who's “need was their only motivation” (Matheson 23). Even when “a sound of helpless terror filled his throat” at the sight of the vampires “in front of his house, waiting,” he fought through them and made it into his house alive (Matheson 42). Which is why I consider him to be a man who never gives up.
Robert Neville is strong. Because of this germ, or bacteria that infected the town, Neville lost his wife and daughter. And while he often questioned “why not go out” and give himself up to the vampires to end his suffereing and “to be free of them,” he refused to give up. He knew “be[ing] one of them” would have ended the pain for him but it wasn't an option (Matheson 29). He vowed to “kill every mother's son of [the vampires] before [he would] give in” (Matheson 30). He also hoped that there were “others like him [that] existed somewhere” (Matheson 30).
Robert Neville is a protector. While his wife and daughter, Kathy were still alive, he tried his best to take care of them. With dust everywhere from the storms, Neville built “a tent over Kathy's bed to keep the dust from her face” (Matheson 53). When his wife first got sick, he would order her to “'go back to bed'” so that she could get her rest and get better (Matheson 54). After they died, he searched fro answers to his questions about vampires so that one day he would be able “to cure those still living” (Matheson 87).
At first glance, I did not think that Neville was a hero. However, with everything that I believe to be characteristics of a hero, Robert Neville, in my opinion is one after all.

Dracula Meets Wanda

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwn3BfhaBqE

The online artifact that I chose was a video I found on YouTube called Jim Carrey – Dracula meets Wanda. All I did was type in Dracula and this was one of the videos that came up. I chose to do a video for my online artifact because I am a visual person and being a film student, I enjoy watching other peoples work. I chose this video in particular because I often tend to lead towards humor and comedy. What I've read of Bram Stoker's Dracula so far isn't funny at all, its serious so I thought this video would be a nice contrast.

In this sketch from the show In Living Color, Jim Carrey portrays Dracula, while Jamie Foxx plays Dracula's victim. The video starts out with dramatic music in the background which misleads the viewer. But as soon as the blanket is pulled off of Wanda, the comedy aspect is revealed. The whole time the two of them are talking, Wanda does not react as though she is in the midst of a blood sucking vampire that could kill her at any moment. She's actually concerned and maybe even a little embarrassed that her 'face' isn't on. But even though she is aware of what he is, she is willing to be his eternal partner.

More comedy ensues when Wanda turns the lights in the room on and Dracula sees who he has been pining for. He is then very anxious to get away from the situation he put himself in. Here the roles have almost been reversed; the vampire wants to leave, while the 'victim' is trying to convince the monster to stay. Dracula then tries to kill himself with a stake to the heart so he can avoid a life with Wanda. Wanda stops this and tells him to kill her instead. Dracula sees this as his chance to get away and lets the sunlight in so he ultimately burns up. Still oblivious, Wanda assumes she was just too hot for Dracula who in turn burned up at the sight of her.

Jonathan Harker, the victim from Stoker's Dracula reacts very differently to the situation he is put in, being trapped with some kind of evil creature. Where Wanda may have acted embarrassed and concerned about her appearance, Jonathan “think[s he] must have been mad” because “[he] behaved much as a rat does in a trap” (Stoker 32).

In the YouTube clip, Jim Carrey's Dracula does not try to hid the fact that he is a vampire. Stoker's Dracula, on the other hand, tries very hard to keep this a secret and Jonathan is in the dark for quite some time, not realizing exactly who it is he's been staying with. He's still not sure why “all the people at Bistritz and on the coach had some terrible fear for [him]” (Stoker 32). He doesn't know why they gave him “the crucifix,... the garlic,... the wild rose,... and the mountain ash” (Stoker 32-33). He hasn't figured that out yet but he's scared.

The video clip and the book show very different interactions between the vampire and his 'victim'. In Jim Carrey – Dracula Meets Wanda, Dracula comes to Wanda because he loves her. He has traveled many many miles just to be with her forever. In the book Dracula, Dracula is just out for blood; he needs it to survive. But both Draculas want their 'victims' to themselves. When three young women attempt to 'kiss' Jonathan before Dracula gets to him, the vampire becomes angry and possessive of his guest. He shouts to the women, “How dare you touch him, any of you? How dare you cast eyes on him when I had forbidden it? Back, I tell you all! This man belongs to me!” (Stoker 43).

It is very soon after this incident that Jonathan is given a clue as to his future life. He was told to write three letters, “'the first should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June 29.'” It was this that told him what “the span of [his] life” was going to be (Stoker 45). He feared for his life unlike Wanda who didn't seem to care what happened to hers.

I like the contrast between these to works; Jim Carrey – Dracula Meets Wanda is comedic while Dracula is dramatic and serious. The two are completely different from each other but display two different perceptions of a famous tale.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Norton & Company, 1996. Print.

"Jim Carrey - Dracula Meets Wanda." YouTube. Web. 10 Oct 2010. .

Carmilla

I very much enjoyed the reading of Carmilla this week. It was one of those stories that I couldn't put down until I finished it. It was easy enough to understand and I liked learning about the mystery of Carmilla as the story went on. One thing that stuck out to me while I was reading, was the reaction of the victims after they had been bit my Carmilla, or Mircalla. Apart from the Twilight book series, I have never read any other Vampire novel. Because of this, the only picture I had in my head that would happen after someone was bitten was a body writhing in pain, screaming for help from the extreme burning sensation they were feeling. The way Le Fanu wrote it was very different. Before bitten by the vampire, the victim experiences things I would have thought would come after. It seems the mere presence of Carmilla also know as Mircalla effects the person she takes an interest in. First of all, the girl will “lose her looks and heath” but no source of the illness can be found (Le Fanu 304). Then they are “visited by appalling dreams; then... by a spectre, sometimes resembling Mircalla [Carmilla], sometimes in the shape of a beast, indistinctly seen, walking round the foot of [their] bed, from side to side” (Le Fanu 304). After this all has happened, the victim experiences sensations, “one, not unpleasant, but very peculiar” that “resembled the flow of an icy stream against her breast” (Le Fanu 305). I'm gonna throw out my opinion that this is from the cold body temperature of the vampire. This is when the bite actually takes place. The victim feels “something like a pair of large needles pierce [them], a little below the throat, with a very sharp pain. A few nights after, followed a gradual and convulsive sense of strangulation; then came unconsciousness” (Le Fanu 305). Both Laura and the General's daughter experienced the exact same occurrences, but Laura did not die from them like the General's daughter. I would have thought being bitten by a vampire would have come with a lot more pain and suffering than what was described in the book. Unlike the Twilight series, the girls were not in complete agony after they had been bitten nor did they feel a burning sensation. While it's quite terrible that the General's daughter died, what she and Laura both went through seemed somewhat peaceful. While reading, I did not get the sense that Laura was in a great deal of pain nor was she suffering. She seemed blissfully unaware of what Carmilla was and what she was doing to her. I think the love and the attraction blinded Laura and did not allow her to figure out what was happening to her until the General filled in the blanks. Overall it was surprising to read about the process one of Carmilla's victims goes through before and after being bitten by the vampire.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

For this weeks blog I'll start out by responding to comments made on mine from last week. Wuthering Heights would be a very different story, with a very different mood if it was being told by Heathcliff, instead of Nelly. If Heathcliff was telling the story, I would think it would be a much more bitter tale rather than a love story. We would only get to see his point-of-view and how he felt about things. With Nelly, she knew both of the people involved in the relationship and she talked to both of them so she has a better, non bias look on what happened. If Heathcliff had been telling the story, we may have looked at Catherine as a cold hearted woman who was horrible to Heathcliff once she returned from the Grange. Instead Nelly tells Lockwood that Catherine really loved Heathcliff but the Linton's had money and had been very kind to her while she was recovering. Lockwood and Nelly are important parts to this novel. To me they represent two different periods of time, Lockwood being the present, and Nelly being the past. Lockwood comes into this world and meets Heathcliff who is rude, and doesn't seem to care about anyone but himself, and without Nelly, this would be our only impression of him. But then Nelly takes us through their past and we, the reader, begins to understand how Heathcliff became the person that he is in the present.

This week, as suggested, I watched one of the film adaptations of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The version I watched is the most recent one I believe, Peter Kosminsky's Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, made in 1992 starring Ralph Fiennes (most of us know him as Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter) as Heathcliff, and Juliette Binoche as Catherine. This film adaptation was different than the novel. For starters, Nelly and Lockwood were in the movie but they weren't narrating the story. Lockwood was only seen or mentioned in the very beginning of the film and the very end. The narrator of the film is Emily Bronte herself. She comes across Wuthering Heights and three graves and decides to write a story about it. In the beginning, its as if she is writing the novel as we see it unfold in front of us. She will say what the characters say before they say them. Actually seeing the characters and how they acted made me feel differently for them. When I read the novel, I disliked Catherine and the way she treated Heathcliff like she was better than him. I also felt sympathetic towards Heathcliff because I knew his heart had been broken and that is why he was acting the way that he did. But watching the film I felt differently, the opposite actually. I disliked Heathcliff because he seemed really evil and ruthless and horrible towards everyone. Catherine was dainty and seemed weak to me. I felt bad watching how Heathcliff treated her and everyone else. It was strange to me how differently I felt between reading the novel and watching one of the film adaptations.

Wuthering Heights vs. Fried Green Tomatoes

Even though I had read this novel before in high school, I found it difficult to keep track of all the characters. I had to write them all down and look them up in my notes when I would come across them in the book a second time. I was very pleased and excited to apply something I had learned about in another class to this novel. Two things that I wanted to write about were the narration style, and the relationships in the book. The narration style of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte was interesting for me to rediscover. I had forgotten about the two narrators from the last time I had read this book a few years ago but remembered as soon as Mr. Lockwood started asking Nelly about Heathcliff's past. Coincidently I found this style of narration to be very similar to a movie I had screened in a film class last week, Fried Green Tomatoes, which is an adaptation of the book Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. I found the two narrators from Wuthering Heights to be comparable to two of the main characters in Fried Green Tomatoes. I believe Mr. Lockwood to be similar to Evelyn Couch, who's stories both take place in present time. The second narrator, Nelly and the film's Mrs. Threadgoode's both take place in the past. Mr. Lockwood and Evelyn Couch represent the 'real world'; they are from present times telling their experiences through their eyes as they see it unfolding in front of them. Nelly and Mrs. Threadgoode are the storytellers in both cases. They are telling a story of something they experienced at one time but not in the present. They both are giving sort of a history lesson to the other narrator while at the same time filling us, the audience, in as well. Both works go back and forth between the past and the present. The relationships in both the book and the film were similar as well. Each story told in the past focuses on the relationship between two people, in Wuthering Heights its Cathy and Heathcliff, and in Fried Green Tomatoes its Idgie and Ruth. Each pair is introduced to each other at a young age although they react differently. In Tomatoes, Idgie liked Ruth upon meeting her only to dislike her years later and then ultimately end up together. In Heights, Cathy did not like Heathcliff when she met him for the first time. In fact when “[Cathy] learnt the master had lost her whip” as he was taking care of Heathcliff, she “spit[] at the stupid little thing” and “refused to have it in bed with [her]” (Bronte 34). They eventually carry on a love affair only to break up and marry other people even though they still loved each other. Even after her death, Heathcliff still longs for “[his] heart's darling” and wishes for her, Cathy, to come “once more” (Bronte 26).

The Vampyre

This weeks reading was difficult for me to get through. The sentences were very long and complex and at times hard for me to understand. One part that I understood right away and found interesting was the beginning of the story where the vampire is being described. “His peculiarities caused him to be invited to every house; all wished to see him, and those who had been accustomed to violent excitement... were pleased at having something in their presence capable of engaging their attention” (Polidori 7). At first this struck me as odd. If this guy was a vampire then why weren't people afraid of him? Vampires, when first created at least when portrayed on film, were visibly different than normal people, and not in a good way. I just watched the movie Nosferatu, which is the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, in another class. The Vampire in the movie, Nosferatu, is facially deformed with a rather large nose, dark eyes, pale skin, and claw like fingers. This is what I expected to read about in The Vampyre. Instead I was reminded of the effect Edward Cullen has on girls and women today. Even though he is a fictional character, there are people who “wish[] to see him” and if he was real, i'm sure he would be “invited to every house” (Polidori 7). People seem to have this fascination with him because of the way he looks, or rather the way Robert Pattinson looks portraying him in the movie, and the way he acts. The ladies particularly seem taken with him just like the women in The Vampyre were taken with “the vampire”. Many women “attempted to win his attentions, and gain, at least, some marks of what they might term affection” (Polidori 7). They would do anything to get him to notice them like one Lady Mercer who “threw herself in his way, and did all but put on the dress of a mountebank, to attract his notice” (Polidori 7). I was surprised at how similar this description and reaction were to the vampire entertainment of today. Today's portrayals of vampires are genuinely good looking, buff men and women who want to be loved like everyone else.