Twilight is Fun to Tear Apart & Looking Back on Literary Theory

    Within the reigns of The New Dawn of Vampire Literature, a class I never expected to take, I learned much more than I expected. While I thought the class would merely focus on vampires and analyzing literature, I also got to experience (and learn more about) more developed literary theory than I had encountered so far. We did a lot of work with literary analysis using different types of theory, which I ended up having a lot more fun with than I expected. Since I had so much to say on the topic, I would have to say that Twilight is the piece of literature that I had the most fun with. I particularly liked criticizing the novel from a feminist perspective.

     Twilight is often looked at as an anti-feminist piece of literature, since Bella is (in my opinion) such a helpless, dependent protagonist. A classic example of her submissive personality is after being saved by Edward by a group of men. “’Drink,’ he ordered. I sipped at my soda obediently, and then drank more deeply, surprised by how thirsty I was” (Meyer 44). Bella, unable to think for herself, is always in need of some direction or a man in charge. This is just one example of many ways to tear apart the text with feminist theory. Though it is easy to look like a bra-burning man hater when using feminist theory, I really just enjoyed the opportunities to scrutinize Twilight presented in nearly every scene.

Literary theory, as a whole, was a new concept to me. I have been writing around a dozen papers each semester of college so far and yet have never taken a theory class nor had it explained to me in a classroom setting. I think this is a drawback to modern American university systems, because since I learned theory in this class, I already feel like I can develop my ideas into a much more thorough and coherent thesis, which makes for writing better papers.

Personally, I now feel that literary theory should be mandatory for incoming first years in university, because it is such a useful tool. In my academic future, especially when in other seminars and when writing my senior thesis, I know that the literary theory methods I learned in this tutorial will definitely be a huge help. I have always had an issue with developing my thesis thoroughly and leaving gaps in my reasoning, but now that I know how to dig deeper to get to the meat of a subject, I feel like that will not be a problem in my future.

Truthfully, I thought the tutorial accompanying the seminar had no faults. We learned a lot about literary theory, discussed the texts as thoroughly as we needed to, and got to brainstorm very often. We also didn’t do the same thing every day; our curriculum was always mixed up, so it was never boring. The seminar was also interesting, though the same agenda every day (student led presentations) became a bit drab. For that portion of the class, I recommend maybe less presentations and more of other activities to keep the students interested and willing to learn. Overall, though, The New Dawn of Vampire Literature was never a class I expected to get into and I really had a fun time in the course. I learned things I would not have learned otherwise and was introduced to literature I hadn’t had a chance to delve into in the past.

Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight. New York: Little Brown & Co, 2005. Print.

New Age Vampires; A Job Well Done.

A)                I just finished season one of the Vampire Diaries and I must say that I am very intrigued. The series begins as a normal cliché drama about how hard high school is and how dreamy vampires are depicted nowadays, however season one ended leaving the viewer with so much more. What began as a modern and corny take on our view of vampires, turned out to be an actually clever and interesting series far from what the other vampire literature I have read.

                   My initial thought on this series was that it was going to be similar to Twilight; young girl falls for the hot new vampire in town. I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be nothing like I expected. The characters and the plot of this series is captivating and about as realistic as a TV show about vampires and get. The protagonist, Elena, is a young girl struggling with the issues that high school brings. In this way she is similar to Bella, from Twilight. She is sad and lonely because of the loss of her parents and is trying to find her place in the world that has changed so much. However, this is where the similarities stop. Elena is a strong-willed, independent, beautiful girl who grows up immensely within the first season alone; whereas Bella’s character is pretty much the same annoying, dependent, whinny seventeen year old throughout the entire series. Elena does fall for the handsome vampire, Stefan, but she maintains her sense of self throughout her experience. Furthermore, Stefan is nothing like Edward (thank God). He is a bit strange and curious like Edward, but his character has much more depth. He is extremely caring and protective of Elena while still allowing her to live her life and experience things on her own. Stefan acknowledges Elena's weaknesses, but at the same time recognizes and respects her strengths. He is hardly ever hovering over her or locking her away in his home to protect her from the dangers that the town is facing.

                This story contains many of the same themes as the other novels we have read. It has first person narration in the form of diary entries (similar to Dracula) that Elena and Stefan keep so in almost every episode we hear the direct thoughts of the protagonist human, as well as the vampire. Also, the theme of good v. evil is extremely prevalent throughout the season. Initially, we have Damon, Stefan’s brother, who is the quintessential bad boy vampire. He comes into town, killing as he pleases, having zero remorse for his actions. Then, we have the evil vampires that return from the past, seeking vengeance on the town for what happened to them hundreds of years ago. Because of the latter, we actually get to see character growth from Damon, which is always the intriguing part of cinema, watching the characters develop and relating to their struggles. Damon’s behavior shifts from evil vampire, to an actual friend of Elena. This is much different from what we saw in Interview with the Vampire, where Lestat continued to be the evil vampire he was in the beginning, and there was no shade of grey between good and evil. Here we have a more fuzzy area, where evil isn’t always as evil as we think it to be.

                Another aspect that I thoroughly enjoyed is how well they blended the new, modern view of vampires, with the old, traditional features. We have teenagers going to school and living amongst vampires, just like in Twilight and True Blood, but it is not all romance and false depictions. Vampire Diaries actually makes it believable that vampires could exist amongst humans, which I think is something that the other series were lacking. The way in which they depict the killings, the mind control, and the manipulation make it very traditional to how vampires were initially introduced into literature and film. These are very important features of vampires that are what initially drew me to them; the fear of the other. They don’t sparkle in the sunlight, they don’t always have control over their hunger, and they can be killed fairly easily. Now, this is only season one, so who knows what the rest of the series has in store for us. But thus far, I think that for the reasons I mentioned, this is by far my favorite piece of work that we have studied.

B)                This course and tutorial have opened up a new outlook on literature for me. The theories and analysis that we have done over these past eight weeks has been something that I never did while reading novels. Although initially I found the constant digging and interpreting to be slightly annoying, now it is something that I find I actually enjoy doing and it is definitely going to carry on to every book I read from now on.

                Thinking too deeply into things that someone has written has never been something I thought to do, perhaps because I did not know how to go about doing it. Now that I have learned how to approach literature from such a view, I find that it really does help understand the text better. For instance New Historicism was an important aspect in learning about Dracula because the novel played directly off of how things were during that time. The fear of the un-known and the lack of information/certainty about such unknown things is what made that book so frightening. Interview with the Vampire’s approach on opening the door to the mind of the other was fascinating as well, especially reading it right after Dracula. Two completely different ways of looking at the same subject matter. This tutorial was extremely helpful in reading these novels; and the theories and approaches we learned opened my eyes to things I probably would have missed had I read these works on my own. I would not change a thing about the tutorial; it was a very interesting and enjoyable experience.