There seem to be as many different ways to kill a vampire as there are vampire stories.
In Dracula, Lucy becomes a vampire. Through a newspaper article, Dr. Van Helsing figures out that she is hurting young children. He takes Dr. Seward to the cemetery where she is buried to keep watch. At one point they open her coffin to find her body missing. Seward, who doesn’t believe Van Helsing, suggests that her body has been taken by grave robbers. They return the next afternoon to find Lucy in her coffin, lips deep red and cheeks rosy as if she were still alive, but sleeping. Van Helsing says that to kill her they must “cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and ... drive a stake through her body” (221).
Other books, movies, and TV series claim there are other methods to killing vampires. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as well as many movies, the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through its heart. There is an old myth that I’ve heard that says that if you decapitate a vampire and throw its head in a fast-moving river, the river will trap the vampire’s spirit, thereby killing it. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight argues that the only way to be sure a vampire is dead is to tear the body into small pieces and then scatter the remains. There are other books and many movies that portray vampires as slightly more human, dying only from serious injury (serious being more serious than a normal human being, but not to the point where they have to have their heads severed from their bodies).
Though there are differences in the techniques to vampire slaying there is one thing that they generally have in common. Most killings involve severe mutilation of the vampire’s body.
In Dracula, Lucy becomes a vampire. Through a newspaper article, Dr. Van Helsing figures out that she is hurting young children. He takes Dr. Seward to the cemetery where she is buried to keep watch. At one point they open her coffin to find her body missing. Seward, who doesn’t believe Van Helsing, suggests that her body has been taken by grave robbers. They return the next afternoon to find Lucy in her coffin, lips deep red and cheeks rosy as if she were still alive, but sleeping. Van Helsing says that to kill her they must “cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and ... drive a stake through her body” (221).
Other books, movies, and TV series claim there are other methods to killing vampires. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” as well as many movies, the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through its heart. There is an old myth that I’ve heard that says that if you decapitate a vampire and throw its head in a fast-moving river, the river will trap the vampire’s spirit, thereby killing it. Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight argues that the only way to be sure a vampire is dead is to tear the body into small pieces and then scatter the remains. There are other books and many movies that portray vampires as slightly more human, dying only from serious injury (serious being more serious than a normal human being, but not to the point where they have to have their heads severed from their bodies).
Though there are differences in the techniques to vampire slaying there is one thing that they generally have in common. Most killings involve severe mutilation of the vampire’s body.
2 comments:
I would like to find out more about the killings of vampires because you do a good job at giving different pieces of evidence of ways they might be killed. I think you should of gotten into more detail. The only thing that is unclear is how much of what is going on is myth and what is fact.And are these findings scientific research that you found or all from the book?
How more specific would you like me to be? (No, that wasn't sarcasm, though it's hard to tell from my writing.) What is it exactly that you'd like to know more about? Ask and I'll do my best to answer you.
On your "what is myth and what is fact" comment: everything is a myth because the existence of vampires (in the sense in which we are speaking) is not proven. It's like the yeti or the loch ness monster: there have been accounts and claims but so far there has been to definitely prove that vampires exist. Everything that I write comes from some form of media, whether it be a book, a TV show, or a movie.
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