Our first Dracula fishbowl discussion was a few weeks ago. My discussion topic was:

Bram Stoker is often credited with the creation of the vampire archetype. How was Dracula a caricature of people in his time and how are modern vampire characters different to that caricature? How does the change in the archetype reflect changes in our culture?

My thesis for this discussion was the image of “the vampire” is always changing with the different eras—it shows what people were afraid of, what people found attractive, and what people found intriguing.

“The vampire” changes as society’s interests change, and to what society likes and wants at a certain time. Dracula was written in the Victorian Era, and some themes of the novel include evil, forbidden, death, blood, and lust because those are all things society was becoming interested at that time. The whole vampire archetype started in folklore when vampires were repulsive, horrifying creatures that people wanted nothing to do with. Now, in today’s stories vampires have evolved into romantic, elegant, attractive beings. In Twilight for example, most of the vampires are the protagonists  and are seen as heroes that protect humans (they’re conveniently “vegetarian” meaning they only feed on animal blood). These vampires are handsome, perfect, inhumanly gorgeous creatures that are as close to human as you can get without actually being one. Twilight features these kinder, gentler, humanized vampires because people are currently interested and intrigued by the idea of beauty and immortality. In comparison, Dracula is meant to be frightening and thrilling and the vampires are the antagonists of the story. He is an evil, bloodthirsty creature meant to be as far from human and as close to demon as you can get and he represents everything that isn’t said or done in society.

The actual discussion went well–sometimes in fishbowls its more of a debate and everyone is arguing with each other, but this was a discussion with everybody agreeing for the most part and adding on to each others points.