Category: Reading

My Immortal

Written by Evanescence

Song

Amy Lee (the singer of the band Evanescence) wrote this song in respect to her sister, who unfortunately passed away.  Its inner meaning is the feeling we have after someone has passed. How we remember them, all the memories we had with them, the feeling deep inside us. This is our known ‘grieving’ term that we associate with. This song speaks of this grieving process. I personally cannot relate to the so-called ‘grieving process’ as I have not had anyone that is so close to my emotional state that has passed away. I cannot imagine or even connect with what this song is telling me. However, this grieving process is very common, everyone experiences it in their life, whether it be short or long. Soon or eventually I will be able to relate to this. Yet, by listening to each word in this song, it has given me a great understanding of what it possibly could be. “I wish that you would just leave ‘Cause your presence still lingers here And it won’t leave me alone” Here she sings of his unnatural presence, which is the grieving emotion, and how it is always new, even if someone has grieved before, it will always be different because whomever the person is and how significant they were to oneself. She furthermore explains the pain behind it saying “These wounds won’t seem to heal, this pain is just too real”, this gives me an even bigger picture that it may is inside our heads, yet it is both mentally and physically painful to experience. 

Additionally, this song is under the ‘gothic’ genre, as it sings of death and grief, but it also includes the love of which Amy had and still has towards her sister, with which all this love meant she was closer to her sister, and hence her pain is felt more.

Dracula

Written by Bram Stoker

Extended Text

Dracula, a famous and classic gothic novel. This novel has been converted and adapted into movies, TV shows and many other books.

In summary, this novel tells the story of a young man named Jonathan Harker, who is an English lawyer. He travels to the Eastern European country of Transilvania, to Castle Dracula. As he makes his way, the local residents warn him by gifting him crucifixes and other charms that prevent evil. There were all repeatedly saying words, which later Harker translates to ‘Vampire’. The closer he comes to the castle the more frightened he becomes, however to his surprise, Count Dracula is dressed respectably and is very well mannered. But, in a matter of days, Harker realises he is a prisoner in the castle. Although trapped, Harker explores and investigates further into Count Dracula and his characteristics, only to find that Count Dracula has supernatural powers and has devilish desires.

One desire, of which Harker discovers is when, one evening he was attacked by three seductive female vampires….however, Count claims towards them that.. “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! Beware how you meddle with him or you’ll have to deal with me.” During this moment, I found it very spine-chilling, Bram Stoker put a lot of detail when describing the females approaching him that is created great tension and adding a sexual element to it as well, an example of this is “…she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth…” and this moment brought strong tension towards me as a reader.

Further on, within the story, it also speaks of Harker’s fiancé, named Mina Murray, who lives in England. Mina and her friend Lucy one day come across a shipwreck, all crew are missing and their captain is dead. The ship was carrying multiple boxes of earth, one of which is Count Dracula. Later, Lucy is found pale and ill, with two pierced teeth marks in her neck. “She seemed like a nightmare of Lucy as she lay there, the pointed teeth, the blood-stained, voluptuous mouth, which made one shudder to see, the whole carnal and unspirit- ed appearance, seeming like a devilish mockery of Lucy’s sweet purity.”, During this moment, once again the use of detail is incredible and really helped me as a reader illustrate what was being said very clearly. 

I don’t want to give out too much information from the story, as I personally think that it is a great read and I very much recommend it. One thing I found, which I personally really enjoyed was Bram’s use of detail when describing anything within the book. In the few examples, I have mentioned before, each of those made me so intrigued and passionate to continue to read as I could clearly understand the moment in the book as well as being able to fully picture it inside my head, which most books these days don’t tend to do. Once again, I personally love the concept of Vampires, as I also mentioned in my reading response on “The Interview with the Vampire”. I just find them such intriguing creatures, and because of my passion, I found this book so relatable to myself. 

A major gothic and obvious element in this novel is the supernatural aspect to it. Count Dracula, among the three seductive females and Lucy, were all Vampires. Each was stronger and faster than humans, and each was immortal. Another gothic element is the setting, the castle is set in a very stereotypical, dark and mysterious area. Closed off from society and gloomy. And Vampires tend to have a stereotypical, non-social aspect about them, despite the fact that they feed off humans. 

Coraline

Movie

Coraline is a spooky and mysterious movie, and from this, many critics have discussed weather Coraline is a children’s movie or not. They have discussed this due to the fact that there is a major need for a certain type of intellect one needs to be able to watch the movie to be able to totally understand what’s going on, and in my personal opinion, I also agree on this statement. The storyline goes as follows, a young girl named Coraline moves into a new house with her Mum and Dad. In this new home of hers, she finds herself incredibly bored, so she decides to explore the new surroundings. She comes across a small secret door, cut away into the wall of the living room.  This door leads to an alternate world, where it very closely imitates her real world. In this alternate world, all characters contain ‘buttons’ for eyes, and she has an “other mother” and an “other father”. However, she figures out that her “other mother” tries to keep her forever by taking away Coraline’s ‘real’ parents. Thus from this, Coraline goes on and tries to get her family back and return to her real world again.

Within this movie, there are a number of gothic elements used. One of which is the setting. Coraline’s new house is a shared building where there a strange man who lives upstairs and two old ladies who live downstairs. Personally, the building it self-has a strange haunting display about it, especially in relation to the suspicious neighbours. In the alternate world, her neighbours are younger, or what Coraline see’s as ‘better versions of themselves’. For example, the old ladies, were old, weak and very plump looking, whereas, in the alternative world, they were slender, young woman doing acrobatics. The same story goes for the man who lives upstairs, in the real world he was a grumpy old man, but in the alternate world, he wasn’t actually present, and instead, his rats performed a show. All of this, for me personally at least, I found very overwhelming. I was overwhelmed because of the trace of confusion mixed with a slight disturbance created a large gothic aroma or vibe. And this is in relation to the setting.

Another gothic element is the tone and the emotions coming from Coraline. Coraline is very emotional, and her emotions throughout the movie influence the tone, her emotions also state that she is a strong gothic protagonist, where her actions are driven off her emotions. An example of this is Coraline, being as young as she is, is highly curious, hence why she discovered this alternate world in the first place. Further on when Coraline is upset we sense her upset in the tone as well. Coraline is also a great heroine, she’s brave, smart and single handily takes down a monstrous creature (the “other mother”).

Speaking of ‘eyes’, in the alternate world, all characters have buttons for eyes, and within the movie it states that “the eyes are the windows to your soul”, thus the “other mother” wanted Coraline to sew buttons on, in order for this “other mother” to completely trap her forever. Eyes in this movie had great symbolic utilization.

In Conclusion, I personally really enjoyed watching Coraline, and will definitely watch again. I do believe it is definitely a movie you need to watch more than once to fully understand it, and I must confess I was pretty confused in many parts during this movie, hence why I agree to the fact that “is this actually a children’s movie?”, but either way, it was a great movie. I can’t personally relate to any of the characters in this movie, nor the storyline, but I did, however, find it of interest. It does remind me of the movie “Alice in Wonderland” a lot due to the ‘other world’ concept, which I find really cool and interesting. I often ask myself things like what would my ‘other world’ be like, especially after watching Coraline. Which this concept also makes me nervous. 

Interview with the Vampire

Movie

Hence the title of the movie, Interview with the Vampire, it tells the story of a Vampire named Louis, being interviewed by a biographer. Louis, who is 200 years old, tells this unnamed biographer his life story. His story begins at the same time as when his life ends. Louis’s brother dies alongside their mother and this sends him down a suicidal path, yet this Vampire named Lestat introduces him to immortality. Together, they become companions, and Louis learns the ways of the Vampire lifestyle from Lestat. However, one of the ‘vampire ways’ is that they must drink fresh blood from humans to the point of death. Louis doesn’t enjoy drinking from humans, as he doesn’t have the tendency or drive to kill innocent beings. Yet, his thirst for blood only grows stronger and he sucks the blood of a young child, whose mother had just passed away from the plague. Louis realises what he has done part way through drinking her blood, the girl it left unconscious and the only way to relieve her of her pain is to continue to drink from her, eventually killing her or to turn her into a vampire as well. He chooses to turn her into a vampire. Now the three of them are like a small family and travel to New Orleans, America. 

First and foremost, I found that this movie wasn’t intended to be a ‘horror’ movie to scare people, however within the movie, it did include traditional horror movie attributes such as it’s supernatural deception and soullessness of those supernatural beings. As a consequence of this, this then leads to the classic and obvious gothic element within this film, is the supernational beings, Vampires.

The whole movie portrays the lifestyle and atmosphere a vampire would possibly obtain in his or her’s immortal life. From this, the tone and emotions within this film expressed the issues of what being a vampire would be like. In the film, because Louis turned the little girl into a vampire, she was going to stay looking like a little girl for the rest of her immortal life, and throughout the film, she ages to over 30 years old and we could see her frustration of wanting to have a body of a proper woman. I could personally feel her frustration, I can only imagine the supernatural in a child’s body for the rest of my life would be the absolute worst. Not only that but because she was stuck in a woman’s body everyone surrounding her still treated her like a child, even though she was mentally ageing beyond 30.

Further on, most, if not all, the film kept with the classic myths and features of what a vampire would be like, such as sleeping in coffins and drinking the blood of the innocents, aka Humans. However, they could also feed on animals, though the blood wasn’t the most nutritious. A rule they had was that they couldn’t drink from already dead organisms. During the film, the little girl wanted to rid Lestat and she tricked him, by making him drink from already dead humans, he turned ugly and ‘sour’, as though as become incredibly sick. During this moment, both and little girl and Louis from then new that drinking from the dead was not to be done. Other classic features would be that they become stronger and faster than humans, and some may possibly receive telepathic abilities.  I personally have watched and read many vampire stories. Such popular vampire films that I have seen would be Twilight, and I have also seen the TV show; The Vampire Diaries. Most of the films I have watched have newly added features to the vampires, making them sound indestructible and completely dominant over the human species. However, this film did not do that, in fact for myself I believe this film gave an equal amount of pros and cons of being a vampire as well as the pros and cons of being human, and this created a small yet present diversion between the creatures, yet not such as though to overpower each other. Because of this I really enjoyed the atmosphere within the movie. 

Overall, I was very entertained by this movie, I can relate to it as I have always had a passion for the concept and idea of Vampires. I have always found being a vampire would be awesome or even if they were real it would be super cool. I am highly intrigued by vampires and it does make me upset that they don’t exist. Well, that’s just my personal opinion.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 

Written by Steig Larsson

Extended Text

This novel is a personal favourite of mine. I feel I can relate to many key features within this novel, such as some of the characters and their personalities, as well as having a passion for some of the ideas within the novel such as mysteries and highly intelligent persons. All of which made me very intrigued to read this book, and will too read the rest of the trilogy. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo focusses of two main characters, which very quickly in the novel, meet together. The book starts off talking about a journalist, Mikael Blomkvist. He is the co-founder of an economic and political magazine, Millennium, where he was forced to resign due to being convicted for defaming a financier named Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. While waiting for his small two-month imprisonment, he gets offered a job by Henrik Vanger, a retired CEO of the Vanger Cooperation. His job is to write about Vanger’s dysfunctional family as well as trying to solve an investigation, where Henrik’s 16-year-old niece had disappeared over 40 years ago, who is quite possibly dead. Mikael accepts this job and moves over to where Henrik lives in order to fully involve himself in the job. In the background of all this is another main character, Lisbeth Salander (The girl with the dragon tattoo), she works with Milton Security as an investigator. She is one of the best investigators thanks to her impressive computer hacking skills. One of her assignments was to do some background research on Blomkvist, thus why they eventually connect with eachother and together they solve the mysterious disappearance of Vanger’s Niece. Lisbeth had, however, a troubled background, therefore she was to be looked on by a guardianship, her last guardianship had passed away and the court gave her a new guardianship named Nils Bjurman. Who was a nasty man that brutally raped her, until however, she got her revenge. 

The genre of this novel is a mystery, crime thriller, because of this the gothic element of tone and mood were present throughout the novel. They are dark and disturbing at times, such moments was when Lisbeth was getting sexually harassed and raped, the details were short and simple in the novel, which built up the moment, making it more disturbing for the reader. Personally, I truly felt disgusted during these moments, it made me sad and angry that someone would do that to a person. In addition to that, another gothic element of foreshadowing was very briefly referred too. Blomkvist was threatened with a dead cat and his cabin was broken into, this foreshadowed violence of someone about to attack him, and possibly wanting to murder him. This becomes true when Martin Vanger (son of Henrik Vanger and new CEO after Henrik retired), captures Blomkvist and was about to kill him until Lisbeth comes and saves Blomkvist.

As I mentioned prior to explaining the novel and its elements within it, I did have a very great interest in this novel. I found it a great page-turner, and really recommend reading it (if you haven’t done so). However, I believe I enjoyed it so much was because I felt like I could relate myself to the two main characters. Both characters were protagonists throughout the novel, they were very different from each other, however. Blomkvist has great interest in the social-political area, and himself is a well-known man, very sociable in a professional way. Whereas Lisbeth is the anti-social investigator, she is not good with socialisation and because of this has unusual outbursts of emotion, usually anger. And these lead to abnormal acts, such acts was her revenge upon her rapist guardianship, she tied him down, did what he did to her, plus tattooed on his stomach “I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT AND A RAPIST”. Yet however, personally, I feel what she did was perfect revenge, yet again, others would say that what she did, was too much. Either way, I found her super intriguing throughout the novel, I loved her attitude, to me she comes across as a ‘bad-ass’ and I love that and because of that, I can somewhat relate myself to her. I also could relate to her fashion, what she wore was exactly what I love to wear, I wear all black, pumped shoes occasionally, lots of piercings. It’s a great hobby of mine and when I was reading many people judged her and gave her looks of disgust, which at times I get the same response. Another reason why I love Lisbeth Salander as a whole. however, personally, I feel what she did was perfect revenge to what he did, yet others would say that what she did was too much. Either way, I found her super intriguing throughout the novel, I loved her attitude, to me she comes across as a ‘bad-ass’ and I love that and because of that, I can somewhat relate myself to her. I also could relate to her fashion, what she wore was exactly what I love to wear, I wear all black, pumped shoes occasionally, lots of piercings. It’s a great hobby of mine and when I was reading many people judged her and gave her looks of disgust, which at times I get the same response. Another reason why I love Lisbeth Salander as a whole.

An added thought that I noticed while reading this book was a major theme in this book is the violence towards women in the novel.  But what most interested me was that the author Steig Larsson is a male. It is not very common for a male to write about such a controversial theme. This was just an added thing I noticed personally.

In conclusion, this novel represented great aspects of gothic elements such as tone and mood, with dark being its most common ‘vibe’. Besides that, it was able to keep me intrigued and I was able to learn a few things and being able to relate to one of the main characters, Lisbeth. From this, I would highly recommend reading.