”Would you understand what I meant if I said I was only human?” : The Image of the Vampire in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark

Abstract In this essay I have decided to look at two very popular vampire novels today, Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The focus of this essay is to look at the similarities and differences between these two novels and compare them to each other but also to the original legend of the vampire; this by using Dracula and other famous vampire stories to get an image of the vampire of pop-culture. I look at the features of the vampires, their abilities and different skills, and also sex and sexuality and how it is represented in these different stories. Even though the novels attract a wide audience they are written for a younger one and have a love story as its center. In this essay I give my opinion and view of the vampires and what I believe to be interesting with the morals and looks of the vampires as one of the different aspects.