Ashley Klink
American Gothic
Final Essay
December 4, 2015
The Transformation of Vampires: from Dracula to Twilight

American Gothic is a subgenre of gothic fiction, with elements specific to it such as; rational versus irrational, Das Unheimliche, puritanism, and guilt just to name a few. What really distinguished American Gothic from any other form of gothic fiction is the continuous references to predestination and presence of original sin, simply because the puritans were the first to settle in the new colonies therefore having a profound influence on American gothic writers. However, American Gothic has become much more contemporary beginning in the eighteenth century. In Caroline Spooner’s “Contemporary Gothic”, she explains how gothic has been able to survive in America by “drawing self-referentially on itself, combining sincere nostalgia with a self-aware sense of theatre, even camp.” (Farkas 1). Gothic has the ability to transform depending on the the times and what social issues are prevalent at a specific time period. Many writers are taking it upon themselves to rewrite “the vampire” in a more modern setting. The face of a vampire has changed since Bram Stoker's Dracula, but his novel has influenced our society and will continue to influence our culture as time goes by. Some of Dracula’s characteristics, including his sensitivity to light and thirst for blood, are still present, but have just been tweaked to the writer’s preference. In the time of Dracula, the vampire was more of a villain but in many of today’s novels and movies the vampires are being depicted more as a hero or protector. The face of the vampire has changed overtime in an attempt to give readers a character they can more easily fall in love with. As humanity changes in what it considers, to be right and wrong so does the characters in our books and movies. The develop