September 22, 2010

Dead Books Vs. W.H.

Although I absolutely love the Twilight series (I have read them several times) I decided to compare W.H. to the Sookie Stackhouse series, or as I like to call them, the dead books.  I found many more similarities between the two books in both character and the popular topic in W.H., place.

The most evident similarities I found between the heroes of both books, Heathcliff and Bill, are that they both represent Byronic heroes.  Heathcliff seems to drain the emotions and essence of those who get to close to him, first with his benefactor, Mr. Earnshaw, and then with the love of his life, Catherine.  Similarly, Bill, whose love interest is Sookie Stackhouse, is literally sucking the life out of her (haha).  Yet throughout the story and series the reader is constantly rooting for the hero to successfully win the heroines love, even if they don't necessarily deserve.  That is because the books are written in a romantic way and the reader knows that the heroes love for the heroine is true.

It is also important to notice that by comparing Heathcliff to Vampire Bill it makes a few characteristics obvious.  One, that Heathcliff more clearly represents our class's descriptions of what a vampire is, which Colleen has quoted “The vampire of subjectivity sees the play of identity from the metalevel, sees the fragrant possibilities of multiple voice and subject position, the endless refraction of desire, with a visual apparatus that has become irreducibly and fatally different. Once one receives this Dark Gift, there is no way back to a simpler and less problematic time. The gaze of the vampire, once achieved, cannot be repudiated; it changes vision forever.” From --Allucuere Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age.  Also, note that Vampire Bill seems much more human when brought into comparison with Heathcliff.  He is not just a hungry vampire looking for blood.  He is in love with a girl and only asks for that love to be returned.  With both characters it is easy to recognize the obvious, but if we look at them from a different angle and try to look below the surface we see a whole different side.

There is also a strong representation of place in both books, although how place is represented in each is different.  W.H. is used often by Bronte to represent a comparison to the characters, especially Heathcliff, which Andrew http://bain1212.blogspot.com/ describes in his blog from last week.
            "Both the description of Wuthering Heights nor of Heathcliff leave the reader thinking positively and the following chapters only compound this case with the wickedness that seems to befall anyone on the property over time."  
It also, on many occasions, represents a highly foreboding image to many of the characters who also fall prey to Heathcliff's wickedness, such as Nelly and Mr. Linton.

Sookie's house is also mentioned many times in the series but its main representation seems to be home and love.  No matter what happens to Sookie, and there are plenty of bad experiences, she always wants to go home.  Her sentiments about her home are perpetual.  Not even her grandmother being brutally murdered in the kitchen could change Sookie's feelings about her home, showing a very strong association of love between place and character.

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