Dead Until Dark
Dead Until Dark, a fantasy, mystery novel by Charlaine Harris, looks at changes in the structure of society as a point of crisis to explore identities of violence and sexual deviance, using the vampire as the abject or other that, ultimately, reflects the self. The society depicted in Dead Until Dark finds itself in crisis due to the revelation that vampires exist and want to become a visible part of the community. However, vampires must deal with abjection as they enter society: “We had all the other minorities in our little town-why not the newest,” Sookie Stackhouse, the novel’s protagonist, thinks, locating the vampire as the other. The normative boundaries are breaking down for both Sookie and the community where she lives as they are forced to incorporate the peculiarities of the vampires. It is this confrontation with the uncanny that causes fear in Sookie’s world and forces its inhabitants into a reflective state on the hidden self that the vampires represent, a repressed self of violence and hyper sexuality (Garabedian 612). Society, as …show more content…
These genres utilize a heightened version of crisis that allows readers to explore the self in a setting that allows the identity to fall away or become blurred enough to confront the other buried within. The moments of change in Dead Until Dark and The Speed of Dark also allow readers to explore the ways identity is shaped and reshaped by interactions with society. They can face those elements outside themselves, experience what brings on a sense of abjection, and either incorporate their understanding and empathy for the other they experienced, or they can turn their backs in disgust and retake the identity that society expects. Either way, the abjection readers experience follows them forever as an anxiety about self they can never
Dead Until Dark, a fantasy, mystery novel by Charlaine Harris, looks at changes in the structure of society as a point of crisis to explore identities of violence and sexual deviance, using the vampire as the abject or other that, ultimately, reflects the self. The society depicted in Dead Until Dark finds itself in crisis due to the revelation that vampires exist and want to become a visible part of the community. However, vampires must deal with abjection as they enter society: “We had all the other minorities in our little town-why not the newest,” Sookie Stackhouse, the novel’s protagonist, thinks, locating the vampire as the other. The normative boundaries are breaking down for both Sookie and the community where she lives as they are forced to incorporate the peculiarities of the vampires. It is this confrontation with the uncanny that causes fear in Sookie’s world and forces its inhabitants into a reflective state on the hidden self that the vampires represent, a repressed self of violence and hyper sexuality (Garabedian 612). Society, as …show more content…
These genres utilize a heightened version of crisis that allows readers to explore the self in a setting that allows the identity to fall away or become blurred enough to confront the other buried within. The moments of change in Dead Until Dark and The Speed of Dark also allow readers to explore the ways identity is shaped and reshaped by interactions with society. They can face those elements outside themselves, experience what brings on a sense of abjection, and either incorporate their understanding and empathy for the other they experienced, or they can turn their backs in disgust and retake the identity that society expects. Either way, the abjection readers experience follows them forever as an anxiety about self they can never