Carmilla the Lover and Monster Essay

The story of Carmilla is one that shows the complexity that mankind is capable of. This story shows how loving and caring mankind can be and how monstrous we can become without knowing how or why we became so monstrous. Carmilla meets the criteria to be called a lover and monster. Love is a virtue representing human kindness compassion and/or affection. Out of love Carmilla slowly drains the life out of Laura so she can turn her into a lifelong companion. But to die as lovers may–to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see–each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room. † Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious. This shows that Carmilla despite being a vampire has retained the human ability to love. She wishes to have friends and the only way to accomplish this task is to turn humans into vampires. She also has the characteristics that many would call monstrous. As a vampire, Carmilla needed blood to sustain her existence. As humans hunt for sustenance so did Carmilla, she obtained sustenance where ever she could without disrupting her relationship with Laura. As we sat thus one afternoon under the trees a funeral passed us by. It was that of a pretty young girl, whom I had often seen, the daughter of one of the rangers of the forest. The poor man was walking behind the coffin of his darling; she was his only child, and he looked quite heartbroken . â€Å"I hope there is no plague or fever coming; all this looks very like it,† I continued. The swineherd’s young wife died only a week ago, and she thought something seized her by the throat as she lay in her bed, and nearly strangled her. Papa says such horrible fancies do accompany some forms of fever. She was quite well the day before. She sank afterwards, and died before a week†. If Carmilla was just a monster she would have killed everyone in the area just to continue her existence and then moved on to another area to find sustenance. That is not the case here in this shows that certain things are not always as they seem. Carmilla believes her existence is better than that of the human and in many ways she is correct. She does not know illness of any sort and because of her longevity. She has been a vampire for over 100 years. â€Å"She ? I don’t trouble my head about peasants. I don’t know who she is,† answered Carmilla, with a flash from her fine eyes. â€Å"The house of Karnstein,† he said, â€Å"has been long extinct: a hundred years at least. My dear wife was maternally descended from the Karnsteins. But the name and title have long ceased to exist. The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted; it is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was seen there; not a roof left†. Carmilla in a twisted way shows the good and evil that has existed in our world for many millennia. She has the ability to love but for her to love long-term she must kill the object of her affection. As twisted as many would perceive this is a fair reflection upon mankind over the generations. Mankind has been doing strange things to find and hold on to what they believed they love for as long as we have been in existence. The existence of vampires such as in the text Camilla is imaginary but the actions of vampires are mirrored in many aspects by the actions of man!