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Everyone’s heard of Dracula, the first true vampire, who would suck the blood from his victims. 

However, there are other kinds of vampirism. Although vVampirism can be seen as literally sucking 

blood from victims, vVampirism can haveoften has a deeper, more symbolicsubtle meaning. 

Vampirism can be seen not only in places where literal blood is sucked, but it can be seen where 

metaphorical, more figurative blood is sucked instead. A person’s life blood can come in different 

forms. Vampirism, although sometimes literal, usually represents sucking the lifeblood out of people. 

Usually this is done by destroying one’s will or making them feel worthless.   

Aside from literal vampirism, there is also a more metaphorical form of vampirism, such as 

sucking the will or lifeblood out of people. Vampirism is often seen in literature where someone has 

power over another person. This could be in an abusive relationship or a master/servant relationship. 

One example of a master / servant relationship is in the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, where 

the main character is a female slave. Because of this, she is subjected to experiences such as being 

raped and having her children taken away from her. The metaphorical vampires in this example are 

theis the white slave owners, because they took away her children, which is basically sucking the 

lifeblood out of her. Additionally, the practice concept of slavery is also metaphorical vampirism, as 

since it is exploiting someone’s work in order to turn a profit, which is the equivalent of sucking the 

lifeblood, labor, out of the slaves. Another example of metaphorical vampirism can be seen in Their

Eyes Were Watching God, where Jody Stark, the protagonist’s first husband, attemptshusband 

attempts to suck the confidence and independencets out of her. The author writes, “ ” In their 

relationship, the initial respect and love got sucked out of the relationship as she lost her feelings for 

her husband. By taking advantage of her, he sucked the lifeblood, or love for him, out of Jamie. 

Although the sucking of lifeblood is more metaphorical than literal vampirism, it still has the same 

concept of taking something necessary for one’s life. 

 Aside from metaphorical and literal vampirism, vampirism can often be portrayed by a society 

or other kind of institution. Typically, vampirism is portrayed by a specific person being used by 

another person, but Societal vampirism is a set of rules, an organization, or a group of people against 

a person. For example, Creole society in The Awakening is societal vampirism, because it was sucking 

the independence and freedom from Edna Pontellier. This is societal vampirism because creole 

society had many harsh rules that restricted women from pursuing their goals. These rules are what 

created the vampirism. Another example, from The Maze Runner, shows an organization as the 

societal vampire. In The Maze Runner, WCKD, the organization that was attempting to find a cure for 

the deadly disease in the story, gained support and got permission to extract special healing elements 

from teenager’s blood. The blood held the cure to the virus. This was vampirism in the way that they 

were filtering their blood, but it was also vampirism because the children would eventually be killed in 

the process. The organization may have had the world’s best interest in heart, but it still was 

vampiristic, since it was sucking the lifeblood out of some in order for the others to thrive. Societal 

Vampirism is often the most difficult to break free from, because it is about breaking away from an 

institution, or group of people rather than just escaping from one, like literal vampirism. 

Vampirism, in all three forms, takes an exceptional character to break free from. However, the 

way in which they break free from their vampirism shows what kind of vampirism it was. 

(I would like to discuss what we should do with the first paragraph when editing.)