Symons' "The Vampire" Poem (1896)

Image Copyright Sandra Ormandy 2012

When designing my July 6, 2014 presentation on the Victorian representation of the vampire figure in their literature for the 2014 Gearcon in Portland, Oregon, I re-found this rather wonderful poem by Symons. Written in 1896, his lyric idea of  “The Vampire” portrays women as a meteorically traditional vampire. Even his presentation of  death here could easily be that of sexual orgasm. 

"The Vampire"

"Intolerable woman, where’s the name

For your insane complexity of shame?

Vampire! White bloodless creature of the night,

Whose lust of blood has blanched her chill veins white.

Veins fed with moonlight over dead men’s tombs;

Whose eyes remember many martyrdoms.

So that their depths, whose depths cannot be found,

Are shadowed pools in which a soul lies drowned.

Who would fain have pity, but she may not rest

Till she have sucked his life-blood from his breast.

And drained his lifeblood from him, vein by vein,

And seen his eyes grow brighter for the pain,

And his lips sigh her name with his last breath

As the man swoons ecstatically on death.

Making the Grade: Writing an A Paper!

An A paper:

Students often think the A grade should be given just because they have turned in the paper, on time and met the basic assignment parameters. It is, somehow, due them. Most college instructors have very specific expectations of an A paper. They expect it to be narrow and clearly focused.

Arguably, the major moral of 30 Days of Night, directed by David Slade, is that mankind is helpless against the supernatural vampire in a world where God has been removed from the equation. It is set in a secular world, where supernatural good (God, and his many manifestations) has been removed, but supernatural evil (vampires) still are allowed.  In the movie itself, we are told that the only reason daylight kills vampires is that it contains ultra-violet light; thus unlinking the tie of day and sunlight, to Christ, God's son. Unlike most vampire films, there are no churches to run to, no crosses, no holy water, no priests, and perhaps most importantly, no slayers.  The humans merely attempt to survive the night; they never attempt to take it back. It is only at the last moment when all survivors have to choose between being eaten or burned alive that the secular power, the sheriff, steps up to save the few still human survivors. The message is thus reinforced: without some supernatural power to even the equation, evil -- supernatural or otherwise -- with its willingness to do whatever it wishes to further its ends, always wins. 

Can you see the difference between this A-level paragraph and the B-level one?

• It is narrowly focused, states its topic up front: there is a moral in the film
• It then clearly states the moral: Mankind is helpless against vampires without God’s power
• It provides support from the film for its premise.

It does do a few things wrong. A short quote from the film, such as when a lead vampire tells one of the victims, “no God,” would have strengthened it and provided a relevant taste of the film. And it sets up a comparison between a human hero and a God-powered savior which is clearly not the moral under discussion. While the writer does manage to pull the human-hero back into the correct direction, in a longer paper, it would beg for development.

 So, in summary:

An “A” reply does the reading and discovers a topic or theme within the story which the story supports – and only the summary supporting those points are told. A “B” response discovers the topic or theme, discusses it, just supports it less well or with a few more grammar errors. A “C” paper – average 121 level, would summarize it with some errors. All within the word count. 

 (All Rights Reserved. copyright Leslie Ormandy 2012)

July 4: OR, Just Another Day (Part 3)

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He loaded her in and crawled in beside her to get a good look at what he’d hooked.

Sarah now had a choice to make; eat now and save herself the pawing, or let him take her back to his hole and drain him slowly. “Hell with that,” she told herself, “I’m hungry.”

But as Wilton turned away to close the back of the van and she prepared to surprise him, she heard the tell-tale crackle of a cop radio and a voice asking Wilton is everything was alright.

“It’s fine, officer,” Wilton said climbing out, “just making sure the picnic food isn’t going to spill on the way home.”

Sarah swore softly as the door closed her in and she felt the van start to move.

She was ravenous when the van finally pulled to a stop. She heard Wilton open a gate, felt the van move though it, then heard him as he closed the gate and resumed driving for a short while. 

When he opened the back of the van and slid inside to lift her flaccid body out, she reached out and pulled him into her embrace. His shock held him motionless for a moment, but then Wilton started struggling. She pulled his head to one side and used her fingernails to pierce his jugular vein. She was a quart into him when she came up for air. She knew she needed to drink a bit slower or she’d be burping blood all night. And Wilton had quit struggling after the first pint or two. He wasn’t going anywhere; out cold and in shock from blood-loss and pain.

Pushing his body away from her own, Sarah poked around the inside of the van, taking stock. A few, now bloody, sleeping bags on the floor. An open tool kit in which plastic zip strips in several sizes and duct tape in a variety of colors filled the top opening. Then she spotted the plether briefcase tucked partially under the passenger seat. Opening it, she found a cornucopia: vials of Rohypnol and Klonopin, along with a baggie of white powder she figured was cocaine and a selection of needles packaged with a vial of Heroin. Nasty stuff, and expensive stuff for a standard old-guy rapist to be carrying around. Sarah looked from the open briefcase to him, considering her options. She could finish him quickly – which was her norm – or hit him with some of his own product to keep him out while she explored the location he’d brought her to. It would mean drinking tainted blood unless she waited until it cleared his system, but really, all it would do was to make his blood taste rancid. The drugs in it wouldn’t make her sick or have any “high” effect on her.

Shaking her head at herself as she gave in to her biggest vice, curiosity, Sarah prepared him a fix and injected him. She’d watched enough of her friends do it back when she’d been alive to be capable of it. Then she covered his body with one of the bloodstained sleeping bags before cracking the door a few inches.

Peering carefully out and seeing no one and hearing no movement, she slipped out of the van allowing the door to close gently behind her.

It was the low moans coming from the obviously abandoned building on her left that gave her direction, and she moved quietly in that direction. Sidling up to a broken window she peered in; there was a young naked woman chained to a cot. The moans were coming from her, “Oh God, oh God, oh God” in a constant stream as the woman rocked back and forth rubbing her shoulders. Sarah knew a good human would rush in and “save her,” releasing her from the chains and sweeping her off to hospital and help. But Sarah wasn’t human. Not anymore.

She smiled and went to the van where she stepped over Wilton to reach the drug kit. Pulling a second syringe out and filling it with enough H to keep the captive placid for a few more hours, she walked over to the broken window and tossed it though a broken space. She heard the scramble as the captive crawled eagerly over to the syringe. No need to watch.

She would finish up Wilton and hole up for the day, and if no “saviors,” or if Wilton’s partners, didn’t show up by the time the chained woman woke up, Sarah would have her next day’s meal.  She’d leave the outcome to chance: good or bad.

It was the game that made eternity interesting.

Story copyright Leslie Ormandy 2012 ALL rights reserved! 

Making the Grade: Writing Papers that Earn an "A" (the B paper)

The B paper:

Many students feel, upon getting a B grade, that they are somehow just not good enough. They are above average, just not extraordinary. Note the focus in those two sentences? The focus is on the author instead of on the writing. Instructors are not grading the person. We are grading the artifact turned in – a paper. We are looking to see if the paper has not only the material we are asking for, and how the material is presented. We are looking to see if the writer is actually interacting, intellectually, with the material we have assigned them.

See if you can see how much this differs from the “D” and “C” paper.

30 Days of Night, directed by David Slade, shows what happens when bad vampires intersect with helpless humans. That the vampires are intelligent is shown by them waiting until there would be no daylight for the humans to use to escape, destroying all the telephones as well as the cell tower, and destroying all the cars and killing the sled dogs. Once the humans are cut off from civilization and help, the vampires attack them a few at a time, in their homes and in the store, taking care to kill the people after they’ve drank their fill. They kill the humans because in this world being bitten by a vampire is all it takes to become one, and the head vampire doesn’t want too many vampires since an increase in the vampire population would call human attention to their existence, and vampires are to be thought to not exist. The sheriff is the hero as he injects himself with vampire blood to fight the lead vampire and save the few survivors. He then has enough humanity left to commit suicide in his wife’s arms as the sun comes up. I think it was a good movie.

Clearly this paragraph is better than the C level paragraph in several ways. And the one “I” statement is a common throw-off I see in student papers. They aren’t willing to just leave the paper to stand on its own merits, but feel it necessary to add the one “me” statement.

• It discovers a topic or theme and attempts to find internal support from the source for it.
• The summary which is given all clearly supports the ideas under discussion.
• It gives a clear statement of what is being discussed – which the reader needs and the assignment called for.
• The grammar and sentence structures have all been proof-read and fixed.

So what went wrong? Why is it not an “A” response?

Because it tries to do too much. There are too many strands of thought running through it – like a brainstorm with every possible topic introduced. This is a very small assignment, but even a larger essay wouldn’t want this many ideas. Let’s take a look:

• Vampires are evil
• Humans are helpless
• Vampires are intelligent: Internal proof – they destroy cars, phones, attack at night
• Vampires don’t like daylight
• Vampires should remain a story character, unreal
• A new vampire would be strong enough to kill an older vampire
• The sheriff is a hero: becomes a vampire to protect, loves his wife enough to not kill her, commit suicide rather than kill humans.

As you can see when they are broken out; there are a lot of topics here. Any one of them would have been ample for a two-hundred word paragraph. This is clearly much better than a C paper, but it tries to do too much.

(All Rights Reserved. Copyright Leslie Ormandy 2012)

Making the Grade: Writing Papers that Earn an "A" (the C paper -- oh-hum!)

This is part 2 of the series on how to make better grades in writing classes.

The C paper:

College students, my own young friends included, get really angry when they get a C grade. They seem to forget that a C means that the paper they have written, not they themselves, is average.

“What makes a paper average?” you ask.

There are a whole slew of issues which can render a paper “average,” up to having the bad luck of having registered in a class where almost all the writers write better through better word choice, descriptors used, and better grammar and syntax. In comparison to the papers the teacher is reading from every other student, this particular paper just doesn’t jump as high.

 Take a look at this example:

 The movie 30 days of night came out in 2007 and it was shot mostly in Australia. It was a scary movie. It begins with a group of vampires walking into an Alaska village as night falls. They are not nice vampires as compared to those in twilight. I liked twilight better. The vampires walk run though the village killing everyone they meet, dragging them out of their homes, and they kill the dogs and destroy the cell tower so no one can call for help. The vampires can only be killed by being beheaded. An ax works good. The sheriff and his wife are the major characters fighting against the vampire and trying to save the town people.  They rescue a few people and go hide in an oil factory. Almost at the end, when the vampires are going to blow up the whole town, and the people hiding in the factory will be killed in the explosion, the sheriff injects himself with some vampire blood to make himself a vampire.  I thought that was sorta romantic. That he loved his wife enough to become a vampire to save her. Anyway, it ends with the now vampire sheriff fighting the boss vampire and beating him. The vampires just leave. He dies by turning to dust in his wife’s arms as the sun comes. (224 words)

As you will see, this response is much better than the “D” response. It does a lot right. Just not quite the “right” things the instructor is looking for in an “A” or “B” paper. Again, the response grade response is cumulative:

• The paragraph begins by naming the title, just not quite correctly. In the Humanities, the standard is that movie titles are italicized. And the same letters should be capitalized as on the original title. Thus:30 Days of Night
•  It fails to list the director – which is easily findable online, and who doesn’t have access to online resources?
• It is a straight summary of the movie, pretty much. This happened, then this happened, then this happened. There is no independent thought occurring here. While summary might get you though high-school, think about the real world. Would you want a Doctor unable to progress beyond summarizing the symptoms?
• There is no personalization, no angle which interested the student more than any other.
• I might forgive one “I” statement and not knock this attempt back to “D” level, but it certainly would keep it from climbing to a “B” level.
• It provides extraneous information which was not asked for. This reads as page filler not as enthusiasm given the lack of the director name. If the writer was online to discover when and where, why not by who?

As a whole, any one of these parts will not knock the paper back to a “D” grade, but it certainly will keep the instructor from raising it to  a “B” paper. In college, instructors want thought, but they don’t want “I think” said, ever. One says, “It can be argued…” “Some people might read this as…”

(All Rights Reserved. Copyright Leslie Ormandy 2012)

Making the Grade: Writing Papers that Earn an "A" (the D Paper)

Making the Grade: Writing Vampire Papers

Grades. We all work for them, and all want to believe that without any effort on our own part, we will earn high grades in every field we endeavor to enter. Unfortunately, for most of us, it takes practice, practice, practice, AND … work

So what is the hidden code that makes one student paper an “A” paper while the next student paper – for a student who has written from the exact same prompt – garners only the dreaded “C,” and the student learns their work is really only av…er…a ge?

The answer really isn’t effort since a “C” student often works longer and harder than the “A” student. They just haven’t learned, yet, how to write to the instructor’s unwritten expectations. And often, sadly, refuse to actually read the damn texts which would teach them the specific skills they need, and inform them of the specific expectations. Not even if the material was written by the instructor of the course they are in, and can be expected to have relevant samples.

That said (rant ended), what exactly makes one response an A response and another a D response?

Let’s take a look at one of my assignments, worth four points towards a total of 190.

Write a short, think around 200 words – one paragraph -- convincing me you have indeed watched 30 Days of Night.  Be detailed, AND remember to mention director and film title.

Inasmuch as I tell my students exactly what garners an F: they get a list of issues, let’s work upwards from a D response. (Each student response is followed by where it has failed. I have fixed some of the typical grammar issues, and left other common ones.)

 ****

D Student: I watched the movie and I really didn’t like it. it was too dark for me to see what was happening half the time, and my boyfriend kept interrupting me and telling me it was too dark. I dont know why the people in the town didnt just leave, after all, there are roads, arne’t there? And why didn’t they fight back. If a vamire attatcked my house i would fight back. Alaska is cold. I disliked the movie because it was set there. And I really like vampires who are nicer to people and who dont go around trying to kill them. “30 days of night’ is a really terrible film because the vampires are mean. The point where the mean vampire tells the girl that there is no god, made me mad. It made me afraid to slep in the dark. To repeat myself, I really din’t like the movie.

Why is this bad? Can you come up with a list of mistakes? Note that it is a combination of badness that garners a “D” grade.

• It focuses solely on the reader and not at all on the film under discussion.
• The word “I” appears seven times in one-hundred thirty-five words. The word “I” in a college-level response is always problematical. “Why?” you ask. Because we want the focus to be on the item under discussion (and are uninterested in discussing you).  This is one reason why students should not use first person pronouns – in any form – in their formal responses. The viewer, the reader, people, a person, John Doe are all good alternatives which not only tell your instructor you are focusing outside your own reactions, but it forces you to format your response formally. And anything turned into an instructor for a grade: Formal. Dress it for Prom.
• Capitalization is broken in major ways. “I” is always capital – something taught way back when in elementary school. To lower-case it in a formal paper turned in to an instructor goes beyond rude. It is student grade suicide. First lines always begin with a capital letter – again, student grade suicide.
• There is little internal evidence at all that the movie was actually watched.
• dont?  Really? Can’t even see the red-underline and right click to get the correct apostrophe?
• It isn’t long enough – for which this reader would be very, very grateful. Would you want this to go on any longer?
• All too often, a D paper has all sorts of off-topic information. And runs looong.
• The basic sentence structures and punctuations are wonky.

All-together, wouldn’t you be happy this ended? The only reason this garnered a “D” with points instead of an “F” is the one line which does contain one small bit of evidence from inside the film, and unmentioned in most reviews – the “no God” comment.

So that is what the teacher sees when reading the D paper. While most D papers might not be quite so dreadful, a fair amount of what crosses my desk looks like it.

July 4: OR, Just Another Vampire Day (Part 2)

July 4: OR, Just Another Vampire Day

by Leslie Ormandy Copyright 2012 ALL rights reserved.

_______

This is part 2 of my Fourh of July vampire story. Scroll down a bit -- or hit this link: http://sweetgothvampires.blogspot.com/2014/06/july-4-or-just-another-vampire-day.html
-- to find part 1.

______    _______

Sarah looked up as the next firework exploded into the night sky. It was beautiful – apart from the deafening noise. The streamers of light cascaded down in several colors, forming a brief-lived flower. She felt his movement as he leaned forward and smelled the chemical as he dropped it into her soda, but kept her attention ostentatiously focused on the fireworks.

Allowing him to drug and rape her hadn’t really been her plan, but she could work with the scenario. After all, it did put them someplace private, and a van or dungy backroom was less likely to be disturbed than under dark bushes or behind a tree. She’d always been one to go with the flow.

“Wow, that was beautiful,” she said as she allowed her face to light up as she looked at the “father” figure sitting next to her. “Do they do this every year?”

But any lying answer he would have made was drowned out by the next explosive boom. Sarah pretended surprise and nudged her drink cup, making it look like it might spill.

Wilton was very quick to steady the shaking cup while she looked up at another flower design.

“I love the flower ones,” she told him, as she looked back at him and picked up her cup and lifted it to her lips.

She heard his quick inhalation as he watched expectantly, so as she turned her head to watch the next display, she took a long drink. As always, in these scenarios, she was grateful that she could drink liquids. It made it so much easier to fit in and lead the predator on.

Turning back to him a bit later and putting her hand to her head, she told him, “I’m not feeling so hot.”

“Why don’t you just lie down for a moment? I’ll keep an eye out for your brother’s truck, it’s a red Chevy, right?” he offered, knowing there was unlikely to be a brother looking for her.

“I guess that would be alright,” she said faintly. And with his eager help Sarah lay down next to him on the blanket, and after allowing her eyes to glaze and then drift closed, she waited as impatiently for the fireworks to finish and the surrounding crowd to begin dispersing as Wilton was waiting. Neither could make their next move until then.

Finally the last explosion brightened the night sky, and the crowd began hurriedly gathering belongings and joining the lines to the exit.

“Is she alright?” Sarah heard a wavery concerned voice ask.

“My daughter was up all last night coming home from college,” Wilton answered affably.

“Do you need help getting her to your car?” a male voice offered.

“No, It’s a nice night, and might as well let her catch a few winks here as wake her and sit in line waiting to get out. Traffic. Thanks for the offer, though. Have a pleasant night.”

She heard the kind man shout to a friend as the couple walked away.

Pretty soon, all was quiet; even the men doing the fireworks display and checking for sparks left, and Wilton and she were all that remained.

She murmured softly and let herself go deadweight as she was rolled up in the blanket and slung her over his shoulder.  She opened her eyes and covertly checked to make certain that indeed no one was around.

After a fair bit of jouncing and a whole lot of having to put up with her legs and butt being felt up, Wilton reached his van. Sarah smiled to herself. She had been fairly sure he’d be driving a van. Any old man who roofied a young woman was going to drive a van. Some sort of rule.