Vampires: An Essay Collection

A Rhetorical Analysis: Edvard Munch's The Vampire

In Edvard Munch's "The Vampire", a flame-haired mistress holds the shadowy figure of a man in her tender embrace; her lips gently pressed against his prone throat. The evocative image, painted in oil on canvas, was considered shocking when it was unveiled to the public in 1895. Since its unveiling, the painting has been diminished by the stereotypical depiction of the vampire, which became prevalent after the publication of Stoker's Dracula in 1897. "The Vampire", however, is more than a simple illustration of a bewitching bloodsucker; it is a motif for the hunter and the hunted in each of us.

The 20th century zeitgeist surrounding Munch's "The Vampire" is like a varnish that, once removed, reveals the vibrant colors behind the yellowed crust. The painting becomes not only a study of color, but a study of humanity. In "The Vampire", Munch limits his composition to two dominant colors: red and black. To skeptics of the theory of color psychology, the use of red and black in Munch's image is purely artistic; but, according to psychologist Robert Plutchick's Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotion, red has deep emotional connotations rooted in our subconscious minds. Plutchik's wheel associates red with strong emotions like anger and rage, which is due in part to our subjective understanding of color. Through the centuries, the human brain has been conditioned to associate red with danger. For example, cavemen correlated red with their fear of fire, medieval peasants correlated red with the bloody lesions typical of plague victims, and 20th century Americans correlated red with the threat of Communism. Therefore, the use of red in Munch's "The Vampire" is so much more than a mere artistic accident. Our subjective and emotional relationship with "red" invokes an immediate sense of danger, and thus, we fear for the man clutched in the vampire's embrace. Black, likewise, is a symbolic color; having become a visual representation of death, doom and decay over the past millennium. In Munch's painting, the man encircled by the vampire's arms is dressed in black and the scene is set against a shadowy background. This use of color makes the vampire's red hair even more terrifying as it marks the dark-clad gentleman as a doomed victim of her bloody kiss. By rendering the gentleman in black, Munch is using our symbolic association with the color to illustrate the imminent death of the figure. It is no wonder then, that red and black have been associated with vampires in one way or another since the unveiling of Munch's famed painting.

"The Vampire", however, was never intended to be a commentary on the nature of vampires in art and literature. The piece was not originally titled "The Vampire" and was only named such following its public reveal. A group of critics mistook the woman in the portrait for a vampire and following our dissection of the painting, it is easy to understand the critic's mistake. Playing on our subjective and symbolic relationship with color, Munch created an image that appeared to mirror that of Stoker's "Dracula", which was published a mere seven years before Munch's painting was viewed by the public. Unintended by Munch, the general audience associated the painting with the outpouring of vampire literature that was prominent in the nineteenth century. His use of red and black was subjectively associated with Stoker's use of the same colors in "Dracula". In Stoker's novel, Jonathan Harker remarks that Dracula is "clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere." Similarly, Carmilla, a Gothic novella written in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, relies heavily on imagery of blood and features black ink drawings to appeal to the color association of readers. Both works of Gothic literature were great influences on the modern perception of vampires and their subjective connection to color. As a result, Munch's painting became a casualty of the Gothic romanticism of the 1800's and vampires became forever associated with red and black; death and fear. Nonetheless, it is intriguing that Munch's painting would be confused with that of a vampire, as the original title was "Love and Pain." While vampires are often lamented as erotic plot-filler in teen novels, Munch's painting suggests a subconscious recognition of the love and pain felt by these seemingly thoughtless monsters. Munch himself never publicly revealed the identity of the figures in the portrait, but we as a collective society recognized the pain and love present in the painting, thus concluding it was that of a vampire with her prey. Therefore, there must be more to the vampire than sheer erotic appeal or we would not connect the bloodsucker to a portrait depicting such deeply personal emotions. Which begs the question, what separates us from the vampire?

Munch's painting offers a unique, if not altogether new perspective on this question. Considering his painting was not intended as a Gothic portrait, it is remarkable the amount of similarities it shares with Gothic portraits from the same period. Munch's painting seems to beg humanity to consider the emotional relationship between the vampire and man. He circumvents reality by creating figures that are both abstract in technique and rooted in human rendering. The painting has a nightmarish appearance but is identifiable as a depiction of living individuals despite its blending of macabre colors. Munch seems to suggest that humanity, like the blending of colors in "Love and Pain," is influenced not only by reality, but by the nightmarish quality of our fears. Like our subconscious association between red and danger, we have a subconscious fear of death. "Humans are obsessed with death; we simply have a hard time wrapping our mind around what happens when we die. This contemplation has led to some of the most famous monsters, with each culture creating their own version of the living dead...We want to imagine a life that goes on after we die. Or better yet, figure out a way to live forever [but] that would violate the laws of nature and is therefore terrifying." (Ringo). As a result, the vampire both repels and attracts us; we long for immortality, but we fear the unnaturalness of living outside the laws of nature. Munch's painting, like the vampire, frightens us because it seems to reside in an unnatural world outside our own. This fear of the unnatural is not entirely unwelcome. It's true, that we dread fear, but we also invite fear because it is exhilarating. And it is this sense of exhilaration that makes the vampire so appealing; we long to feel alive and coincidentally the vampire does too.

Our fear of death and resulting exhilaration from fear makes the vampire an irresistible concoction of toxicity. It is this mixture of fear and desire for exhilaration that lends a nightmarish quality to our reality- akin to that of Munch's "Love and Pain". We cannot escape our fear because deep down, we do not wish to escape it. Munch's painting offers a similar commentary, as the figures in the image appear frozen in an unbreakable embrace. Given our understanding of color theory, it is even more fitting that Munch should pose the figures in such a way, as black and red- fear and death- are forever interwoven against the passage of time. Therefore, we cannot escape our subsequent fear and fascination with death; like the bunny being hunted by the ravenous wolf, we are hunted by the passage of time. However, our fascination with the undead suggests we are also subconscious hunters of immortality. It is this desire for immortality and terror of death that has resulted in the vampire becoming a metaphor for the hunter and hunted in each of us.

In the words of Rice, "Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask...they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds... To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner." It is for this reason that Munch's "Love and Pain" has evolved into "The Vampire". It is far easier for the viewer to label the man and woman as vampire and victim; to isolate them to the realm of metaphor and imagination. To really ask why the man and woman, mere human beings, are in pain would be to "open the door to the whirlwind". For our all-abiding fear is not that of vampires, but of dying a trivial death; of failing to outrun time. Thus, we are ever on the hunt for immortality; ever in search of the elusive "vampire" depicted in Munch's "Love and Pain". Perhaps we will find her in ourselves, "In the inner pictures of our souls." (Munch).