Vampire Morality: The Need to Feed

Very few people want to cheer for a villain.  And that’s how bloodsucking vampires are traditionally seen.

But somewhere in the literary evolution of the monster, vampires have become heroes.  But how can a creature who feeds on innocent people be seen as heroic?

It’s not so bad if they don’t feed on the innocent, right?

Lestat, the central character of Anne Rice’s novels, one day decides he’s only gonna feed on criminals.  In the readers mind, this isn’t so bad.  Why, it’s even heroic!  Good for Lestat for taking the law into his own hand and making those fiends suffer.  Ever see the show Dexter?  Dexter Morgan, the homicidal murderer with a sense of justice primarily kills other criminals, and we all love him.

I’ve mentioned before Anne Rice’s vampires even save the world in Queen of the Damned. But as soon as the threat is over, Lestat and the others return to murdering at least one human a night, reclaiming their status as the top predator of the human race.  These vampires even create an island for themselves filled with high art and luxury shopping centers to draw humans in.  But as long as their only feeding on criminals, who cares right?

One of the most consistent traits of a vampire, regardless of who is writing them is “the thirst.”  The penalty for disobeying this ranges from fatigue to psychotic episodes.  With an urge so powerful, it’s almost noble for a vampire to limit their diet to the people we don’t want in society.

What if the vampires don’t have a thirst?

In Communion, I play around with morality a lot.  For one, I remove the THIRST for human blood.  My Dhampir still require human blood to use their superhuman abilities.  But, rather than having a thirst that would constantly drives them to feed, each of my Dhampir makes a conscious choice rather or not they will feed on a human.

As I mentioned in the previous post, some authors escape this problem by having their vampires not feed on human blood at all.  In my next post, I look at other alternate food sources authors have used.

(P.S. In this post, I refer to criminals in a sarcastic, crass manner.  Let’s remember everybody, vampires aren’t real.  And, if they were, any lives they take (whether innocent or criminal) would be a problem.)