Monsters and Vampires and Werewolves, OH MY!

The popular “Twilight” series has spawned an entire genre of literature now known as Paranormal Romance or what I like to call “creatures of the night and the women who love them”. Apparently these novels entail the ultimate in forbidden love. However, loving a monster, vampire or werewolf is anything but new. Women referring to a certain man as a wolf, demon, monster, blood-sucker all go back to the dawn of time and this name-calling obviously continues today throughout all forms of media.

If your teen is “into” paranormal romance, he or she is old enough to also read the originals of paranormal romance: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein”, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde”. Amazon offers all three together with a very insightful Introduction by Stephen King.

As Mr. King refers to these novels as the “personification of evil”, this makes for a great topic for sharing thoughts and concepts of evil with your teen, maybe even starting a family-version of a book club to discuss these works of literature around the dinner table. For example, questions for discussion could include: “Who is the depiction of evil? Dr. Victor Frankenstein or the monster he created?”; “Do you think scientists today play God?”; “Where should science draw the line?”; “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the first novel to explore evil as internal force and part of human nature rather than an external force such as the moon, a bite from another creature, creatures from the underworld sent to plague mankind, etc. What do you think? Is evil internal or external? Was Dr. Jekyll justified in trying to rid his DNA of evil?”

I’d love to read your thoughts on the above questions. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section of this blog!