Danielle Andrada

English 112B

Professor Warner

1 December 2011

The Psychology Behind The Fascination For Supernatural Beings

My focus for this project is on the supernatural elements of young adult fiction. I chose to look at supernatural monsters in an attempt to get a better idea about why teens are fascinated with the supernatural genre. There are multiple answers to the question of why supernatural monsters are so appealing to teens. The supernatural is dark and unsettling. This genre lets imaginations soar while letting young adults analyze teen related issues from the safety of their homes. The monsters or supernatural beings in their novels can do things that normal humans cannot do. They live outside the bounds of human laws and expectations, and because of this, they are free. For this project, I focused on three supernatural monsters. I picked pieces of literature that focus around vampires, werewolves and zombies since they are some of the most loved and feared creatures in the supernatural world. These frightening and intruding beings have captured the attention of young adult readers for centuries.

What is the psychology behind why teens love these scary creatures? �Based on research, adolescents identify four of the most appealing characteristics of the vampire as self-identity, power, sexuality, and marginality� (Bodart 14). Vampire characters inspire teens because vampires are strong and immortal. They know exactly who they are, and they are comfortable with their place in society. The confidence that vampires have is very appealing to young adults who are just beginning to discover more about themselves. Vampires are also sexual beings. This type of character becomes appealing to young readers who are just starting to become aware and curious about their sexuality. These creatures are also very humanlike, but they have endless time to do whatever they want because they never die. Some vampires even sleep all day and stay up all night. Teens do this all of the time. Some vampire characters are beautiful and sexual while others like Count Dracula for example strike fear into the hearts of readers and vampire victims. The vampires in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight have superpowers, and this is talent that even adults wish that they had. The vampire archetype is attractive to the young adult because of the vampire�s confidence, sexuality, power and ability to live on the edge of society without being confined by rules and expectations.

Werewolves are seen as fascinating beings because they can change their appearance. Werewolves can turn into wolves, and they are strong like vampires. Teen can relate to werewolf characters because often teens will try to balance the human side and the animal sides of their nature just like werewolves fight to control their actions and emotions. Bodart says, �teens are struggling with controlling themselves, as they learn to cope with the new sexual and emotional drives that are coming alive inside of them� (Bodart 83). Teens can relate to werewolves because werewolves often experience inner conflict with themselves and this is something that young adults also have to face.

Zombies also inspire young adults. Teens and many adults dress like them either for Halloween for more adult events like zombie crawls. Teens can relate to zombies because life can get too ordinary sometimes, and kids can feel like they are repeating the same things over and over. Going to school everyday and doing homework are two examples of a repeated routine. A zombie-infested world can be very attractive to young adults because it becomes a place where people are not judged by their race, religion or skin color. The fight against zombies is the only thing that matters. It is a scenario that unites all people from different backgrounds for one common goal. It is the annihilation of all zombies and the fight for survival that becomes appealing to young adult readers when their teen world seems too normal.

The centerpiece of this annotated bibliography is the novel They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill: The Psychological Meaning of Supernatural Monsters in Young Adult Fiction. This book looks into the psychology of why teens like supernatural novels, and it is a great starting point when evaluating young adult supernatural fiction. Once this book was chosen as the main focus point, I picked other novels to include that had vampire, werewolf, and zombie creatures in them. Each book is an example of why teens like the supernatural.

Annotated Bibliography

1. Brooks, Max. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Three Rivers Press. 2011

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com).

2. Bodart, Richards Joni. They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill: The Psychological Meaning of Supernatural Monsters in Young Adult Fiction. Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2011. Print

In They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill: The Psychological Meaning of Supernatural Monsters in Young Adult Fiction Joni Bodart examines six different monsters—vampires, shapeshifters, zombies, unicorns, angels, and demons—in YA literature. Bodart first discusses the meaning of these monsters in cultures all over the world. Subsequent chapters explore their history and most important incarnations, comparing the same kind of creatures featured in different titles. This volume also contains interviews with authors who provide additional insight and information, and the bibliography includes a comprehensive list of titles featuring the various monsters.

Analyzing the most important and well-written series and titles for teens, They Suck, They Bite, They Eat, They Kill will be useful for parents, teachers, and anyone else hoping to understand why teens want to read books in this genre and what some of the benefits of reading them might be. (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com)

3. Klause, Annette Curtis. Blood and Chocolate. New York: Delacorte Press. 1997. Print.

Annette Curtis Klause led the way with YA shapeshifer fiction, just as she did with vampires, publishing Blood and Chocolate in 1997 and introducing Vivian Gandillion, a beautiful and sensuous werewolf who relishes her animal side and loves to run in the woods near her suburban Maryland home. Vivian is a powerful character with a fatal flaw-she has fallen in love with Aiden, a meat-boy, a human who writes haunting poetry about werewolves (The book summary is taken from They Suck, They Bite, They Eat� by Jodi Richards Bodart 89). This book is very important for teens to read because it deals with issues like cliques and acceptance. These are two major topics that teens face throughout their time in school. Vivian is a high school character that many young adults can relate to because she deals with other teen issues like the balance between her human and animal-like nature.

4. Klause Annette Curtis. The Silver Kiss. New York: Delacorte Books for Young Readers; Reprint Edition. 2009. Print

The Sliver Kiss (1990), by Annette Curtis Klause, was the first vampire book written for teens and is a thriller as well as a romance, born of the author�s lifelong fascination with vampires. Klause�s vampires have many of the standard charactertics-fangs, pale skin, superhuman strength, agility and speed, intolerance of sunlight, the ability to dissolve into mist, the inability to enter a home without an invitation. They are repelled by crucifixes, must sleep on or stay near their native soil, and prefer dressing in black. But Simon, one of the two protagonists, refuses to feed from humans except when hunger overtakes him, although he usually sees humans as food, rather than as individuals. He is attracted to Zoe and wants to protect her, two traits of the modern vampire, who is dangerous yet �good� (The book summary is taken from They Suck, They Bite, They Eat� by Jodi Richards Bodart 25). This book is a great example of the modern vampire, and the vampire characters are examples of why the supernatural is appealing to young readers.

5. Meyer, Stephanie. Twilight. New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition. 2008. Print

Twilight has exploded as a cultural phenomenon around the globe. The book is about a teenager named Bella Swan. She moves to the small town of Forks in Washington. Once she is settled in, she becomes faced with issues that many teens go through. She has to adjust to a new school, and she has to deal with living with a father that she has hardly seen since her mother and father got a divorce. While at school, she immediately captures the attention of a vampire named Edward Cullen. The book continues with Bella is trying to find out what kind of monster Edward is. Once he starts to confide in her, a relationship develops between them. Throughout the rest of the novel, the Cullen vampire family struggles to keep the existence of their kind away from the public view while trying to save Bella who had attracted the attention of evil vampires who are feeding off of the inhabitance of Forks and the surrounding areas.

This novels is a wonderful supernatural book for teens because it questions what it means to be good vs. what it means to be evil, and it brings up the question of whether or not someone can fight their nature. This vampire book presents a teen friendly view of vampires, and it offers an analysis of them. It challenges the idea of whether all vampires are evil while presenting normal everyday problems that teens have to face.

6. Stiefvater, Maggie. Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls). New York: Scholastic Press. 2010. Print.

Grace, 17, loves the peace and tranquility of the woods behind her home. It is here during the cold winter months that she gets to see her wolf—the one with the yellow eyes. Grace is sure that he saved her from an attack by other wolves when she was nine. Over the ensuing years he has returned each season, watching her with those haunting eyes as if longing for something to happen. When a teen is killed by wolves, a hunting party decides to retaliate. Grace races through the woods and discovers a wounded boy shivering on her back porch. One look at his yellow eyes and she knows that this is her wolf in human form. Fate has finally brought Sam and Grace together, and as their love grows and intensifies, so does the reality of what awaits them. It is only a matter of time before the winter cold changes him back into a wolf, and this time he might stay that way forever. Told from alternating points of view, the narrative takes a classic Romeo & Juliet plot and transforms it into a paranormal romance that is beautiful and moving. Readers will easily identify with the strong, dynamic characters. The mythology surrounding the wolf pack is clever and so well written that it seems perfectly normal for the creatures to exist in today's world (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com).

7. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. USA: SoHo Books, 2011. Print

A naive young Englishman travels to Transylvania to do business with a client, Count Dracula. After showing his true and terrifying colors, Dracula boards a ship for England in search of new, fresh blood. Unexplained disasters begin to occur in the streets of London before the mystery and the evil doer are finally put to rest. Told in a series of news reports from eyewitness observers to writers of personal diaries, this has a ring of believability that counterbalances nicely with Dracula's too-macabre-to-be-true exploits (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com). This is one of the first vampire books ever written, and this book inspired many teen novels.

8. Walpole, Horace. The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story. USA: Oxford University Press. 2009. Print

This Broadview edition pairs the first Gothic novel with the first Gothic drama, both by Horace Walpole. Published on Christmas Eve, 1764, on Walpole's private press at Strawberry Hill, his Gothicized country house, The Castle of Otranto became an instant and immediate classic of the Gothic genre as well as the prototype for Gothic fiction for the next two hundred years. Walpole's brooding and intense drama, The Mysterious Mother, focuses on the protagonist's angst over an act of incest with his mother, and includes the appearance of Father Benedict, Gothic literature's first evil monk. Appendices in this edition include selections from Walpole�s letters, contemporary responses, and writings illustrating the aesthetic and intellectual climate of the period (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com).

9. Wellington, David. Monster Island: A Zombie Novel. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. 2006. Print

It's one month after a global disaster. The most "developed" nations of the world have fallen to the shambling zombie masses. Only a few pockets of humanity survive — in places rife with high-powered weaponry, such as Somalia. In New York City, the dead walk the streets, driven by an insatiable hunger for all things living. One amongst them is different; though he shares their appetites he has retained his human intelligence. Alone among the mindless zombies, Gary Fleck is an eyewitness to the end of the world — and perhaps the evil genius behind it all. From the other side of the planet, a small but heavily-armed group of schoolgirls-turned-soldiers has come in search of desperately needed medicine. Dekalb, a former United Nations weapons inspector, leads them as their local guide. Ayaan, a crack shot at the age of sixteen, will stop at nothing to complete her mission. They think they are prepared for anything. On Monster Island they will find that there is something worse even than being undead, as Gary learns the true price of survival (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com).

10. Williams, Wes. Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern Culture. USA: Oxford University Press. 2011. Print.

To call something 'monstrueux' in the mid-sixteenth century is, more often than not, to wonder at its enormous size: it is to call to mind something like a whale. By the late seventeenth 'monstrueux' is more likely to denote hidden intentions, unspoken desires. Several shifts are at work in this word history, and in what Othello calls the 'mighty magic' of monsters; these shifts can be described in a number of ways. The clearest, and most compelling, is the translation or migration of the monstrous from natural history to moral philosophy, from descriptions of creatures found in the external world to the drama of human motivation, of sexual and political identity.

The centre of the book's gravity is French culture, but it also explores Shakespeare, and Italian, German, and Latin culture, as well as the ways in which the monstrous tales and images of Antiquity were revived across the period, and survive into our own times (The book summary is taken from Amazon.com). This work of literature is important because it gives a numerous amount of information on monsters and their background. It would give American young adults more of an idea about how other countries view monsters and the supernatural.