Hannah Blair
Week 2
When I saw that we had the option
to read a George R. R. Martin book I knew that was going to be the one. It took
me a bit longer than anticipated because so much of the book was dedicated to
the descriptions of steamboats in the way that Tolkein would describe a
mountain. It made it less of an enjoyable experience than Martin’s other more
popular series Game of Thrones, which has conventions that appeal to me more.
But I digress, The story was staring an Abner Marsh who in fact wasn’t a
vampire unlike some of the other novel choices I researched for this weeks
topic. We meet Abner a very unfortunate fellow both aesthetically and
financially. The vampire is Joshua York who stumbles into Abners life when the
peculiarly rich man decides to fund Abners dreamboat in exchange for a
co-captainship of the Vessel named Fevre Dream. Abner doesn’t discover his
business associates secret until he observes many weeks of strange behavior
from Joshua and his crew. The strangely group spends most of their time in
closed doors during the day and Abner discovers their secret when he stumbles
upon strange writings they have stored in their quarters about deaths and
murders and confronts Joshua about them. This is where the novel takes a turn
from that of a normal vampire story. Joshua tries to calm Abner at first
telling him that him and his people are actually hunters of vampires only to
later reveal that while they are out to “end” vampires by using a cure that
Joshua created, they are themselves vampires. The irony of this convention
really resonated with me as a struggle that even us mortals deal with. We often
recognize the evil of man kind and strive to do all In our power to diminish
the destruction that we leave on this world with our wars and mass reproduction
and pollution and political corruption but there is always a greater power that
either distracts us (think the reason the Greeks originally created the
Olympics) or we become so overwhelmed with the amount of corruption that we
choose ignorance. This translates over, in my opinion, when the villain of the
novel, Damon Julian, an ultimate evil vampire, takes over the Fevre Dream,
crushing the nobel attempts of the vampires aboard. Abner barely escapes the
vessel. To me the vampires are those that were distracted from their mission by
fear and distraction while Abner chose the path of ignorance. Many years pass
and Abner and Joshua reunite in order to conquer the evil that instilled fear
and disregard in the people with noble intentions. The novel ends on a happy
(well as happy as it can be) note when the team is able to overcome Damon. To refer
back to my analogy, during my reading I often found that if those who felt
overpowered by the evil in the world were able to leave their reservations and
delusions of what is possible behind then the evil in this world can be
abolished.
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