Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter Film Analysis

Although the film and the novel of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter highlighted different characters and other versions of Lincoln, they shared a commonality in the underlying themes discussed within the works that later helped to explain the alteration of his character as a result of the Twenty-First Century. One of the main themes shared between the works was the fight against oppression and injustice. An immediate connection was made between vampires and slavery: the reason for the imprisonment of the African American race in the South was due to vampires. The movie said that “killing a slave was not considered murder, no matter the circumstances” and went on to illustrate how this fact upset President Lincoln to the point where he wanted

Life and death had always been the only two stages of life, but Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter adds a third stage, vampire. Being a vampire meant that one was both dead and alive at the same time, thus, giving neither life nor death a particular purpose. Henry said it best when he asked, “But what of a life with no urgency?” (Grahame-Smith, pg. 90). The film and the novel attempted to fabricate a third stage of life in order to illustrate that some people, such as Abraham Lincoln, are timeless and, in a sense, never die from our history. The fine line or gray area between good and evil was also another theme stressed in both works. At first, it seemed clear cut that vampires were bad and everyone else in the movie and book were good, but as each work progressed, the fine line between good and evil had disappeared. In the novel Henry attempted to explain this gray area to Abe when Henry says to him, “Judge us not equally, Abraham” (Grahame-Smith, pg.

Earlier in the semester we defined historical memory as an interpretation of the past and how a group of people remembered history in order to shape it to their current needs. After assessing the differences between the characters in the film and novel, comparing the different versions of Lincoln, and identifying central themes of the works, we could use historical memory to give a definite answer as to why we used the principles of the Twenty-First Century to convert Mr. Lincoln into a vampire hunter. In reference to the varying characters within the film and the novel, the book was written in a more historically accurate manner where there was no central black characters surrounding Lincoln, however, the movie created a central African American character and a central voice for women. The Twenty-First Century film producers incorporated the ongoing fight to end the oppression of women and African American individuals. They did this in order to show the advancement of the United States while simultaneously surrounding President Lincoln in the movie with progressive, Twenty-First Century characters that would not have been viable at the time in which Abe was alive. Another way