Symbolic Hybridity and the Identity Crisis in Vampire Fiction: Niklaus Mikaelson

Abstract

The effects of the imperialist agenda are ever present. Nations, even after acquiring their freedoms, suffer from the residue of an oppressed self. The heritage of colonialism includes a set of elements such as identity crisis as a result of hybridity. The latter denotes an unwanted marriage between two ambivalent cultures. A myriad of gothic works carry in their pleats symbolic instances of colonization wherein the vampire is often compared to the coloniser. In this paper, the aim is to analyze the vampire as an invader in parallel to another mystical creature, a werewolf, who is believed to take the role of the colonised. Niklaus Mikaelson, the hybrid, in the TV series The Vampire Diaries is put under scrutiny as the best sample to study the symbolic representation of a colonial and racial hybridity between the self and the other, the supreme vampire and the lowlife werewolf.