Vampires in the lemon grove story analysis

Vampires in the Lemon Grove

By KAREN RUSSELL

Presented by: Xinfan Su, Peirong Wang, Dandan Zhou, Linh Cao

Author - Karen Russell

American fiction writer

DOB: July 10, 1981

Photo credit: Michael Lionstar

Education:

2003 B.A. Northwestern University

2006 M.F.A. program Columbia University

Author - Karen Russell (cont.)

Bibliography:

2006 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

2011 Swamplandia! (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize)

2013 Vampires in the Lemon Grove

Awards:

2012 National Magazine Award for fiction

2013 MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant"

Background

Monster-tale

loneliness, uniqueness, ugliness, terror that dread of an unspeakably private, unshared future

Find a balance between the humanity of the characters and their fantastic traits

Monsters are often slaves to ungovernable appetites and desires, they are powerless over their own impulses, they are brutally violent. And also exiled from love and community, hunted and hated, etc.

to use the fantastic elements as an opportunity to draw forth and think through some of the more frightening and troubling aspects of our human nature—the ways we deal with or deny and fail to deal with our “monstrous” longings.

Background (cont.)

A funhouse mirror for human nature

Face challenges as any long-married human couple

What would “’til death do us part” look like from the everlasting vantage of a vampire?

Find a balance between the humanity of the characters and their fantastic traits

Monsters are often slaves to ungovernable appetites and desires, they are powerless over their own impulses, they are brutally violent. And also exiled from love and community, hunted and hated, etc.

to use the fantastic elements as an opportunity to draw forth and think through some of the more frightening and troubling aspects of our human nature—the ways we deal with or deny and fail to deal with our “monstrous” longings.

Setting

Time: 19th century

Place: Sorrento, a old town in Italy

Settle down in the lemon grove - a safe haven

A grove of luscious lemons in Sorrento. Photo credit: Rachel Olding

Sorrento is an old town in Italy where Clyde and Magreb have come to live in a lemon grove. The old-world town is reflective of the old world nature of Clyde and Magreb as vampires, and becomes a safe haven for them as they realize they can subsist on lemons.

Sorrento is also the home of Fila and the lemon grove workers. It is in Sorrento, proper, that Clyde and Magreb go to see a movie which Magreb leaves early. On his way home, Clyde encounters Fila in Sorrento, during which times his true nature comes out when he feeds on, and kills Fila.

Characters

Clyde:

An old Vampire looks like an Italian “nonno”, small, kindly

Live in a lemon grove in Sorrento, Italy

Magreb

The wife of Clyde, vampire

Characters (cont.)

Fila

A teenage girl, mans a wooden store at the back of the grove

The only human knows Clyde and Magreb’s secrets

Plot Summary

Clyde and Magreb, as the vampires no longer drinking human blood, also found out that many things they used to believed to be true about vampires are incorrect. They travelled around the world to find the substitute foods for blood, and they finally settled in a lemon grove in Sorrento, Italy, because lemons could relieve their thirst.

Travelled around the world to find the substitute goods of human blood: mint tea, coconut, jet black coffee, apple, rubber balls, jackal’s milk, cherry coke

Haunting liquid chimeras everywhere

“The lemons relieve our thirst without ending it”

The blood does nothing; dont need to sleep in the coffin

Plot Summary (cont.)

However, having lemon juice couldn’t solve the starving. After enduring the desire of blood for a long time, Clyde lost his control and killed Fila for blood one night after the film.

Travelled around the world to find the substitute goods of human blood: mint tea, coconut, jet black coffee, apple, rubber balls, jackal’s milk, cherry coke

Haunting liquid chimeras everywhere

“The lemons relieve our thirst without ending it”

The blood does nothing; dont need to sleep in the coffin

Plot Summary(cont.)

Exposition: Memory

Rising Action: Vampire Movie

Climax: Killed Fila

Resolution: Open ending

Point of View

First person point of view

The story is told through Clyde’s point of view, which makes readers feel more real and understand the emotion more easily.

Tone/literary devices

Tone

In general: Weird & Creepy

Peaceful Happy Horrific

Literary devices

Flashback: recall the past experiences

Simile: “her voice is beautiful, like gravel underfoot”

Symbolism

Vampire- everyday people

Blood-true nature of vampire, or the darkside of people

Lemon- a substitute for blood

Fila- restraint

https://prezi.com/g1qsokzceqkt/vampires-in-the-lemon-gorve/

· The vampires symbolize everyday people, that seem normal on the outside but have their inner struggles that drive them towards negative actions to aliviate the stress/addiction/appetite

· The lemon symbolizes a type of drug (depressant), or escape that the vampire’s use to battle against their blood addiction.

Themes

The horrible true nature of individuals

A dark romance between Clyde and Magreb, the mortal and immortal of love

Illustration by Clifford Harper/agraphia.co.uk

In the story, horror appears in a very classic way through the existence of vampires. Clyde and his wife, both vampires, deny their true nature as vampires by refusing to drink blood. Clyde’s true nature wins out in his horrific killing of Fila to drink her blood late in the story.

The relationship btw M n C is hard to say because they both have an endless longevity so for Clyde, he think that their love is immortal however, Magreb leave Clyde in the end that for Clyde, nothing can last forever

Quotes and Explanation

“I once pictured time as a black magnifying glass and myself as a microscopic flightless insect trapped in that circle of night. But then Magreb came along, and eternity ceased to frighten me” (Russell 465).

He has spent most of his life in the dark, literally and figuratively: sleeping in coffins, drinking blood, aping the manner and style of those vampire tales the villagers told back during the Enlightenment. Not until he meets Magreb, his future wife, and she asks at what point he figured out "the blood did nothing" (p. 10), does the vampire begin to question the false narrative that he has been feasting on.

They searching for home and food for alternity plan that last forever. That is immortality of their relationship

Frighten with his true nature and change when he meets Magreb

Quotes and Explanation

“I blinked down at a little blond child and then saw that my two hands were shaking violently, soundlessly, like old friends wishing not to burden me with their troubles. I dropped the candies into the children’s bags, thinking: You small mortals don’t realize the power of your stories” (Russell 471).

One Halloween, after his relationship with Magreb has opened his eyes. he is faced with children dressed as vampire hunters, bedecked with necklaces of garlic

Quotes and Explanation

“‘I’m tired, Clyde.’

‘Don’t you want to know what happens?’ My voice is more frantic than I intend it to be.

‘I already know what happens’”(Russell 475).

Foreshadowing - Clyde and Magreb go to the cinema to watch a dracula movie; however, Magreb leave Clyde with a sentence “I already know what happen” and that is a kind of foreshadowing of Magreb know what is the nature of dracular which also vampire ....

Works Cited

Russell, Karen. “Vampires in the Lemon Grove.” 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology, 5th Edition, edited by Beverly Lawn, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2017, pp. 745-1894

“Karen Russell.” Penguin Random House, 16 Nov. 2018, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/70463/karen-russell/.

“Karen Russell.” Mac Arthur Foundation, 16 Nov. 2018, https://www.macfound.org/fellows/902/.

Russell, Karen Interview by Mason Henderson. The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress,

www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/russell.html . Accessed 16 Nov. 2018.

Thank You!

Raise your hand: Yes/NO Q&A

Anyone think you have a dark side?

Did you suffer from it?

Did you try to overcome it or just hide it?

Did you succeed or fail? If not...

=>at least one true nature inside anyone and you cannot avoid it

Discussion Question

Do you think you have a dark side?

Do you suffer from it?

Do you try to overcome it (failed or succeed) or just hide it?