Plot Summary

A story about metaphor, exploring metaphor rather than a naturalistic or contemporary narrative, avoiding the discursive. It's not difficult to find the parallel between what happens and what actually happened: a family (us as a society) protected by a violent drunk (the government at the time), his wife and son, naked victims of their father's violence and impotence. The well-meaning bourgeois family (the cultural empire of good manners) seems to be restoring order when, in the face of such a situation, what they're actually doing is appropriating what they need under the guise of imperialist civilization. Reading it merely as a vampire story reaffirms this metaphor: out of our ignorance, we despise what conquers us, only for it to conquer us again without hesitation, with morality and good manners on its side.