I’d have to say the most pure evil would have to be the classic Vampire but my reasons are from circumstantial evidence. Seems to be similar to a demon/the Devil. Note:
The vampire is warded by holy water
The vampire is warded by the Crucifix
The vampire cannot see himself in a mirror (lacks a soul)
Can be killed by running water – I have no idea why
There are other parallels that I don’t know if are current/archaic in origin – sanctified ground, grave dirt, other things.
And don’t forget that regardless, the vampire is undead. The opposite of life which is an abomination - resurrection without salvation, I’d guess.
The werewolf, while only being able to be killed by silver, doesn’t exactly exist as the antithesis of anything in particular. Probably mans animal nature that manifests at night/sex, I don’t know how much religious significance this has.
You can’t really argue things like this with the modern vampire/werewolf as defined by current Hollywood/WotC/Horror writers. All evil vs. good components are given lip service in favor of cool vs. un-cool or some other conflict. Very little attention is given to “Evil.”
But a werewolf is involved in an immoral situation, whether he like it or not.
As soon as the (involuntary) werewolf is made aware of his condition, his choice becomes “restrain myself so no one gets hurt” or “someone may get killed.” The werewolf does not have the luxury of taking a full moon off.
I must distinguish between the werewolf who gets bitten and is then cursed (the involuntary werewolf or schmuck) and the werewolf who makes a belt of human skin and stands at the crossraods (evil, sick, and twisted bastard).
I wouldn’t say it’s OK for a werewolf to kill an innocent person, but that it’s not neccesarily* evil. A rabid dog, for example, who ran around attacking people wouldn’t be considered “evil,” even if he remembers enough from his “normal” life to know how to get through a dog-door, or where he can find his owners sleeping.
*Of course, there can be exceptions. Like if a werewolf retains his intelligence while in wolf-form, and chooses to hunt and kill people, rather than being driven almost solely by aggression and instinct.
A vampire is by definition a damned soul, someone who prefers an eternity of living death to a natural end to their existance. Vampires are the essence of selfishness, willing to kill and kill and kill just to prolong their existance by one more day. Contrary to uninformed belief you can’t become a vampire by being killed by a vampire…you become a vampire by drinking the blood of another vampire. It requires a choice. Even if it were possible to become a vampire through misadventure, an ethical person would simply refuse to continue their existance by killing, and would allow themselves to waste away to nothingness, or whatever the fate of vampires who cannot feed.
In contrast, a werewolf is merely someone who is reduced to an animal nature. That animal part is natural, it is something that every human being possesses to one degree or another. That animal part is a large part of what makes us human, see good Kirk/bad Kirk transporter accidents. A werewolf might be evil, but doesn’t have to be evil. A person who embraces that animal nature without regard for the consequences of their actions when in animal form is clearly immoral. A parallel can be drawn to the epileptic who continues to drive a car, knowing that they might have a seizure and endanger themselves or others, or someone who leaves toxic chemicals within reach of children. An ordinary werewolf does not have an obligation to kill themselves, although they do have an obligation to prevent themselves from killing people when they are in animal form. If they typically roam the woods and eat a rabbit or two, then locking themselves inside isn’t neccesary. If they become a ravening monster who invariably feasts on human flesh, then they must lock themselves in an escape-proof vault during full moons.
The tough situation comes when a werewolf is prevented from restraining himself by forces outside his control, and knows that he will cause great harm. A similar situation might be an airplane pilot in a crashing plane…he can bail out and save himself, but the plane will crash into a populated area, or he can stay with the plane and guide it to crash into water, knowing the crash will kill him. But the evil of a werewolf compared to the evil of a human being is a difference of degree, not kind. A werewolf is capable of more evil than a regular human being, but so is a person with a gun compared to an unarmed person. A responsible werewolf doesn’t have to be evil, even if they are possibly selfish and exhibit other typically human failings.
One of the joys of working with fantasy creatures is that you can make them anything you darned well please! There is no single definition of a vampire or a werewolf. Over the centuries, different cultures and different individual writers have customized all of the fantasy creatures, and that’s what puts new spins on them.
Anne Rice’s vampires aren’t the same as Tanya Huff’s. Bram Stoker’s original Dracula doesn’t behave like the vampires in the romance novels. The vampires in Buffy are quite different from the ones in The Cowboy and the Vampire (an amusing book).
If I were to write a vampire/werewolf novel, I’d probably make both of them unwitting converts who got bitten and transformed even though they didn’t want to.
The question as asked in the OP makes no sense without clarification. Be specific. Is the werewolf in American Werewolf in London more evil than Bram Stoker’s original Dracula? Is the werewolf in the Scooby-Doo Halloween special more evil than Count Chocula? Those are some questions we could sink our teeth into.
The folkloric vampire, is much more akin to the modern movie zombie than recent fictional vampires. It’s a largely mindless animated corpse, and seeks only to drink the blood of the living. While many vampires are cursed for evil deeds in life, it’s damned unnatural state is no more immoral than the plague.
The folkloric* werewolf, on the other hand, is much more akin to the witch. It got its powers due to so unholy rite or deal with dark powers. It chose its condition (and not in the “I chose not to kill myself/ lock myself up” sense, either), and retains human intelligence in wolf form. that’s how you know you have a werewolf, when a especially nasty and cunning wolf starts snacking on the village children. He’s obviously more evil.
And who’s folklore? There was one guy in the Baltic who believed that he was a werewolf for God, who once a year descended to Hell in four-legged form to fight the devil and ensure the growth of next year’s crops. That’s an unambiguous good guy.
Folklore: it’s unclear to what extent either vampires or werewolves have self-awareness or understanding of right and wrong. However, both states are associated with people who were wicked or sinful in their normal life. Bite-victims may be innocent, but then again in folklore bite-victims usually just die rather than turn into vampires or werewolves themselves. So I’d call this an even match with both being people who were likely at least formerly evil and who are now at best mindlessly destructive and dangerous.
Pop culture: I think I’d give vampires the edge on evilness, as they usually seem both more self-aware and more prone to killing innocent people. However, it’s not really clear in pop culture whether werewolves must eat people to live, whether they kill people for sport or because they can’t control themselves, or even if they necessarily kill people at all. Someone who just turns into a wolf every full moon but doesn’t hurt anyone doesn’t seem evil.
Vampires are more consistently portrayed as needing to kill people for their own survival, although they may also kill for other reasons. A vampire that kills solely for food is arguably less evil than a werewolf that kills for fun, although there’s the added moral question as to whether or not it’s more ethical to commit suicide or live off the deaths of others.
One interesting aspect that nobody has mentioned about werewolves yet that normal wolves, as a rule, don’t attack humans. In fact, they usally try to avoid humans unless hungry(as I understand it). In essence, Man-eating werewolves like in pretty much every werewolf movie out there are actually more like sociopathic humans or rabid dogs then real wolves.
I’m not sure what that means, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Would you mind namimg these books and films? Just want to know if they are comical or horror in nature. I did a search for “Jewish vampire” on google and it returned, well, a lot of disturbing stuff not related to this thread.
Remember I said
In order to argue relative goodness vs. evil, I would establish boundries of classical vampire and werewolf - how can you involve current writings when they are all striving to be different than the norm?
I like Anne Rice’s books, but now everybody is writing about a midget vampire, or a priest vampire, or a rabbi vampire, or an umpire vampire. When the only distinction of a vampire is it drinks blood and abhors sunlight, the Vampire is only as bad as the person at the helm (like Spike in BTVS.)
Well, let me take the discussion off on a slightly different tack–if a (real-world) (pop-cultural) vampire or werewolf was arrested, what would be the charge?
All the pop-cultural (Buffy, Anita, Ann Rice style) vampires that I am aware of are independent, free-will agents. They choose to drink the blood of the living. As such, they are clearly vulnerable to charges of assault and/or murder (assuming an unwilling victim–sometimes there are willing donors).
The pop-cultural werewolves often do not have a memory of or conscious control over their actions as a beast-person. It seems to me that a prosecutor who has a currently-human suspect in a lycanthropic attack has something of a quandry. If he goes for the charge of murder, the defense would be temporary insanity. On the other hand, a charge of reckless endangerment would be a slam-dunk (assuming the facts can be proved, of course).
The Anita Blake series covers the legal aspects in some depth, by the way. Anita has to get a court-order before slaying a vampire.