Essay Questions

What is the main setting of this story?

“First Kill” seems to be at some level a very concerted throwback to the vampire fiction foundation laid by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then built upon by the Twilight series. The main physical setting of the story is Stewart High where the two main characters—Juliette and Calliope—as well as most of the secondary characters attend school. The opening scene drops the reader directly into the English class where Jules sits two rows behind Cal. That the very first word of the story also reveals that this scene is taking place on a Friday serves to foreshadow that one should not expect everything to take place within the school, however.

How does the story immediately get to subverting vampire mythology in the first scene taking place on Saturday?

“Part II [Saturday]” begins with Juliette nervously loitering outside her sister Elinor’s room in anticipation of some sisterly advice and assistance on the whole makeup front. Of course, the scene is really about much more than that. The title of the story refers to the fact that Juliette is a vampire on the verge of making her first kill. Elinor is not just a big sister with a talent for cosmetics, she is also an experienced vampire who can offer insight into the all the aspects associated with this rite of passage.

Although not veering into the realm of sparkling or anything quite so radical, a minor subversion of the vampire mythos is revealed in that part about the makeup advice. Needless to say, no teenage girl’s bedroom is quite complete without a nicely illuminated mirror, but the history of this horror icon at the same time indicates such accoutrements would be utterly usefulness. As Elinor takes her place behind, both sisters face the requisite looking glass and, as both their reflections stare back at them with the three-year age difference doing nothing to hide the glaring differences, Juliette muses how “she’s never understood the logic behind that myth.”

What is the unexpected question “First Kill” readers are explicitly encouraged to contemplate?

Each of the stories in the anthology in which this story appears features a short commentary by the editors that ends with a question posed to the reader. These questions that the editors have constructed to accompany the associated narratives are far-ranging in their intent to spark the imagination of readers in the post-completion process of engaging with a fictional narrative. Some are of the more simplistic what-if variety such as “If you were turned into a vampire, what is one thing about yourself you wouldn’t change?” Others are more literary in nature like “In what other way might you interpret the metaphor of the vampire?”

Interestingly, the only story that provokes a question that really asks the reader to potentially make a wholesale re-evaluation of their initial interpretation of the story is that associated with “First Kill.” Keep in mind that the story is about two young teenage girls, one of whom is a vampire while the other is a vampire slayer. As questions go, this one is a doozy: “Who is the real villain: the slayer or the vampire?”