Each acts according to their own passions and their own nature, rather than an abstract notion of a “greater good.” Damon, with his self-serving motives, is a natural fit amongst the other vampire hunters of Mystic Falls.
Vampire hunting in Mystic Falls isn’t centered around a defining objective doctrine, and so the vampire hunters there are more complicated and less morally righteous than the traditional incarnations of such figures. They are as much like the vampires they hunt as they are like the people they protect. Smudging the lines that separate the vampires from 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 137
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their hunters even further, Alaric and John both have (in John’s case, had) magical rings that allow them to return from the dead if killed.
Alaric also reflects back on Damon’s character in another way. Damon and Alaric have similar heartbreaks in their histories: each believed that their lover was dead (or entombed), only to discover later that she was alive (albeit now a vampire, in the case of Alaric’s wife, Isobel) and had abandoned him. The show plays heavily with mirror-image and double characters—Katherine and Elena function as inversions of each other, Stefan and Damon likewise.
Damon and Alaric make another such pair, with the differences in how they grieve similar losses, and their motivations in vampire hunting, putting them in contrast to one another. Yet the relationship of something approaching honesty and camaraderie they have developed suggests that their similarity of purpose—protecting the humans of Mystic Falls against the nonhuman threats—is stronger than their differences.
Caroline Forbes’ mother, too, is a vampire hunter worthy of closer study, largely because she is so quick to trust Damon, and because, of all the members of the Founders Council, she’s the one he decides to manipulate most heavily. In some ways, Sheriff Forbes is the perfect foil to Damon when it comes to vampire hunting. Like him, she does not draw a distinction between vampires and humans when it comes to doing her duty—she polices them both.
In a dark twist of the old saying that the cobbler’s children go barefoot, it’s Sheriff Forbes’ own daughter who is often 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 138
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under the greatest threat from vampires. One of the scenes that most strongly demonstrates the ways in which Damon is a dark parody of the sheriff’s good intentions occurred when the sheriff went to the Salvatore residence to discuss vampires with Damon. He escorted her outside, which would be beyond Stefan’s earshot if Stefan were human, and explained that he was trying to protect Stefan from the truth about vampires.
The action was believable to the sheriff because she was employing the same tactic with her daughter: doing what she could to shield Caroline from the dark reality of the town.
Ignorance was no kind of protection, though, as Caroline was constantly and violently preyed on by Damon. It was Stefan, seeking to attack Damon by proxy, who administered vervain to Caroline for the first time. If the sheriff had given the herb to Caroline from the start, rather than “protecting”
her from the truth by concealing it from her, Caroline would have been safe from Damon’s predations.
Damon, by pretending to follow the same plan as Sheriff Forbes and “protecting” Stefan, highlights the massive flaws he’s found in the hunters’ methods. Rather than point out this weakness to Sheriff Forbes, as an objectively “good”
vampire hunter might do, Damon simply utilizes the weakness for his own benefit.
Which brings us to the last way in which Damon’s role as a vampire who hunts vampires differs remarkably from older examples of the character type—typically, it’s a lonely role.
Blade, Angel, Saya, and D, as diverse as they are as characters, all share a distance from those around them. To be a 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 139
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creature who kills its own kind is to be out of step with any community that may have embraced them: they can work with other hunters, but will