with another person and really matter.
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Taken together, Caroline’s relationships with Elena and Bonnie, her mother, and the men in her life all show a consistent image that suggests that the kiddie pool might not be so shallow after all. Caroline is a mean girl who isn’t mean, a shallow girl who wants things so deeply it hurts, and the voice on the show of every girl who’s been treated badly, dismissed, or told a million times over that she’s just not good enough—for a boy, for her friends, for her parents, or any or all of the above.
So cut Caroline some slack—because if she doesn’t wake up at the beginning of season two, you’re going to miss her.
Jennifer lynn BarneS is the author of seven books for young adults, including Tattoo , Fate , the Squad series, and Raised By Wolves , a paranormal adventure about a human girl raised by werewolves.
Jen graduated from Yale University in 2006 with a degree in cognitive science and Cambridge University in 2007 with a master’s in psychiatry. She’s currently hard at work on a PhD.
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Dear Diary . . .
• Karen Mahoney •
The show is titled The Vampire Diaries, so it’s no wonder that the humble diary should be the subject of an essay of its own. While the diary entry voice-overs may have been short-lived, journals have been the key to many of the first season’s major events. Karen Mahoney delves into the use of diaries within the series as tools of narration and as a method of connecting the past and present within the story itself.
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Ah, diaries . . . repositories for our innermost thoughts and most private dreams. In literature throughout the ages, diaries have allowed us to get closer than ever to characters we seek to know better. A sneaky peek at someone’s journal equals a window right into his or her heart and soul; dark secrets are often revealed. We love the confessional aspect—
especially, it seems, when it includes teen angst and tales of paranormal love.
But a diary is a written format. Sure, journal entries have been a common storytelling device used in fiction throughout the years, but on TV? How does that translate? Putting aside the original books written by L.J. Smith, how exactly does a TV show like The Vampire Diaries bring a character’s diary successfully to the screen and make it (a) work within the confines of a visual medium and (b) retain relevancy to the ongoing story lines?
The answer, at least to the first part of that question, lies in the extensive use of voice-overs.
I don’t think I can be blamed for going into the first episode assuming that the focal point for viewers would be our heroine, Elena Gilbert. She is the viewpoint character; the bereaved seventeen-year-old girl that the audience must empathize with and relate to as the story progresses. After all, a lot of the prepub-licity for the show focused on similarities between the Twilight franchise and The Vampire Diaries. Just as Bella is at the center 160
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• D e a r D i a r y . . . •
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of Twilight, so we might reasonably expect to see Elena at the center of this new TV show, one that would most likely appeal to large numbers of female teens and young adults.
Yet despite this, it was Stefan Salvatore, her vampire boyfriend-to-be, whose voice-over actually opened the pilot episode—he also keeps a journal: Stefan: For over a century, I have lived in secret. Hiding in the shadows. Alone in the world. Until now. I am a vampire—and this is my story.
Wait a minute . . . It’s Stefan’s story?
When I first saw the pilot I had to rewind and hear that again: a teen vampire drama that, traditionally, would place the greatest emphasis on the teenage main character (i.e., Elena), instead challenged that very notion by putting another person’s thoughts and feelings up front and center alongside hers. Viewers were immediately alerted to the fact that this TV show wouldn’t follow preconceived notions of traditional storytelling.
The Vampire Diaries is as much Stefan’s story as it is Elena’s and, as the series develops, we learn that many more characters