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undead threat. In “The Turning Point,” Logan Fell told Damon that the Founding Families passed these journals onto their children, describing vampire lore and the secret activities of the Founders Council that was formed to oppose them.
When Anna started hanging around with Jeremy, determined to help him with his history paper on the “vampires”
of Mystic Falls, the audience was suspicious of her motives (“Bloodlines,” 1-11). We felt the same way when Alaric bor-rowed the journal from Jeremy. It was supposedly just to get his history teacher’s geek on, but we knew otherwise. By then we had figured out that Johnathan Gilbert’s journal must have held something far more significant—and potentially more deadly—than simple stories of things that go bump in the night.
This was confirmed when Stefan caught Damon searching for their father Giuseppe Salvatore’s journal; he wanted to find any information he could about his lost love Katherine, the tomb she was trapped in, and how to open it (“Unpleas-antville,” 1-12). Together, the Salvatore brothers learned that the location of Emily Bennett’s grimoire was actually revealed in Johnathan Gilbert’s journal—the one that Alaric then had in his possession. The one that Anna was so desperate to get hold of.
And so, the race was on: who would get to the journal first? Whoever won would ultimately be in possession of the knowledge that could free Katherine and the other tomb vampires. Not only was this a powerful example of how dangerous a diary’s secrets can be, but we were also made aware of how closely linked the past and the present truly are.
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The Vampire Diaries went relatively quiet on the issue of journals after the events of “Children of the Damned” (1-13), where Emily’s grimoire was finally retrieved. That is, until
“Under Control” (1-18), when Jeremy, suspicious of his sister’s attempts to placate him after Vicki Donovan’s body was dug up, read Elena’s diary and learned the truth about Vicki’s death and how his memory was erased by Damon. In between, we were left without the familiar framing device of Elena’s and Stefan’s thoughts, and also without the search for the historical Gilbert journal. It was only a gap of four episodes, and yet as a viewer I found it quite significant. There is often just as much power in silence as there can be in words.
So what did the “silence” of these journal-free episodes say? For me, it was like the calm before the storm: a way of subtly preparing us for a Big Reveal of some kind. There was a buildup of energy, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in episode seventeen, “Let the Right One In,” the storm broke—literally—and rain poured down on the inhabitants of Mystic Falls. Stefan was captured and tortured by the tomb vampires; Elena fed him her blood in order to save him; Caroline found Vicki’s buried remains after her car broke down in the storm. All the pieces were put in place for the final dramatic arc of the season.
Whether the writers intended for the lack of journal voice-overs to be significant doesn’t really matter; the silence still spoke volumes. We were kept in the dark, finding things out alongside the characters, just as Jeremy had been kept in the dark by Elena. Reading his sister’s journal—invading her pri-vacy in that way—was a betrayal that Jeremy knew was 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 171
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difficult to justify, and yet, as he told himself, how much worse was it that Elena arranged to have his memories tam-pered with in a misguided attempt to remove his suffering?
All of the many secrets she had been keeping from him, including the truth about the vampires in Mystic Falls, came to the surface. From that point on, there was no going back.
The diary could not just be closed and the truth—and lies—
be easily forgotten (well, not unless Damon got his hands on Jeremy again).
When Jeremy searched Elena’s room for her diary, we knew that nothing would ever be the same again. And yet . . .
even he was unsure about whether or not he would