Eric's Humanity

Eric’s Humanity

Granted, in the show, Eric has very little in the way of humanity. But we also see in season two that though he may not have feelings for humans (yet) he has feelings for his maker, the tragic Godric.

Eric was a man of his time. He was a Viking whose sole purpose in life was to kill and be killed. When he became Vampire, he took that philosophy with him into his Vampiric life, which seems to have served him well as he is a Vampire a thousand years old. When he reencounters Godric, he is faced with being in his maker’s presence for the first time in centuries. He cares for others, he explains to Bill, just not humans. His sole interest is his maker.

Sookie is the foil to Eric’s experiences with humans. I suspect that Eric’s experiences with humans have been limited to the blood whore he was feeding from, a contemptible creature good only for his personal satisfaction. He does business with humans and profits from them but he does not care for them. They are a means to an end.

When he sees his maker, he sees a changed Vampire. Godric has spent a great deal of time considering the light of his fellow Vampire and their relationship with humans. He has become far more philosophical. And Eric knows that his maker has changed. He has gone from being a powerful survivalist to philosopher. He declares to Eric: I was wrong, we are wrong, we don’t belong here! Eric roars “But we are here!!!” and then we see Eric’s façade crumble in front of his maker and Sookie. He falls on his knees and begs Godric to stay, to not give away his existence to the coming dawn.

How will Eric change? And what will Sookie’s influence do to the big Viking trying to find his way in this brave new world for both humans and supernaturals.

I think it is going be really interesting to see how he changes. For his growth to be so calculated, so measured, this is going to make his character really interesting and really difficult for Sookie to resist. Eric as he is, he would be easy to turn away, he being so limited and one dimensional. But as he evolves..it will be very intense.

Of course I don't want to be soft and lovely dovey, I want him to be a real contrast to Bill. He should be a conflicted character but the other way around. Bill is a human like Vampire...but I want Eric to be a Vampire with human qualities...Does that make sense?

WHat is so funny is that we say they are not human....that they have limited abilities to feel emotions and all that, but I think their range of emotions are just aimed differently. They have a great range of emotions toward their own kind and now that they are living among us in this world, they are leaning a whole new set of feelings.

Funny, the traditions and taboos of Vampires in this world are far more complex than the way humans feel for each other. If you compare us and our interaction with one another. We are far more violent and disrespectful to one another. They seem to have more respect for one another as fellow beings if not as individuals....it is almost like a hive...if you harm one, they all come after you


Everything that happens to Eric from now on is going to be tough emotionally for Eric. He may have made a blood bond with Sookie, but he shared something with her that bonds people. I can't think of anything more intimate, excluding sex, than to cry and show your weakness in front of someone. Once you share that with someone, you are never the same between the two of you.

Yes, I imagine that Eric was private with his emotions as a human as well. He was of a warrior culture and he would have been taught from a young age to keep his emotions in check. I think too, the blood bond works both ways. He hasn't had her blood, but he feels his blood inside her, which is how Bill feels Sookie and how Eric feels Sookie. He would not only feel her reactions to his influence on her via the blood but feel her emotions whether they had anything to do with him or not and Sookie, if nothing else, is very very emotional and as Bill said, tender hearted. Imagine Eric feeling her compassion as it is directed to others, like Tara or Sam or Lafayette and even her misery and anger about Bill.

So Eric may have gotten more than he bargained for when he bonded with her. Bill, being so much closer to his humanity, would be able to internalize it and relish it as a way of reconnecting further with the humanity he seeks, but Eric may be a bundle of emotions in the future. DO you think, as his feelings for her intensifies, he will regret from time to time opening that link between them, after all, he will be having feelings and he even tells Sookie, "I don't like having feelings,"

What is so interesting about Eric is that he may want to be in Sookie's orbit but he really doesn't feel the whole human thing. He is still very much a Vampire, he doesn't want to be anything but.

But now we have seen his emotional side on the show, I wonder if that will change Eric's dynamic with Sookie. And one of the things that I have been wondering about is the thing Godric said: We are wrong, we don't belong here, and Eric roars "But We Are Here!!!" I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life.


Do you think Eric is afraid of exploring the vestiges of his humanity, because it seems he does. Like Gertrude, Hamlet's mother said, "The Lady (Vampire) doth protest too much," when he is confronted about his growing interest in Sookie. He tells Sookie: "Don't use words I don't understand," and "I am not interested in Sookie Stackhouse," and in the books, he tells her, "I don't like having feelings,"

And now that he has suffered this loss of the conflicted Godric and he is now in contact more with humans more than he has in a long time beyond the aspect of a sag and sip, do you think he will have as painful a rebirth as we all suspect? Or will he simply be a Vampire who has a strange obsession with our telepathic barmaid?

One of the things I thought was interesting was the way Eric said," Stop it, don't do that, it makes me feel strangely human" See, even now, being around Sookie and her own difference and having his blood inside her is making the Viking change somewhat. I predict that we will conflicting views of Eric. The raw, sensual character to the strangely sensitive character. Sookie, I think interprets this as some level of falsehood on the part of Eric and really all Vampires. But I think this is a real complication for him.

The way other Vampires seem to laugh at and marginalized Bill for his love for Sookie sort of gives you insight into what Eric may be fighting in his own self. So, as the story develops and we see Eric's conflict in his own nature, we will see him change and it will wonderful to watch the tearing down and rebuilding of this character.

Season three really showed us many sides to Eric's personality. Eric is now experiencing things that are quite new for him in his one thousand year existence. And we have seen him as he was in life and he was not unlike any other man. As Barrister said, he is looking for the solace of the warmth between a woman's legs and he is a person content to be in the bosom of his family but he is not looking for any real responsibility. He cares nothing for his father's crown and position....

Funny, but all that changes for Eric. Not only in the moment he sees his family butchered by wolves but in the moment he becomes a Vampire. I wonder if Eric had been wounded in a battle against the weres the night Godric saw him fighting. I wonder how he confided in his maker. The little bit we saw Godric in season two as he was before he was enlightened, I imagine the Vampire would have been up for the adventure of hunting werewolves, a long drawn out frolic.

He would also be teaching Eric the way to be a Vampire and teach him how to survive. Eric is a very bright man and would have been an apt pupil but he did that have weakness, the desire for revenge. He even violates the law of the blood. Which if you think about it is a very human thing to do. Most humans if asked would say I would do anything for revenge. I think that would be doubly so for a Vampire with unlimited time and amazing strength.

Through the long corridors of time, Eric follows the wolves and their Vampire master til he finally simply loses them. He tells the Authority he thought Edgington met the true death. But can you imagine the shock of being in some rich man's house and seeing something that belonged to your father a thousand years ago, simply another knick knack in a vast collection of things.

Eric's reaction is more than human. His rage is so exquisite, so overwhelming it amounts to a sort of madness in Eric. He takes risks, blinds himself to things that have no purpose to him at the moment. He knows this is his final chance to get the thing he has wanted since he was a human. To hold on to a grudge so long tells me something about the Viking...if he says he loves you...if he makes you a promise, he will keep it and be faithful to it forever. But is that a true example of humanity?

I am not sure...we as humans make vows all of the time. We promise to love honor and cherish til death do us part and we routinely break those promises (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad). We make promises to our deities, but our God(s) know we are frail inconstant humans and we break our pledges to them on purpose or accidentally or we make promises rashly.

Not Eric. If he promises to kill you, he will, he will hound you to the end of his days. But what if he promises to love you? Would he love you to the day you die. I think he would. If you get the strong, stoic Viking to love you, he will. And if that is what you are looking for, then you have it made.

Eric has not fallen in love with Sookie yet but his mere interest in her at Fangtasia in season one, to his desire to trick her into a blood bond in season two and now his day dreams of her saying she smells his memories and she makes him feel uncomfortably human shows the slow build of his interest in her. And now he has tasted her blood. He is as much bonded to her as she is to him...

That is why I don't think the amnesia thing will be necessary. And I hope it is left out. I want to see them uncomfortable and a bit adversarial toward one another so he has to open up more to her so she will let him in to her confidences and she his. Intimacy is so much more than the intimacy of the body. She needs to see Eric as she has seen Bill. The only thing different will be the fact that she is already aware of Eric...there are no carefully built facades and deceptions. He is a brute, a part time villain, a head honcho full of politics....but she has also seen him loving and caring, she has seen his devotion, she has seen his love.

When Eric says his goodbye to Sookie when she goes to see him at Fangtasia, she may feel as though he tricked her with his...the only thing I will regret is not having kissed you...and then followed up by dumping her in his basement and chaining her up and seemingly selling her to Edgington for a chance to walk in the sun, she will realize that he...and Bill...were simply trying to get rid of Edgington once and for all.

So, now, to get in her good graces, he will have to tell her things about himself, a sort of true confessions. It is gamble, but now he is blood bound her as much as she is to him. This is where we will struggle with the faces of Eric's coin...and so will he.

Becoming human is not the easiest of births...there will be pain and I suspect....blood

One of the things I thought was interesting about Eric when he had amnesia was how old fashioned he could be on one hand and how he had these obvious memories of things he had mastered for his life in a modern world.

For example, he sort of gently chastises Sookie for being a woman out in the night and says she should be taken into her brother's home to be guarded and cared for. Sookie of course, a modern woman, thinks this a ridiculous burden for her brother when she can care for herself and a silly suggestion anyhow because Jason is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

His attitudes about sex do not surprise me in the least. The world he came from sex was earthy with few or no inhibitions and anything you might imagine we would do sexually has already been thought out and done and discussed in art religion and philosophy. So his sexual prowess and his openess to doing whatever with Sookie is just part of the man he was. It is ingrained in him like his being a Vampire is a fact he simply states. "Yes, I know I am Vampire, and you are not," he tells Sookie.

The only glitch in the story I see is the fact Eric has a hard time figuring out the lever to roll up the car windows on her shitty little car but later in the book when the witches and the weres are at Bill's house, he goes and gets Sookie's car. Of course you can argue that he has had a some time to think things over, perhaps he was trying to figure out what he did know how to do and driving was something he remembered.

But aside from the obvious, I think that one of the things we do see about Eric is not so much the modern man who is different by virtue of not remembering who he is and what he is the world, but a sort of reversion to the human he was and this is very interesting... and makes me wonder if he still feels after he is restored the man he once was and if he wants to go back to that more primal man who saw things in a very basic almost romantic way. In some ways, far more romantic than Bill with all his old fashioned ways. The simply earthy pleasure of sex and warmth, the companionship he confesses to Sookie much later which made him so happy and his struggle to maintain the Vampire self he has built over one thousand years is going to be an interesting re-imagining of Eric's character....