The first time we met dementors was in the third book when they stopped the Hogwarts Express for a check. Dementors are repulsive creatures. Whenever they approach someone, he/she feels that he/she will never sense happiness again. Even Muggles can feel their presence, though they can’t see them. They nourish from happy emotions of people around them and they are guarding Azkaban’s jails. We can say that dementors are something between erinnyes and vampires. They have characteristics of both the above-mentioned “existences”. We’re going to explain the similarities between dementors and vampires in order to extend later to erinnyes.

General information about Vampires: Vampires are creatures of darkness. They live drinking blood from the living, and by using their two overgrown teeth they bite their victim to suck blood from it. Their appearance is 80% human; the only things that differ are the eyes, the teeth, and the ears. It is said that they die forever if they are nailed in the heart, see the daylight, drink blood from any dead, or touch a rose. It is also remarkable that they can live drinking blood from small animals such as mice and dogs. (The information is from the article of Orpheus Spiliotopoulos)

After a vampire attacks its victim, what is left behind is a lifeless and “cursed to hang around body”. They haven’t got will neither conscience, their only aim is to satisfy their necessity for nourishment. We believe that something similar happens with dementor victims. Rowling hasn’t yet explained to us what really occurs with them. Naturally, if vampire victims don’t turn into a vampire, they must die in 3-5 days because of lack of water. We don’t want to believe that dementor victims end up like dementors, and we think you agree!!

General information about Erinnyes: Erinnyes were Gods in Greek mythology. In Greek language, “erinnyes” means “remorse”. They punished every immoral action. Erinnyes were said to be older than the Gods who dominate with Zeus. Their appearance was horrifying. From their eyes came out fire and poisoned scum. From their mouth came out fire too, and they had a smelly breath, unbearable even for Gods. Their skin was dark like their clothes. They ran after the criminal on earth, in the sea even in the underworld, where they live. It was pretty easy to catch the criminal as they captured him in his remorse. They chased and punished him without caring for the reasons or the circumstances which dictate the crime (sometimes they ran after innocent people too). When they approached the guilty, they cut off his head, uprooted his eyes, whipped him, threw stones at him, and drank his blood.

Petrified? Well, it is pretty obvious that dementors are more like erinnyes. They, like erinnyes, capture the soul into the body and make it think of all the bad moments it had lived (perhaps those while it had been committing the crime); namely, they captured it in its remorse. Also, like erinnyes, dementors don’t care for the occasions of a crime neither, if the person said to be guilty is really one.

Finally, we put all of these together in order to get the general meaning of all the above:

1. Dementors look like Vampires in the way of “eating” their victim (“bite it”).
2. But they are more like Erinnyes in the reason of eating their victim (“punish it”).

   2/23/04
   
   
   
   

   
   

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