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Death and the Maiden by Grien Hans
“Give me your hand, you fair and tender form!
I am a friend; I do not come to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not savage.
You shall sleep gently in my arms.”
Matthias Claudius
From La Mort Dans l’Art

This theme [of Death and the Maiden] has a multi-faceted past . It is rooted in very old mythological traditions: among the ancient Greeks, the abduction of Persephone (Proserpine among the Romans) by Hades (Pluto), god of Hell, is a clear prefiguration of the clash between Eros and Thanatos. The young goddess gathered flowers in company of carefree nymphs when she saw a pretty narcissus and plucked it. At that moment, the ground opened; Hades came out of the underworld and abducted Persephone.

This old vision will take a new form at the end of the 15th century and become the theme of Death and the maiden, which will culminate in Germany at the Renaissance. In many dances of Death already figured a representation of Death with a fine lady or with a beautiful virgin. The image of a young woman was also found in the three ages and Death. However in both cases, there was no trace of erotism. But with Death and the maiden theme, something new happened. People discovered a dark [bond] between sexuality and death. In this type of iconography, the young lady was not involved in a dance anymore, but in a sensual intercourse, which [would] become always more erotic as time went by.

At the beginning of Dead Unit Dark, Sookie, the twenty-five year old virgin who can’t have a relationship with a man and can’t better herself with an education is frozen in a life that is a monotonous living hell, slinging beers and constantly being bombarded with the unwanted thoughts of all those around her. Sookie could even be described as a zombie, a walking dead freak who consumes the brains, no, the thoughts of the living. True Blood makes the same point about the state of Sookie’s life in the first episode when she advises a young man to get out of town as quickly as possible because the longer he stays, the more stuck, frozen in place, he will become.

On Sookie’s first visit to Fangtasia, Long Shadow tells her that vampires are death, implying that those who come to Fangtasia have a deathwish. While he may or may not be right about Fangtasia’s other patrons, but Sookie does have an unconscious deathwish, which is one of the reasons she is attracted to Bill. Sure, he brings her mental peace, but isn’t that a euphemism for death? The dead get to rest in peace while the mental wheels of the living are constantly churning.

After her grandmother is killed, Sookie goes from leading the life of a zombie to embracing death, graphically depicted in her mad dash through the graveyard that separates the living from the dead and her determination to throw herself into the arms of Death, a.k.a. Bill, the man she had rejected as too dangerous the night before the murder.

If Long Shadow is right that vampires represent death to the humans who are drawn to them, then Bill is Death personified. Bill is the only vampire beside the newborn Jessica shown rising from the grave, not once but twice. Uniquely Bill is associated with decomposition through the decaying condition of  his house, his earth toned wardrobe, and Sophie Anne’s command to Eric to let Bill rot. Bill is also identified as Death allegorically. In Sookie’s Sojourn, I explained how he represented the snake who seduced the Virgin in the Garden of Eden and introduced death into the world.

One prescient reviewer described True Blood early on as a cage match between Thanatos, the Greek name for Death, and Eros. He was alluding to Frued’s theory that the death drive, which compels humans to engage in risky behavior, is counterbalanced with an instinct for life. That battle is playing out with Bill representing Thanatos and Eric, Eros. Sookie is both the prize and the beneficiary because this battle is symbolically part of the alchemy that is going to lead to Sookie’s enlightenment.

Bill’s identification as Death itself ties in with the first part of the alchemical process, which is the black phase. It is characterized by decomposition. Hot, dry, volatile chemicals (not unlike Bill’s temper or a compost heap) are used to break down the base metal into its component parts, so that the impurities can later be discarded, leaving behind only gold.

Bill’s job in this process is to plunge Sookie into a state of darkness, choas, and alienation, which will provide the shock to her system needed to break her down emotionally and psychologically, so that she might be built up again better than new. This is exactly what Tara was reading about in The Shock Doctrine in the first episode, and what Jason was unwittingly talking about  last season when he said that sometimes you have to destroy something in order to save it. Through the course of the series, Sookie will metamorphose from a zombie who embraces Death into someone who can embrace life and love fully thanks to Eric’s influence in the white stage, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. This post is about the danse macabre that Sookie is engaged in with Bill.

Death and the Maiden by Edvard Munch

Actually, Sookie isn’t the only maiden from Bon Temps dancing with Death. Tara’s doing the horizontal mambo with Franklin Mott.

I’ve always said that Tara is Sookie’s prime alter ego, but this season is when Tara’s storyline with Mott parallels Sookie’s relationship with Bill so closely that it’s impossible not to notice the similarities, from their first meeting at Merlotte’s, which includes a violent bonding experience in the parking lot to the spoiler that Mott will attempt to marry Tara. We know that toward the end of s3,  Tara will be running through the woods in a white gown alluding to Sookie’s graveyard sprint to Bill, but Tara will be running away from Franklin and toward life, reversing course and foreshadowing Sookie’s eventual turning away from Bill and toward Eric.

These parallels make Mott another alter ego of Bill’s who will, no doubt, turn out to be a psychotic serial killer who meets a violent end along with René, Amy, Luke, Maryann, and Eggs. What makes Mott unique as one of Bill’s alter egos is that he is the only one to share Bill’s vampiric nature and his identity as Death personified as the god Mot, in Ugaritic, the same language that gave the Hebrews the name ‘El’ for God and the word ‘mot’ for death. It is also the same language that was used in the s1 promo invitiations and ads. It looks like Mott also shares Bill’s sadistic streak as evidenced by his refusal to bite Tara because she wanted him to and his seeming pleasure at tormenting her in upcoming promos.

The universal truth in the danse macabe is that death is inevitable. Even Persephone, the Goddess of Spring accepted her fate as Death’s companion. In a 21st century girl power twist, Bill and Franklin will discover that Sookie and Tara will not willingly rest in peace, no matter how seductive Death is. If their stories play out like their counterparts’ in the Sookie Stackhouse novels, both Tara and Sookie will escape Death’s clutches thanks to Eric, the Christ figure in the allegory who makes life after death possible. Bill and Mott will not simply give up, though. They will always be stalking Sookie and Tara, lurking in the darkness, waiting for another opportunity to seduce the women who danced with Death and lived to tell the tale.

Updated:

In s3 when Bill called Sookie to break up he said, “I am Death.”