Chapter 3

"But it's also about things other than literal vampirism: selfishness, exploitation, a refusal to respect the autonomy of other people, just for starters. We'll return to this list a bit later on. This Principle also applies to other scary favorites, such as ghosts and doppelgangers (ghost doubles or evil twins). We can take it almost as an act of faith that ghosts are about something besides themselves." (Page 16-17)

In this passage, Foster states his main topic of discussion for this chapter. He claims that in valuable literary works the ghosts and vampires have a deeper purpose than just spooking the readers; but they play a role of exploiting the evils of life, such as "selfishness" and "refusal to respect the autonomy of other people". The ghosts and vampires can exploit weakness and help the main charcter such as in A Christmas Carol, or they can ruin the main character such as in The Scarlet Letter. In The Scarlet Letter there was no actual ghost or vampire, but Roger Chillingworth is as close to one as a man can be do to his monstrous ways. He exploits the weakness that Hester bares and tries to ruin her and her lover, thus making him a vampire because he acts out for his own behalf, also known as selfishness. What Foster is saying is that characters in these books can learn valuable lesson from these evil characters, even though it may seem as if they are a threat to the main character. These vampires and ghosts are generally what end up making the character who they are by the end of the story because they either gained a valuable lesson by something taught to them from the ghost, or because they defeated this vampire and ended the evil it was spreading, thus giving them a sense of self-acomplishment.