Werewolves in modern fiction
The process of transmogrification is widely supposed in both film and
literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but
merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless
of the moral character of the person when human. The form a werewolf takes is
not always an ordinary wolf, but is often anthropomorphic
or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern
werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons,
being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or blade). This
negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the
metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns. Current-day werewolf legends almost
exclusively involve lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being
transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf.
Werewolves have been dealt with in many movies, short stories, and novels, with
varying degrees of success. The genre was made popular in recent times by the
classic Universal Studios movie The Wolf Man (1941), starring
Lon Chaney Jr as the werewolf Larry Talbot. This movie contained the
now-famous rhyme: "Even a man who is pure in heart / And says his prayers at
night / May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms / And the autumn moon is
bright." This movie is often credited with originating several aspects of the legend which differ from traditional folklore (including invulnerability to non-silver weapons, contagiousness, and association with the moon).
More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken a significantly positive
turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature
ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen as a representation of humanity allied
more closely with nature. A prime example of this outlook can be seen in the
role-playing game in
which players roleplay various werewolf characters who work on behalf of
Gaia against the destructive supernatural spirit named Wyrm, who represents
the forces of destructive industrialization and pollution. Author Whitley Strieber previously explored these themes in his novels The Wild (in which the werewolf is portrayed as a medium through which to bring human intelligence and spirit back into nature) and The Wolven (in which werewolves are shown to act as predators of humanity, acting as a "natural" control on their population now that it has been removed from the traditional limits of nature).
Werewolves still continue to be popular as monsters in movies and literature,
however. The recent film Ginger Snaps made use of lycanthropy as an
analogue to puberty, portraying the unsettling physical and emotional
changes of human adolescence through the device of lycanthropic transformation.
The novel Howling Mad by Peter David takes the novel approach of
featuring a wolf who has been bitten by a werewolf, becoming a "werehuman" as a
result. The werehuman provides the reader with a unique perspective on human
civilization.
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium also features werewolves. Tolkien's werewolves are not shapeshifters, but evil spirits in wolf-form. See: werewolves (Middle-earth).
Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves" is a modern take on the story of Little Red Riding Hood in which the wolf is but a werewolf. He, as a young man, approaches the girl in her way to her grandmother's house. Carter imbues the story with sexual overtones and the story climaxes when the werewolf seduces the girl into sleeping with him in her late grandmother's bed. There is also a movie based on this short story, directed by Neil Jordan.
Select films featuring werewolves
Select novels featuring werewolves
Other uses of the term "werewolf"
- German author Hermann Löns wrote a book called "Der Wehrwolf" (available online at [1], in German), describing an uprising of farmers against oppression by the state.
- When Germany was on the verge of defeat by allied forces at the end of World War II, the remaining Nazis planned a "resistance movement" named Wehrwolf.
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