Hellsing & Vulnerability: Alt. How Sad Is Alucard?

Hellsing & Vulnerability: Alt. How Sad is Alucard?

Gentlemen… I am a nerd.

Case in point: during my lunch breaks, instead of surfing Facebook—something I save for the comfort of my couch—I am on the TED talks website. Nothing makes my day like learning something new; I would take infinite college courses if they didn’t cost a dime, no matter how stressful the workload would be. Give me a lecture on anthropology or ancient history and I am happy as a lark.

Recently, my lunchtime lecture was given by self-proclaimed researcher-storyteller Brené Brown. It was entitled “The Power of Vulnerability”, and I highly recommend you view it [link here], if you’re interested in human nature like I am. Anyway, so I’m sitting there, half-reclined with the door to my classroom locked and fully engrossed in both the video and the sandwich in my hand, when it hits me. I’ve heard of inspiration washing over people like a wave, but when I get it, it’s like an arrow straight to my brain: sudden, unexpected, and I can’t think of much else afterwards.  

My brain sent a single thought through my head, one that made me stop chewing and run it through two or three times to make sure I’d heard it right: Alucard’s greatest fear is vulnerability.

Emotionally, that is.

Well, wait, I countered myself, taking another bite of my sandwich. Who isn’t afraid of vulnerability? It’s sort of a given: we don’t want to let anyone else—who can do harm—into the deepest, most secretive part of our souls. But then, as I thought more, I realized that although we as humans try to hide it, vulnerability also has a little habit of sneaking through.

Humans, as a species, are amazing. My favorite thing to learn about is universal experience. For example, all nations seem to have the odd occurrence where a child’s father tells corny jokes that often fall flat, but are funny because they fall flat. But dad jokes aside, universal experience bleeds into vulnerability like pink on a white dress. You don’t have to know someone’s language to know that they’re smiling because they’re happy, or covering their eyes and cowering because they’re afraid. Body language, facial expression, the look in their eyes—it all goes without saying, no matter who you are or where you’re from. Isn’t that amazing???!

(Clears throat) Since I was supposed to be talking about Hellsing, I’ll use an example from the manga/OVA. Also—do I even have to mention spoilers at this point? It should be assumed, but even so: spoilers!

The scene I’m thinking about is not Alucard, but rather his master. When Walter shows up on the streets of London, dressed in conveniently found leather and sporting some impressive age reducing cream, everyone is astounded. Seras gasps dramatically, Alucard smiles like he always does, the Iscariots go “No, no, don’t step there!” collectively. But what always got me was Integra’s reaction. Not immediately, though she does kind of waste her nicotine on the bloody ground, but afterwards, when Alucard asks her what he’s supposed to do—kind of. That one page became one of my absolute favorites in the manga, and it’s an excellent jumping point for our talk about vulnerability.

See, Hirano didn’t have to say “Oh, she’s super sad. That was her butler and kind of her second dad and now he’s thrown their relationship away to fight another dick also dressed up in leather”. He didn’t need to say it. She says it all without a word in edgewise about it: clenched fists, watery eyes, a tightness in her stance that suggests fighting back tears… she’s in despair. When you see a panel like this, it’s all too easy to remember that she’s a young 20+ woman who just lost the last person she could theoretically call family.

Heartbreaking, but what’s my point? Think about it. She was in the middle of a war, her house is on fire, vampires are trying to bite her, she was unofficially kidnapped and held hostage by a bunch of weirdos working for the Vatican, and she remains calm and cool. Her breaking point only comes when something cuts her to the core, something that she can’t deal with without instantly having to fight against the tears that would show everyone—enemies included— “hey, I’m hurting emotionally, I really need comfort and reassurance.”  

POINT #1: Vulnerability shows when a person feels a pain so great that it strikes a chord within their soul. Remember it, bookmark it: it’ll come back up later.

Another big thing, that I didn’t really think about until Mrs. Brown touched on it, was that the only people who don’t feel shame are the ones who lack the ability to connect empathetically with others. Now, I know you just read that and thought “Wait, weren’t we talking about vulnerability?”, but trust me on this. It’s just another point I’m making.

Now, let me ask you this: What is the defining term between the words psychopath and sociopath? Most people put them on the same lines, but there’s a major, major difference. That term is conscience. Psychopaths lack a conscience. They feel no sense of right or wrong about what they do. They can’t connect with others. Sociopaths, according to experts, have a weak conscience. They feel guilt or remorse, but it’s not strong enough to guide their hand like it might be in the average person’s mind.  

Now, Mrs. Brown found in her research that the underlying cause for shame, for people saying ‘I’m not ___ enough, I don’t deserve love or happiness” is excruciating vulnerability. The people who were ashamed of themselves were also afraid to let their inner selves show to the world. And the only people who don’t feel shame are psychopaths, who lack empathetical connections with others.

Point #2: Sociopaths can feel shame; therefore, they can feel vulnerable. You can probably see where I’m going at this point, right?

Last point: Mrs. Brown, in her findings, talked about something called “numbing vulnerability”. She talked about how humans will try to numb the emotions that they don’t like or agree with, the ones that cause them pain or go against what they consider their morality. Think of monks and nuns giving up pleasures for devotion, that sort of thing. But humans can’t just numb things that make them suffer. When they do, it starts numbing other things, too. You can get rid of shame, of guilt, disappointment, but at what cost? Joy, gratitude, happiness.

POINT #3: Those who chose to fight against vulnerability, become miserable.

Think of the London Blitz, or as I call it: manga catharsis. Everyone—Iscariot, Hellsing, Millennium: they all blew up, shot a man or two, got their emotions out, and if they lived they went on with their lives. SAY THAT I’M WRONG. Out of all the people that could have cried their eyes out there, which one of them did? (looks at camera like the office) Which one of them had a complete screaming, crying meltdown and showed a surprising amount of true vulnerability to a dying man as well as like, fifty other people who were just kind of hanging back and watching it all play out?

It wasn’t Seras, I’ll tell you that much. T_T;

Let’s take our three main points and apply them to the 600-year-old… uh… guy.

Point 1: Why did he have that fit in the first place? Catharsis, I tell you! Anyway, he was angry at Anderson for becoming a… plant thing dude. Ugly. He was mad at Anderson for turning ugly. (coughs) But if we take that point into thought, Anderson’s ugliness—okay, the nail loophole—cut him so deeply that it struck a chord within him, and he couldn’t help but rant and rave against what had happened. And, we can assume that unlike Integra, it went so deeply that he couldn’t stop the tears in time. Why? Because—and this is a bit of conjecture, but I think I can safely say—what Anderson did hit on a source of deep shame for Alucard, shame that he hadn’t been strong enough, brave enough, whatever enough to stay a human and instead became a vampire.

Summation: Alucard has the ability to feel emotions, and these can be forceful enough to provoke a reaction from him.

Point 2: Alucard is, I believe, a sociopath. Prevalent more in the manga, and subtle in the anime/OVA, he does appear to have the ability to connect with others. In the manga, he’s seen joking around with Walter, teaming up with Seras to tease Integra, getting along with Pip in a business-like way, and you can even go so far to say that he has an—albeit unhealthy—connection with both Anderson and the Major. Of course, it’s sometimes possible for people to fake these connections, but I don’t think that’s the case BECAUSE of his breakdown in London.

As stated earlier, to feel shame and vulnerability, to be burdened with emotional pain, is a sign of someone who has morality and can form relationships. Now, that’s not saying he’s a good guy—not at all. As a sociopath, any emotion he feels that gets in the way of his ultimate goal is easily ignored. He might feel guilt, shame, pain, or remorse for his actions, but he simply chooses to do it anyway and probably doesn’t bother to consider it more than a minute or two.

Another example is his and Seras’s little spat in the hotel room. She argues that the people he killed are humans, innocent of anything other than following orders. He shouts at her, yanking her up by the collar and yelling in her face. Then, when she starts to cry, he puts her back down and is more subdued. Now, there’s two ways I look at this: firstly, his expression when he sees her tears. He looks, in the OVA at least, almost shocked that she’s crying, and then seems to rethink his actions. Now, he wasn’t rethinking the killing, per say, but instead he felt something about making her cry. This leads back into the ability to make connections. He felt—bad?—about her tears, so he promptly stopped the offending action and reformed his behavior to something more acceptable: a quieter tone, placing her back on the floor, backing away to give her space. A psychopath wouldn’t care that he’d made her cry, having no emotional connection to her. But Alucard cared enough to stop the behavior, which means that he cared enough about her to at least think “I should not be doing this to this person. Let’s stop and do something else.”

Summation: Per the clinical definition of a sociopath, Alucard has the ability to both make meaningful connections with others. Whether he makes those connections or not is up to him.

Point 3: Throughout the manga/OVA, a close observer can see Alucard fighting against himself—and his emotions. When he dreams about his demise at the hands of van Helsing, he cries in his sleep. However, upon waking he is apathetic about the experience, dismissing it as “a dream; it was nothing”. He feels disgust and anger when a guard kills himself, rather than let Alucard rip him apart while alive. He speaks out against monsters “like me[himself]”, pleading with Anderson to stay human even if it costs him his life. He demeans himself at different times, often in soliloquy or as an undertone to a sentence.

This provokes the question: Does Alucard consider himself worthy of happiness? The answer is probably no, he does not. He shows himself to be very self-critical of his past choices, although he accepts all of them for what they are. However, instead of learning from his past and starting over a new leaf, he remains on the same path of death and destruction. One can assume that he might feel trapped by his own actions, unable to rise up and overcome to begin life anew. This might be why he waits for someone to kill him—a punishment that would, ultimately, free him. This would be a miserable, endless existence, one of self-loathing and an eternal feeling that he is, and always will be, beyond any sort of redemption.

Summation: Alucard’s shame and constant fighting against his own emotions has caused him to turn bitter against the world, as his existence is a cold, bleak realm of misery.

Now for the (deep, echoing voice)

 REALM OF OPINIONS:

If all of the above is true, and can be said about Alucard, here is what I think. Alucard would view his vulnerability as something weak and useless, to be despised and ignored for as long as possible. In short, I think that he would consider vulnerability to be something wholly

human

, and that as a monster he has neither need nor inclination for exposing that side to others. As a human, he was taken at a young age and abused, which set the foundations for what would have otherwise been a happy, healthy adulthood. Surely as a prisoner of the sultan, any weakness would have been mortifying to show to his captors. Even now, as a servant to the Hellsing Organization and British Empire, he would feel it better to hide any emotion that he truly felt behind a mask, so that they could have no ammunition to use against him if the time arose. This does not, however, stop him from at the very least forming a social bond with a few select people, even if they remain outside the field of acquaintances. It is shown through the manga, anime, and OVA that although he walks with both feet in the lawless side of existence, he has the ability to be polite, civilized, work with others, be a teacher, understand the implications of his actions, tease others, even laugh and cry. Despite hating the human part of himself, it is still a core element of his being. I leave you now with questions and thoughts: you are more than welcome to continue the discussion in the comments, PM me, reblog, etc. In fact, if you liked this read, please reblog it so that others can see as well! If Alucard can feel vulnerable, what other situations might he willingly/unwillingly show it? Men are automatically expected by society to be more aloof and emotionless than women, though it is not the case in the slightest. How might this also play a factor in Alucard’s psyche? Is this another part of the reason he loathes himself?If he were ever willing to step back and take a look at himself, or even go to therapy, how would that affect his behavior? As a sociopath, would he make a willing change, or would therapy only further complicate things?

I also want to do a talk that’s more about my fanfiction side of things, which will be coming up VERY soon. I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think! I leave you now, with a quote from the TED Talk that Mrs. Brown gave, that I think sums it up nicely.

But there’s another way, and I’ll leave you with this. This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen … to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive."