i live so i love

Orlok was no more than a shadow at Ellen’s window during her teenage years (she calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II).  As we see at the prologue, Ellen didn’t give him entrance into her family home (and her opening the window to him at the Harding household, dooming everyone inside, confirms this, she didn’t know Orlok has to be invited in, like your regular vampire). Ellen was masturbating and when he grabs her neck, she almost suffocates to death (confirming he wasn’t touching her before). The prologue also established their communications are telepathic, Orlok talks with her inside of her head/mind.

Herr Knock’s Sex Magick ritual (masturbation) will confirm its sexual energy that conjures Orlok, and he has to be summoned (invited) for these telepathic communications to happen. This will explain everything about Orlok and Ellen’s communications: the “hysteric fits” are all on herself, and she’s summoning Orlok for them to talk inside of her head. In her teenage years, she would masturbate and he would appear at her window, as a ghost, similar to Catherine's ghost with Heathcliff, calling him to his grave.

And her father caught her masturbating and shouted “sin!” and threatened to have her institutionalized because masturbation was considered the “ultimate sin” in Victorian society. It was called “self-pollution” and “self-abuse”, and both a moral and physical evil. Medical manuals adverted against this “evil”, for both men and women. In the early 19th century, female masturbation was considered a “anti-social behavior”, a form of insanity (“lunacy”) and epilepsy, and was believed to increase the risk of hysteria in women. Which is aligned with the Victorian diagnose of Ellen's character: "hysteria" ("shame") and melancholy (“abnormal beliefs”, hallucinations, delusions).

Ellen is also seen at her window throughout the film, which is both based on strigoi myth (when strigoi rise from their graves for the first time, they return to those they have loved the most in life, and are said to appear at their loved one’s windows, asking for entrance), and "Wuthering Heights" with Catherine's window: where windows (and doors, too) are usually connected with Catherine and Heathcliff’s separation, and his inability to reach her. In “Nosferatu”, we also see this with Ellen and Orlok: in the prologue, Ellen’s window is wide open (when she meets Orlok), then it’s shut (separation) until the third act, when she asks him to come to her (reunion).

The intense horror of my nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!’… As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child’s face looking through the window […]: still it wailed, ‘Let me in!’

The Love Triangle

“In this “Nosferatu,” he’s [Orlok] coming for Ellen. This love triangle that is similar to “Wuthering Heights,” the novel, was more compelling to me than any political themes.” (Robert Eggers; “Dream of Death”)

This is the easiest to recognize. The love triangle between a free-spirited and medicalized woman (Ellen/Catherine) and a beastly man (Orlok/Heathcliff) and a gentleman (Thomas Hutter/Edgar Lindon). The “demon lover story”.

We see many similarities between Catherine and Ellen, even in her teenage years (Ellen calls it “childhood” because the concept of “teenager” was only created after World War II). Love of nature: While Catherine enjoyed being in the moors of Wuthering Heights, Ellen liked to be in the forest and in the fields. They both stopped because of social pressure (society gender expectations of them); while with Catherine this was more of her own choice, with Ellen it was her father who started to forbid it, and confined her to the domestic sphere. They were both wild and free-spirited; Ellen’s father called her “changeling girl” (European folklore) because she enjoyed being in nature so much. Both characters spiral down into madness, apparently because of Heathcliff/Olrok, when, in truth, they are done with society expectations of them.

Orlok is similar to Heathcliff after Catherine's death. He’s a literal beast, a monster, a strigoi from Balkan folklore. The two are compared to “the devil”, brutal, cruel, dangerous and unforgiving. Both are demonized by society: Heathcliff because of social class and racial issues, and Orlok because of his occult dealings, as he's slandered as a “Devil worshipper” when he’s, in fact, a Pagan enchanter worshipper of Dacian God, Zalmoxis.  However, the sinister and cold behavior of both characters hides a tragic and romantic motivation, both are deeply sad characters, filled with grief and rage, driven by revenge and tormenting everyone around them because of their trauma of losing Catherine/16th century Ellen. I’ll explain this theme in a minute. Heathcliff feels his soul is already dead, and the grief destroyed all the good left in him; he's described as a "living dead" with no mercy nor compassion.

Three representations of unbearable/maddening grief in "Nosferatu" (2024)

Thomas is extremely similar to Edgar Linton. They are both gentlemen, constant, gentle, polite and well-mannered, embodiments of civilized virtues. Both Edgar and Thomas seek to be good Victorian husbands, and fulfill their provider gender roles. Similar to Catherine with Edgar, Ellen chooses to marry Thomas when she meets him, over accepting her covenant with Orlok. Both Edgar and Thomas don’t understand what Catherine and Ellen are experiencing, but stand by them. Both will become grieving widowers at the end.

Like Heathcliff and Edgar, Orlok and Thomas are each other’s foils and opposites, in every single way. Thomas is life; Orlok is death; Thomas is beauty, Orlok is the beast; Thomas is Victorian love, Orlok is passion, Thomas is society, Orlok is nature; Thomas is well-mannered, Orlok is a monster (literally); Thomas is gentle; Orlok is brutal; Thomas is Middle-class, Orlok is a count (aristocracy). Thomas cares about wealth, Orlok doesn’t (he’s already dead).  

"Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.”

“Wuthering Heights” is, at its core, a love triangle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Edgar; which is also the case in “Nosferatu” (2024) with Ellen, Orlok and Thomas:

Ellen and Orlok didn’t grow up together (like Catherine and Heathcliff), and their passionate and wild past as lovers happened in the 16th century (reincarnation theme); 

Ellen, like Catherine, feels ardent desire and passion for Orlok/Heathcliff while being married to Thomas/Edgar: "this demon lover that attracts her, and she doesn’t know why, but somewhere there is a deep understanding there and a deep attraction". The “why” is because she’s the reincarnation of Orlok’s wife, and she has some sort of memories of this (the lilacs, her believing they were lovers “then”, the erotic dreams of Orlok, “you could never please me as he could”);

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also disappears after Ellen/Catherine marries Thomas/Edgar, and returns with a vengeance. In Ellen’s case, she stops conjuring Orlok, and that’s why the haunting ceased (she doesn’t understand this because society doesn’t give her the language for her to understand her power, like Robert Eggers says in interviews).

Like Heathcliff, Orlok also comes between Ellen/Catherine and Thomas/Edgar. Orlok whole ordeal in Transylvania with Thomas is, literally, to scare the crap out of him (hallucinations of the Handsome Roma vampire hunter, the heaviness of his shadow, his jokes about the "torturous grave"), and the the Divorce Sex Magick ritual (which is the whole point why Thomas is there in the first place, as Orlok wants to annul his marriage to Ellen in both the physical (covenant papers aka divorce papers) and the spiritual realms. And then Orlok will go on to influence and possess Thomas.

Like Catherine, Ellen sees her love for Thomas/Edgar as social acceptable (made her “normal” and stopped her medicalization by Victorian society), while feeling Heathcliff/Orlok is a part of her (“I’m Heathcliff!”). In Ellen’s case this is very literal because she believes Orlok is a demon possessing her (because of what Professor Von Franz said, only he spoke of “spiritual obsession”).  

‘No, it was not because I disliked Mr. Heathcliff, but because Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity."

"I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do!"

"You teach me now how cruel you've been - cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you - they'll damn you. You loved me - what right had you to leave me? What right - answer me - for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."

Locket with Lock of Hair

"I shouldn't have discovered that he [Heathcliff] had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair [Edgar's], fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own."

After Catherine’s death, Edgar spends the day at the chapel with her coffin, while Heathcliff goes there at night. He opens the necklace-locket she has on her neck and places a lock of his own hair inside (tossing away Edgar’s) as he begs Catherine’s ghost to haunt him.

Ellen does her “maiden’s token” in front of her symbolic window, and the next after is Herr Knock conjuring Orlok to communicate with him. Ellen has premonitions and just had a dream about Orlok after the prologue, she knows Thomas will be sent to him. Her heart-shape locket is an invitation for him to haunt her again (because he needs to be invited).

"You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Catherine Madness and Ellen’s Sickness

"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

When Edgar forbids Catherine from seeing Heathcliff, she locks herself in her room, and isolates into silence and starvation, confined to her bed. According to Nelly, she’s delirious, hallucinating and inflamed with declarations of madness. She becomes consumed by her passion for Heathcliff and death. Catherine is mentally devastated by the constant fighting between Edgar and Heathcliff, and, then by being separated from him and him running off with Isabella. Catherine’s mind and body are consumed by her passionate feelings for Heathcliff, and she’s not able to control herself. When he goes to visit her, behind Edgar’s back, they finally confess their love for each other and Catherine blames him, and says he killed her, comparing her passion for him with murder. In her death bed, Catherine, after giving birth, calls out for Heathcliff, saying she won’t ever rest until he’s dead by her side.

Catherine famously declares she’s Heathcliff, as in they share the same soul, the same spirit, they are soulmates: “he’s [Heathcliff’s] more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” For his part, Heathcliff feels the same, as he declares he can’t live with his soul in the grave, nor without his soul, after Catherine’s death.

Ellen resurrected Orlok when she was 15 years old (confirmed by composer Robin Carolan in an online interview, alongside Robert Eggers), and, through her prayer, she commands “a guardian angel, a spirit of any celestial sphere, anything” to come to her (enchantress). She unconsciously brings Orlok back from the dead (necromancer). There’s an immediate recognition from Orlok’s part: he not only knows what she is, but who she is (reincarnation theme: strigoi haunt the one they loved the most in their life). After her father caught her masturbating, she’s medicalized by Victorian society as hysteric (“shame”; connected with female sexuality) and melancholic (delusions, hallucinations). Orlok stopped haunting her when she met and married Thomas because she stop masturbating and conjuring him in the process.

However, and like Robert Eggers tells us in his interviews: “Ellen has an innate understanding about the shadow side of the world that we live in that she doesn’t have language for. This gift and power that she has isn’t in an environment where it’s being cultivated, to put it mildly. It’s pretty tragic”. Ellen doesn’t understand her power, and Victorian society tells her sexual desire and expressions outside of marriage are sinful and demonic. As such, at the beginning of the story, she believes it was Thomas who stopped her “sickness” (and consequently her medicalization). But, she never forgot Orlok, and she most likely has memories of her past life, to the point she mixes the two in the narrative (16th century and 19th century). Catherine goes out into the pouring rain searching for Heathcliff; Ellen does the same, but runs into Thomas, as sees him as her “lifeguard” (sort of speak).

As the story progresses, Ellen, like Catherine, also becomes consumed by her passion for Orlok, as she keeps having these “hysterics fits” to conjure him and communicate with him (telepathically, inside of her mind). Like Catherine, she can’t control herself. And, like Catherine, she will also put the blame on Orlok/Heathcliff; here motivated by Professor Von Franz saying she’s “obsessed of some daemon” (spiritual obsession). Ellen interprets this as Orlok being a demon possessing her and forcing her to have these “hysterical fits” (“I have felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”). Ellen can’t accept she’s the one who keeps summoning Orlok because that’s too shameful, and her sexuality is owned and controlled by her husband, which is why her answer to Orlok “it is not me, it is your own nature” is “no, I love Thomas”.

Professor Von Franz also began to give Ellen answers about her power, mainly that she’s a medium and can communicate with the spiritual world through her trance mediumship. But she thinks she can only communicate with Orlok specifically; which she discovers it’s not the case during the “possession scene”. This scene is important to her character arc because it’s when she realizes Orlok is not a demon possessing her, it’s all on herself (which is why she declares “I’m unclean!” because that’s what Victorian society tells her about her sexuality). In this scene she sees Thomas will always call the doctors to deal with her, too; he will always medicalize her.

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills."

Several Feminist literary critics have interpreted Catherine madness in “Wuthering Heights” as a result of her imprisonment. This topic is explored in the book “The Madwoman in the Attic” by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. Themes of childhood vs. motherhood, freedom vs. imprisonment, home vs. outdoors, society vs. nature are present in Catherine perceived descent into madness, as Nelly becomes the representative of patriarchal authority to report her behavior.

When Catherine meets the Lintons, she’s “domesticated”, robbed of her independence, nature and individuality, as she seeks to become socially acceptable. She decides to marry Edgar Linton, and struggles to define her identity as a woman in her husband’s household. Her confinement in Thrushcross Grange (society) makes her life unbearable, she wants to return to her Wuthering Heights and to Heathcliff (nature), and this leads to her premature death. To Gubar and Gilbert, it’s Catherine’s marriage to Edgar that causes her to feel trapped, she can no longer make sense of the world, sees things entirely from her own perspective, and ultimately is confined to her bed with illness. This connection between mental breakdown and imprisonment is common to many Gothic tales and Romantic poems, notably Lord Byron’s “The Prisoner of Chillon”and some of Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems.

We see something similar with Ellen in “Nosferatu” (2024); she has a clear connection to nature, in her teenage years she enjoyed being in the forest and the fields, and now she wants to go to the beach. Society wants to keep her imprisoned in the domestic sphere, which is represented in her marriage to Thomas, as he seeks to buy them a bigger house and a maid because that’s what Ellen deserves. Like Catherine, Ellen is also “domesticated” when she meets and marries Thomas, as she represses her power because of societal expectations of her, until it eventually explodes and she keeps summoning Orlok to her. And like Catherine, Ellen’s desire for freedom will also lead her to her premature death (in a different context). And while Catherine and Heathcliff had their Wuthering Heights, Ellen and Orlok have their garden of lilacs (like we saw at the prologue, when he revealed himself to her; which is probably also a reference to their past life since these flowers are native to the Balkans, and both Ellen and Orlok associate them with each other).

The Destructive Power of Love and "Blood Plague"

"One of the tasks I had was synthesizing Grau’s 20th-century occultism with cult understandings of the 1830s and with the Transylvanian folklore that was my guiding principle for how Orlok was going to be, what things he was going to do, and the mythology around him. I was synthesizing a mythology that worked with all of that." (Robert Eggers; Dream of Death)

Theme of the all-consuming, obsessive and self-destructive passion, wrecking the lives of everyone around them and only stops when they are both dead.

Robert Eggers' Count Orlok is a strigoi morti from Balkan folklore, with roots in Dacian mythology, and that's his lore and what explains his actions/motivations in this story. Strigoi haunt one person (usually the one they loved the most in their life), and the rest like unfortunate collaterals. In “Nosferatu” (2024), it’s Ellen who’s the target of this haunting; as Orlok’s every action in the story is connected to her. Having her soul by his side for all eternity (“you shall be one with me, ever-eternally”) is his sole motivation.

"May she [Catherine] wake in torment!' he [Heathcliff] cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings!"

Strigoi feed on souls (“life force”, soul in the blood), they are the original “psychic vampires”. As Orlok is feeding on his victims, he’s gradually trapping their souls inside of Nosferatu (the rotten corpse), alongside his own. This is a sort of reversed “possession”; where the victim becomes part of Nosferatu, taking residence there until Nosferatu is destroyed and the souls are set free (including Orlok’s); because strigoi are sustain by the souls of others  ("I will drink upon thy soul"; "I relinquished him my soul").

Besides the physical symptoms of the “blood plague” there’s a notorious change of behavior on Orlok’s victims, as they seem taken by madness and delirium. This is interpreted as “fever”, but it’s them having access to Orlok’s soul inside of Nosferatu, and vice-versa. He's dragging these characters into darkness (Nosferatu) alongside him, forcing his own pain and torment upon their souls, like Heathcliff did with the characters of “Wuthering Heights” after Catherine’s death.

In his own essay to “The Guardian” about his “Nosferatu”, Robert Eggers writes: “what are we to make of stories like this? What kind of trauma, pain and violence is so great that even death cannot stop it? It’s a heartbreaking notion. The folk vampire embodies disease, death, and sex in a base, brutal and unforgiving way.” The answer to Orlok's dark trauma, connected to Ellen, that death cannot stop it, is on the story itself.

Orlok is forcing all of these characters to relive his own trauma throught their "blood plague" deliriums, which fits the “demon lover story” in a, indeed, brutal and unforgiving way. He compells Ellen to confront her own power (death), destroy her Victorian self-deception (“You deceive yourself”) and for her to remember their own shared trauma, at the same time.

Unbearable guilt: Thomas blames himself for everything that is happening, he believes he was the one who unleashed Orlok because he sold him a house in Wisburg. He thinks Orlok is already getting to Ellen the same way he did to him once he arrived at Transylvania. He's now on a vendetta against Orlok ("I'll kill him!") and wants to be forgiven ("Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!” as he’ll say to Friedrich).

Burden of reproduction: Anna feels her pregnancy is eating her away, because her unborn child is hungry like their father, and asks Ellen for explanations;

Maddening grief: Friedrich Harding blames Ellen’s diseased mind for his grief, and he'll go on to blame himself when Thomas proves Nosferatu is real.

"I’ll kill him! He shall never harm you again. Never! [...] Please, it is my fault! Forgive me my dear, sweet friend!" "Suffocating… I… feel so weak… I… I fear little Friedrich is so strong and hungry, he’s eating me weary." "Anna, my love. Our son … our little son… forgive me. I shall never sleep again. Never."

And we also have Herr Knock's delirium, which is "death wish", and wanting to be executed because Orlok broke their covenant in favor of Ellen.

The “blood plague” victims are mimicking Orlok’s dark trauma: 16th century Ellen either died on childbirth or had a pregnancy-related death (like Catherine in "Wuthering Heights"); which embodies disease, sex and death. Which will find parallel in Thomas, but mostly in Friedrich Harding blaming himself because of his wife’s death. Which is also expressed in Anna Harding saying their son is so strong and hungry (like his father) and it’s eating her away. Orlok’s appetite is the culprit of his wife’s death. He kills the two Harding children as revenge for the burdens of reproduction. Like Friedrich Harding, Orlok was also an extremely wealthy man (count; ancient line of nobility; etc.) but his greatest treasure was his wife. Without her, he didn’t want to live anymore, and this will resonate in Herr Knock seeking a violent execution to punish himself. He was either executed because of witchcraft or committed suicide. The symptoms of the "blood plague" (shortage of air, lung infection) and Orlok's "wheezing" indicate he died by suffocation (drowned; hanging or strangled).

And this also makes sense with the strigoi myth where “bad death”, violent, like execution or suicide is believed to be one of the reasons why a person becomes a strigoi after death. And since Orlok calls Ellen his "affliction" (sickness; plague; sorrow of all sorrows), his death is related to her.

Olrok targets Friedrich and Anna Harding because they are the mirror pair to him and Ellen, which indicates they were a similar couple to the Hardings in the 16th century (only Ellen was more sexual than Anna, because she’s similar to Friedrich Harding).

"I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep and throw the church down over me, but I'll not rest till you are with me. I never will!”

Orlok possesses Thomas during the "possession scene" after Ellen begins to "remember", as she says "you could never please me as he could".

Separated by death/United by death

After Catherine’s death, she’s buried in the churchyard, near the moors she loved. While Edgar’s grief is quiet sadness, Heathcliff is pure desolation, suffering and anguish, which will set him on a path of self-destruction. Edgar will be buried next to Catherine. Later, Heathcliff bribes a sexton to unearth Catherine’s coffin and remove the wood on one side, so when he’s buried next to her, their corpses will be together, with not even a piece of wood between them. After their deaths, peace returns to Wuthering Heights and the people swore they saw their ghosts, together, in the moors. The last scene in the book is Mr. Lockwood seeing Catherine and Heathcliff ghosts approaching the window.

Given all the context, it was Orlok’s maddening grief and unbearable guilt over his wife’s death that caused him to be cursed to become a strigoi after his death. Reincarnation is one of the main beliefs in Zalmoxis worship, and so, he died believing he would find his wife on another reincarnation. Only this didn’t happen; he became a strigoi, and his wife’s soul (Ellen) moved on to the next reincarnation. When Ellen calls out, he’s resurrected and immediately goes to her window, asking for entrance, truth to strigoi folklore.

Orlok’s actions with Ellen are very much rooted in Balkan folklore of the strigoi: he’s dragging her to her grave (“you are not for the living. You are not for human kind”); and he needs to have Nosferatu curse removed from him in order for them to be together in the Afterlife, because his soul is trapped in that rotten corpse. At the end of “Nosferatu” (2024) we have two strigoi legends; if a strigoi haunting isn’t stopped, the haunted will, inevitably,  die, broken hearted and insane. In some legends, strigoi return to their widows to have sex with them, until they die of an excess of intercourse (exhaustion); and Ellen literally dies of a “broken heart” because he fed off her heart blood. At the end, Ellen is possessed by Orlok, as their souls are one inside of Nosferatu, she has access to his soul, and her blood plague delirium is love.

'I wish I could hold you,’ she continued, bitterly, ‘till we were both dead!'

And that “final look of love” she gives Thomas isn’t about him at all, it’s about her and Orlok, as their joined blood/souls are pouring out of Nosferatu and ready to ascend to the Afterlife, together forever. Like Catherine and Heathcliff, their bodies are united in death.

Heathcliff grieving Catherine: "Wuthering Heights" BBC Minisseries (2009)

At the end, Ellen and Orlok return to their spiritual garden of lilacs, like Catherine and Heathcliff went back to their Wuthering Heights. Both pairs were separated by death, and are united by death. In both, we have Mr. Lockwood and Professor Von Franz looking out of the window, smiling: