Werewolf in Fiction
The process of transmogrification is often portrayed as painful in film and literature. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless and prone to killing and eating people without compunction, regardless of the moral character of its human counterpart. The form a werewolf assumes is not always that of an ordinary wolf but often anthropomorphic or otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Many modern werewolves are 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 fiction almost exclusively involves lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like an infectious disease by the bite of another werewolf. In some fiction, the power of the werewolf extends to human form, such as invulnerability, super-human speed and strength and falling on their feet from high falls. Also aggressiveness and animalistic urges may be harder to control (hunger, sexual arousal). Usually in these cases the abilities are diminished in human form. In other fictions it can even be cured by medicine men or even antidotes.
The first feature film to use an anthropomorphic werewolf was Werewolf of London in 1935 (not to be confused with the 1981 film of a similar title) establishing the canon that the werewolf always kills whom he loves most. The main werewolf of this film is a dapper London scientist who retains some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation.
However, he lacks warmth, and it is left to the tragic character Talbot played by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941’s The Wolf Man to capture the public imagination. This catapulted the werewolf into public consciousness. Sympathetic portrayals are few but notable, An American Werewolf In London and those in the Harry Potter literature being more recent examples. Other werewolves are decidedly more willful and malevolent, such as those in the Howling series.
With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen by some authors as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature. Some recent fiction also discards the idea that the werewolf dominates the mind when one transforms, and instead postulates that the wolf form can be used at will, with the lycanthrope retaining its human thought processes and intelligence.