"The Dead in Love" plays with the boundaries between life and death. For example, as Clarimonde is a vampire, she is a creature of hybridity: one that comes from life and from death, neither fully monster nor human. It is through her hybrid nature that she is capable of traveling between the realms of life and death. Her reason for returning from the dead is love and her relationship with Romuald has been compared to the Platonic myth of Aristophanes.Romuald, conflicted about his dual life, can also be regarded in the same manner: dead (or rather not living) during his priestly duties in the day, but alive and vivacious in the evenings as Il signor Romualdo, Clarimonde's lover.