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Gothic literature and culture
Themes in gothic fiction
Importance of gothic themes in literature
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Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula is composed of many journal entries and even though they are in chronological order, when writers switch, the times will overlap. This allows Stoker to hide the truth of situations and make the novel more mysterious. It also allows the reader to experience events as the characters themselves experience them. The diary entries begin in May and end in early November so in five hundred pages, the book covers seven months. With this short time period Stoker includes a lot of detail into his characters and their stories. Stoker writes in a straightforward way displaying an everyday style of writing. This follows his epistolary style and makes the diaries more convincing. These diaries not only keep track of everything …show more content…
He displays evil through the vampires and Dracula as the main evil. Darkness is synonymous with bad or ominous events and this happens to be the time when Dracula is active. Even though the guys hate Dracula and condemn him, they display similar action as Dracula. Like Dracula, the men attack at night and murder people. The difference is that they can justify their actions with their entries and thoughts. They use Dracula’s weaknesses, religious items, against him to destroy him. Crosses, wafers, and holy water represent God and goodness. Through these details a clear barrier is drawn between good and evil. The guys seek to rid the world of Dracula, to stop him from harming any more people. With Dracula’s death Stoker shows that good conquers evil, even though the road proved to be difficult. While modernization improves the lives of many, Stoker shows the negative sides to it. Through Van Helsing he shows that knowledge is power. When Lucy was ill, John could not figure out the cause of her illness even with his technology. Helsing with his wisdom and open mindedness figures out her problem quickly after seeing the bite marks. Upon learning the cause of her illness, he returns to his hometown to gain more knowledge on vampires so they can defeat Dracula. Stoker shows that without knowledge of the past some problems cannot be
Throughout ‘Dracula’, Stoker presents the idea of ‘foreigner’ through the characterisation of Count Dracula and Professor Van Helsing, who are the two main outsiders in the novel. Dracula, being a supernatural creature, is of Transylvanian descent which makes him such a poignant character. On the other hand, Van Helsing is a Roman Catholic, and is of a Dutch background, which also highlights him as a foreigner within ‘Dracula.’ In this essay I will explore how these two characters are represented and the intention behind the idea of ‘foreigner.’
The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker has plentiful examples of key concepts we have examined in class including: Purity and impurity, magical thinking, strong emotions such as disgust and shame, , formalization, and myth. In this essay I will summarize events that take place within the novel when the protagonists deal with Dracula and then relate these events to the key concepts to demonstrate why the characters view him as dangerous, and therefore something to be avoided completely.
This fictional character was soon to be famous, and modified for years to come into movie characters or even into cereal commercials. But the original will never be forgotten: a story of a group of friends all with the same mission, to destroy Dracula. The Count has scared many people, from critics to mere children, but if one reads between the lines, Stoker’s true message can be revealed. His personal experiences and the time period in which he lived, influenced him to write Dracula in which he communicated the universal truth that good always prevails over evil. Religion was a big part of people’s lives back in Stoker’s time.
The diary entries or notes used in ‘Dracula’ are fragmented and have an epistolary structure ‘Jonathon Harker’s Journal’. This emphasises each of the character’s feelings of isolation and loneliness, adding to the appeal of the reader. During the entries, Stok...
Bram Stoker’s Dracula includes themes of death, love, and sex. Stoker’s use of empiricism utilizes the idea that everything is happening “now”. The book offers clear insight into who is evil without explicitly saying it. Stoker’s interest in empiricism uses British womanhood as a way to distinguish between good and evil.
In a world with ghosts, monsters, demons, and ghouls, there is one being that resonates in everyone’s mind. The idea of these creatures can be found in almost every culture on the planet in one form or another. They prey on the weak and they feast on the blood of their victims. They are compared to a fox for being quick and cunning, but also rather seductive in their nature. With their unholy existence one can only describe them as almost demonic. So what is this horrid creature? Well it is none other than the vampire, a creature as old as time itself. Throughout history there have been many different variations of the vampire, each with their own unique abilities. But one cannot help but mention
Stoker has rendered the reader to see the Count as physically strong and powerful, through Jonathan Harker and his confinement and Lucy Westenra and her failing health. Although the reader does not understand all the omniscient powers and control that Count Dracula possesses over people, they are brought to light through Dr Steward’s accounts of his patient R.M. Renfield. The ‘strange and sudden change’ (Stoker, 86), that has happened in Renfield evokes the reader to contemplate the Count’s influence over people. Dr Steward suggests it is as though a ‘religious mania has seized’ Renfield (Stoker, 87), and is controlling him. The reader is aware that Renfield can feel the Counts presence and that there is a connection between them. This eventually leads Van Helsing to recognize the bond between Mina Harker and the Count, which helps them to find Dracula and ...
The late nineteenth century Irish novelist, Bram Stoker is most famous for creating Dracula, one of the most popular and well-known vampire stories ever written. Dracula is a gothic, “horror novel about a vampire named Count Dracula who is looking to move from his native country of Transylvania to England” (Shmoop Editorial Team). Unbeknownst of Dracula’s plans, Jonathan Harker, a young English lawyer, traveled to Castle Dracula to help the count with his plans and talk to him about all his options. At first Jonathan was surprised by the Count’s knowledge, politeness, and overall hospitality. However, the longer Jonathan remained in the castle the more uneasy and suspicious he became as he began to realize just how strange and different Dracula was. As the story unfolded, Jonathan realized he is not just a guest, but a prisoner as well. The horror in the novel not only focuses on the “vampiric nature” (Soyokaze), but also on the fear and threat of female sexual expression and aggression in such a conservative Victorian society.
In Bram Stoker's "Dracula", Dracula is portrayed as a monster made evident by his gruesome actions. An analysis of Dracula shows that: shows his evil nature in his planning, brutally killing Lucy Westrenstra causing a violent response from Dr. Seward and others, and how his evil ways lead to his downfall. To characterize Dracula in one way, he is a ruthless, cunning monster who uses tricks, torture, and wits to manipulate people to his will. However when he trifled with some courageous people, he had no knowledge that it would be his undoing.
In the book, Dracula by Bram Stoker there are many characters that display qualities of good verse evil. The Count Dracula is a mysterious character who appears as an odd gentleman but the longer the story goes on Dracula shows his true self. Dracula started infiltrating the lives of anyone who crossed his path and he was not stopping his destruction of others’ lives. Many people were affect by Dracula’s actions but there were two people that Dracula caused an impact on during his rampage. Dracula is an evil, cunning, and selfish character who harms the life of a young man and ruins the future of an innocent woman.
The “Otherness” Dracula possesses reinforces our own norms and beliefs through his transgression that separates him from society and the polarity to Western norms and ideals makes him an effective device for extorting revulsion and horror. Stoker’s novel employs Gothic tradition, providing “the principle embodiments and evocations of cultural anxieties” from which the very Gothic mood and horror is produced, establishing the baseline used to distinguish the modern vampires, as part of vampire mythology within the Gothic (Botting Aftergothic 280). Differences Between Dracula and Twilight The similarities between the two novels are namely Gothic imagery and theme, but the Gothic mood predominates in Dracula over Twilight and it is this difference that makes Twilight not belong in the vampire canon. Horror is the element that Dracula possesses that Edward does not, and it is crucial in the interplay between transgression and limit.
Dracula, as it was written by Bram Stoker, presents to us possibly the most infamous monster in all of literature. Count Dracula, as a fictional character, has come to symbolize the periphery between the majority and being an outsider to that group. Dracula’s appeal throughout the years and genres no doubt stems from his sense of romanticism and monster. Reader’s no doubt are attracted to his “bad-boy” sensibilities, which provide an attraction into the novel. Looking first at his appearance, personality, and behaviour at the beginning of the novel, we can easily see Dracula’s blurred outsider status, as he occupies the boundaries of human and monster. Related to this is Dracula’s geographic sense of outsider. For all intents and purposes, Dracula is an immigrant to England, thus placing him further into the realm of outsider. To look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula as solely a monster in the most violent sense of his actions would to be look at a sole aspect of his character, and so we must look at how he interacts with the outside world to genuinely understand him.
From the whispers of townsfolk spreading legends and tales of what goes bump in the night to the successful novels, plays and film adaptations, the story of the vampire has remained timeless and admired. One of the main writers responsible for this fame and glory is Bram Stoker with his rendition Dracula, written in 1897. Dracula follows the accounts of Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray, Dr. John Seward, Lucy Westenra, and Dr. Van Helsing, through their journal entries and letters, newspaper articles, and memos. Bram’s vision for Dracula is both terrifying and captivating as the reader follows a small group of men and women led by Dr. Van Helsing through their attempt to retaliate against Count Dracula’s efforts to spread his undead chaos and blood lust across England.
Over the years people have given new out looks on the original vampire, Dracula. He was a tall non-attractive looking man who would never come out during the day. Hollywood however has made new vampire stories such as Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries/The Originals that have new ideas of a vampire. These novels/books all have differences, but some still have key characteristics of the original vampire.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the story about how the small company of men and a woman lead by Professor Abraham Van Helsing combats against Count Dracula, who moves from Transylvania to England in order to manipulate people as “foul things of the night like him, without heart or conscience, preying on the bodies and the souls of those [they] love best” (223). Stoker employs an epistolary format in this novel and nowadays, Dracula becomes one of popular literary works representing epistolary novels written in the nineteenth century. The term “epistolary novels” refers to the novels composed of different types of documents, such as journals, letters, newspaper clippings and so forth. One of the effects created by using an epistolary format is providing the characters’ inner state throughout the story, which “focuse[s] on a broader exploration of the insights that made up the conscious self by and [the broader context]” (Ştefan 73). Consequently, Stoker’s use of fragmentary narratives delivers the main characters’ emotions and thoughts in more picturesque ways. In Dracula, the epistolary format of the novel increases terror and suspense, which derived from tension when the story alters after alluding characters’ insecure future and immense power of Dracula affecting not only the main characters, but the third parties who are irrelevant to them.