When people hear the world “Dracula” they think black cape, red blood, and white vampire. The creative story of Count Dracula is fiction, but the inspiration behind it is as real as life itself. In the words of Richard Means, “‘Dracula’ is the story of the Transylvanian Count Dracula, a vampire who terrorizes a group of friends, led by Abraham Van Helsing, in his search for victims in London.” The novel by Bram Stoker is widely known and popular throughout most of the world, although not many people know the initial spark for the story. The fictional character, Count Dracula, was actually inspired by Vlad Tepes, a ruthless Romanian prince, who truly earned his horrid reputation. Some people don’t believe this to be true, but there are many …show more content…
He inherited his name, Vlad, by being born into a royal heritage. His royal bloodline also meant that one day he would get the chance to rule his family’s kingdom. Vlad also went by “Dracula” because of his family’s associations. “..Vlad was known as ‘Dracula’, because his father belonged to a society called the Order Draconis. As this made his father a ‘dragon’, it made Vlad ‘Dracula’, which means ‘son of the dragon’” (Means). Stoker learned of Vlad’s reign from a Hungarian professor, Arminius Vambey. Means explains this connection and also says it is believed Vambey “greatly influenced the novel’s central ideas”. Stoker must have been truly intrigued by these horrifying historical accounts of Vlad causing the spark for his work renowned piece of …show more content…
“Some particularly gruesome accounts claimed that Vlad liked to dine among the impaled bodies of his victims, and would even dip his bread into their blood” (Was Dracula a real person?). There are paintings of Vlad dining on his victims everywhere, and most of them revolve around this one common story. In the story, Vlad held a banquet with his enemies as his guests. As if this didn’t seem suspicious enough, he knew “they would challenge his authority” (The Real Dracula) and had a vicious plan. He took them all as prisoners and led them outside the city. “If they really numbered in the hundreds, the executions must have taken a long time. The last victims had to watch in terror for hours. One by one, the prisoners were impaled--run through with a sharp stake” (Goldberg and Itzkowitz, 13). The prisoners had come for a peaceful, elegant evening, but hey ended up having their last night ever, watching in terror as the doom approached. To make matters worse, the people murdered at the banquet weren’t the only ones affected by this
Florescu, Radu, and McNally, R. T., Dracula: A Biography of Vlad the Impaler, 1431-1476 (1973)
During his rule, Dracula established five monasteries and was always followed by priests and monks as he thought that religious charity would erase sin. Despite being known for his great religious virtues and being a war hero in all of Romania for defending his empire from the Ottoman Empire, Dracula had a thirst for blood. Dracula’s good deeds were overshadowed by his methods of torture as he became known as “Vlad the Impaler”. Dracula’s choice of punishment for his enemies was to impale them and leave them to slowly die a painful death. This did not sit well with the Vatican as they condemned his actions of cruelty. It was also reported that on a separate occasion of impaling his enemies, Dracula was eating his dinner and dunked a piece of bread in blood which some say added to the myth of him being a vampire. Dracula was killed in 1476 while he was battling the Turks and his head was cut off and put on display in Constantinople as a tribute of his actions for the country of
After a few years his father and brother were assassinated by the Wallachian nobles, after that he began a long series of campaigns to regain his father seat, during which he committed the atrocities he was most famous for such as impaling his enemies through wooden stakes. The common misconception that Dracula is Vlad stemmed from Vlad’s name and his thirst for blood, even though some of his people had believed that he was some type of demon or vampire, but that was just not true. This false thinking has been around since the release of Bram Stoker’s book Dracula. Though there is another thing that both Dracula and Vlad share, it is that they are both monsters who thirst for blood, the former of which is the blood of the innocent while the latter is the blood of those he deemed sinners.
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.
In the 19th century Bram Stoker wrote the infamous novel, Dracula. This novel was composed in the style of letters, journal entries, newspaper articles and telegrams in order to convey to the reader a realistic story. The story of Dracula is about an ancient vampire who moves to London from his native country of Transylvania. In London, Dracula seduces and bites a young woman by the name of Lucy Westenra. When Lucy falls sick, no one knows how to help her because while Dracula has bitten her many times she has always been in a trance.
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.
Dracula was concerned with female chastity and often cut women’s sexual organs or breast off, who had committed adultery. Some sources narrate stories of women impaled through the vagina on hot stakes. Despite these acts of cruelty, Dracula insisted Wallachians to be honest and hard working. Scholars believe Dracula’s actions may indeed be interpreted as efforts to strengthen and sustain the government while ensuring the security and productivity of his people. Bibliography: The Historical Dracula, Ray Porter, http://www.eskimo.com/~mwirkk/castle/vlad/vladhist.html, 16/10/04 Vlad Dracula: An intriguing figure in the fifteen century, Benjamin H. Leblanc, http://members.aol.com/johnfranc/drac05.htm, 20/11/04
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.
Dracula is a mythical creature designed to wreak havoc on the lives of mortals through the terror and intimidation of death by bite. Vampires are undead beings that kill humans for their blood to survive. Human blood is the vampire’s sustenance, and only way of staying alive. Throughout time, humans have come up with ways to repel vampires, such as lighting jack-o-lanterns on All Hallows Eve, placing garlic around the neck, a stake through the heart, sunlight, etc. Both beings have a survival instinct, whether it be hunger or safety, both are strong emotions. In the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, the characters Lucy, John, and Van Helsing strive for survival, therefore killing Dracula.
The famous movie Van Helsing produced by Stephen Sommers, characterizes Dracula with many different meanings. Portrayed as a typical male human being, transforming into a vampire with astonishing bat-like wings that help him fly. Many different concepts reveal Dracula’s identity throughout the movie. By watching Van Helsing repeatedly, the idea of Dracula seems to reveal more and more information every time the movie gets watched. Dracula remains as one of the best devil topics to study due to his changes, attitude, and duties. For example, Sommers demonstrates the whole concept of why Van Helsing was created. The movie title was named Van Helsing because the main character who ends Dracula was named Van Helsing. The setting of the movie remains based on Transylvania, where Count Dracula murdered Frankenstein’s creator (Grant 2004). The whole point of Van Helsing being sent to Transylvania involved the killing of Frankenstein’s creator and the fear of Dracula murdering the rest of the Valerious family. The Valerious family includes only a brother and sister left who names were Velkin and Anna (Grant 2004). The start of the movie introduces how horrific Dracula sustains with his murders and gruesome ideas. A huge concept behind the scenes of Dracula in Van Helsing included the key to Frankenstein’s creators machine. The machine primarily was responsible for creating Dracula’s young and sustaining their life. Ultimately, the machine gave life to Dracula’s unborn creatures. Trying to find the key remained difficult because a key did not accomplish the machine. Over the period of time in which Dracula finally found the key, many lives were taken and many figures were recognized through Dracula. For example, “Count Dracula is the quintessence of the evil creatures we meet in everyday life” (Herbert 2004). Being known as one of the evilest creatures in the
From Transylvania to Hollywood, vampires have transformed from unfamiliar, mysterious personalities to one of the most dominant monsters in the horror genre today. Vampires are one of the oldest and most noted creatures in mythology, with many variations of them around the world. Although the most famous version is Bram Stoker’s Dracula, many variants have come before and after telling of the same legend with their own added ideas and modifications to relate to their cultures. Today, there is a multitude of literary and film works that convey and resurface peoples’ fear of vampires. As gothic works like Dracula, by Bram Stoker and Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire directed by Scott Jeralds share certain traits reflective of the genre; These factors include setting, actions of each vampire, the initial reactions to news of them, and how their presence affects the people who live within the region the vampires inhabit.
Bram Stoker wrote his infamous novel, Dracula, during the turn of the century in 1897, and the Victorian era novel is heavily influenced by the time in which it was written. Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula is influenced by the period in which it was produced, and it diverges from the novel in the sexualisation of women, the humanization of Dracula, the representation of friendship, and the depiction of science. Dracula is a classic story that can represent the current era’s fears and desires. Although the story changes in Coppola’s Dracula, in comparison to the original, it is not the first time Dracula has been adapted according to the era, and it will not be the last.
Mina Murray was engaged to Jonathan Harker and when Dracula kept him prisoner, the Count wrote letters to Harker’s boss and pretended to be Jonathan and to inform his boss and his fiancé that things were going good with his business trip. The Count was giving Mina and Jonathan’s boss false hope and keeping Harker prisoner at his castle. Dracula would even dress up in Harker’s clothes and mail the letters so it would not arise any suspicion. The Count seemed to only focus on turning women into vampires and he used the men to lure the women into his trap. Therefore, that is why he was keeping Jonathan alive. Everything Dracula did was made with lots of forethought. Such as when Lucy a young woman who also was a friend of Mina was mysteriously getting ill and sleep-walking during the night no one knew what was happening to Lucy because she would get sicker after they discovered she was sleepwalking. Lucy was sleep walking because she had gotten bite by Dracula and every night he called to her so he could feed off her again. He also made sure she was alone and waited a few days before attempting to suck her blood again. Although, Dracula was a smart man in his cunning actions he could not hide the fact that something evil was
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.
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.