The vampire is an embodiment of society's deepest fears. Throughout literary history, the vampire has always been characterised as a vile figure of pure evil. However the depiction of the vampire is affected by the social, historical and political context of the time. As said context shifts, so does the collective fear of society and the portrayal of the vampire follows suit. Dracula, I Am Legend and Twilight are three extremely popular books of vampire fiction created during vastly different points in history. In Dracula, the titular character, is depicted as an anti-christ figure as Bram Stoker, the author, warns people about the dangers of straying away from traditional Christian ideals. I Am Legend, a post-apocalyptic novel, emphasises …show more content…
In a day and age where more people have begun to adopt humanitarian views, a strong emphasis has been put on rehabilitation and redemption. However Edward Cullen, a vampire, has a deep ingrained fear that he is beyond saving. This reflects society's fears as society now believes that everyone has the potential to be good and to be saved. Edward rejects these notions and fuels this fear that one can be inherently beyond saving.
Dracula embodies society's fear of straying away from traditional Christian beliefs. Bram Stoker, himself an Irish Protestant, wrote Dracula as a cautionary tale in the midst of the romanticist movement. Romanticism was the movement that harkened back to medieval times, embracing nature and emotions over the rapid industrialisation and the increasing emphasis on rational thought that was occurring in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, romanticism was also strayed away from religion by replacing the image of God with the grandeur of nature and moving gestures of the heart. As this movement gained more and more traction, the institution of the church and core Christian beliefs were beginning to fade
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Written in the 1950’s, Richard Matheson intentionally attempts to warn people about the dangers of not being environmentally aware by popularising post-apocalyptic fiction. The book begins with exposition of the devastated world:“The plague had spread so quickly. Could it have done that if only vampires had spread it?” The world of I Am Legend is one that has been destroyed by a plague created by dust storms and mosquitoes. Robert Neville is seemingly the last man alive, as everyone else has been infected and transformed into vampire-like creatures.Therefore, the portrayal of the vampire shift, becoming much more animalistic and brutal which is evidenced in their stupidity and tendency to hunt in packs. Neville spends his days trying to repair the damage that occurs during the night time attacks. During one of these attacks, Matheson writes: “They were all pursuing him... their grayish-white faces approaching, their dark eyes fastened to his car, to him.” The animalistic nature of the vampires, reveals the fear of environmental annihilation. By creating the Vampire to be a result of an environmental plague, the author attempts to show the dire consequences of not considering the environment. This is how the collective societal fear of environmental annihilation seeps into the portrayal of the vampire. Instead of being a solitary, cunning and vile figure of pure evil as shown in Dracula the vampire has
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.
... period where there was a mix of different feeling and ideas coming about. Religion was the core of his tale, and also modeled it. On one side were the humans and on the other Dracula. Through their struggles to defeat the monster they experienced changes in gender roles, which was also present in real time. Women were becoming more free and working. The only way this change happened was because of the trust and the love between family members; that led to good stable home and ultimately success in life. Stoker wrote Dracula later on his career, this way he had more experience and knowledge of life and grew to believe in common universal truth. Dracula was a hit because it had truth and history in it, and it turned the ordinary good beats bad story into a compelling and interesting narrative, and if readers read carefully they could even find themselves in the book.
he is leaving is the night when "all the evil things in the world will
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.
Conclusively, while Bram Stokers novel Dracula is seen as a gothic and horror story, I argue that it is a novel that seeks to address female sexuality directly. Seen through numerous passages, Stoker confronts and battles the views between sexuality during the Victorian era though his genius of characterization of characters present within the novel. As it seems highly intentional to me, I respect the way in which he criticizes and critiques upon female sexuality by bringing into light new ideas regarding female desires. When contrasting his text upon today’s culture, the differences to how one perceived the vampire has changed significantly.
Carter, M. L. (ed.). Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics. Ann Arbor, U.M.I. Research Press, 1988.
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.
Within Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the reader is introduced to two “men”, a term that is applied loosely, whom come to represent the realization of the dying days of the Victorian Era. Heart of Darkness’ Kurtz comes to be the representation of the realization in that he sees what is required from him, as well as the rest of humanity, in order for them to survive. Dracula, in contrast, is the idealization of what has to be done in order to survive. Furthermore, Dracula comes to represent the next step, in almost evolutionary terms, in that he starts to attack England on its home soil, going to so far as to transplant his own soil onto England. This reverse colonization by Dracula is the resultant action he takes based on the fact that he was able to do that which Kurtz is seemingly unable to do, sacrifice the last of his humanity to become a monster.
The last five paragraphs of Matheson’s novella I Am Legend turns the perception the main character has of the world on its head (Matheson 169-170). He goes from seeing himself as something of a tragic hero, a human remnant in a world descended into monstrous savagery, to understanding that to an emergent society of medicated vampires, he is a murderous terror stalking them when they are at their most vulnerable. The monster is not who he thought it was. He is the thing that will feature in frightening tales of tomorrow. However, with the new perspective that places Robert Neville in the role of the monster, the novel takes on an aspect found in later Vampire Fiction. Robert Neville
In Twilight, Edward Cullen presents the question; “ But what if I’m not the hero? What if I’m the bad guy?” The role of vampires is very controversial. Back in the day they were evil, soulless monsters and people genuinely feared them. However, in the present day it seems that we have grown to love them and even hope to one day be them. There are a plethora of vampire stories and many of them have become immense hits. With so many vampire stories, it is not uncommon that readers are able to identify a vast amount of similarities. Although similar in aspects, there are still many differences between the classic and modern day vampires. Two highly popular stories, in which we can easily identify similarities and differences, are Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.
The Victorian England setting and culture of “Dracula” by: Bram Stoker attributes to many stylistic components and character behaviours in the novel. One of which is the behaviour and actions characters express that are a result of sexual repression. In Dracula, sexual repression is best expressed by the character’s desire to create. This desire is exemplified by the way Dracula creates other vampires, Lucy’s sexual desires, and the men’s expression of aggression. The creation of other Vampires is evident through events including Dracula’s aggressive encounters with Lucy and Mina, and the fact the Dracula is building up a Vampire army. Lucy’s sexual desires are exemplified through her longing to have sex with multiple men and how she compares
In Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, the character John Seward assists his friends and team to defeat Dracula, a blood-sucking vampire who has chosen to target Lucy, the woman Seward got rejected from in a marriage proposal. Lucy is attacked, and Dr. Seward witnesses her slow transformation from innocent women to voluptuous vampires. Within her transformation, Seward is faced with multiple opportunities that allow him to choose to either believe that vampires and superstitions are real, or to rely on his own logic and knowledge of science. Through Seward, Stoker conveys the theme of science vs. superstition and shows how Seward's beliefs and way of thinking evolve throughout the novel.
Bram Stoker's Dracula is a staple of the Gothic Horror genre. It is a novel that has been scrutinized by countless readers over the years. It has spawned an absolutely massive following that still persists to this day, more than a hundred years after it was initially published in 1897. While Stoker's novel is certainly not the first example of a piece of gothic horror, or even the first example of a gothic horror story focusing specifically on vampires, it still managed to fully capture the attention of the public. But not only did Dracula enthrall the readers of its time, but it continued to be a mainstay of the gothic horror genre, and was continually discussed over the following years. The myriad of ways this novel has been interpreted over
It is precisely the point that Hollywood distorts and corrupts serious literature for the entertainment pleasures of a mass audience. In the task of comparing and contrasting the novel of "Dracula" to film extracts of "Bram Stoker’s Dracula", values, meaning and context discovered lie between discrepancy and similarity. The change from differing mediums, novel and film, reveal characteristics and possibilities of narratives. Through the advancement of technology, modern writers have gained a cinematic approach to their writing. However Dracula, written in 1987 by Abraham Stoker, where the introduction of technology was gradual, forging inventions such as the typewriter and phonograph, made reference to in the novel, had no anticipation of what technology would have an effect on such writings. With society’s fascination with the supernatural, and love of technology, Dracula’s many adaptations, film, stage, have ensured its survival through the passage of time.
The author’s op-ed piece was published in 2009, the very peak of the vampire contagion, where one could find these creatures wherever they looked. This pandemonium that arose from vampires is what drove del Toro and Hogan to pen “Why Vampires Never Die.” Furthermore, the purpose behind this essay is to give an abridged description of the past of vampires for the people who had become fanatics of the creatures. Also, this essay showed how vampires have persisted in pop culture. They suggest that vampires have been remade by diverse cultures at different times, and this change echoes that society's angst and concerns. The novelist’s imply that Stroker’s Dracula may mirror an exaggerated human on a prim...