Stoker's Use Of Religion In Dracula

Stoker uses religion to showcase the good while having Dracula represent the bad. Throughout the chapters Stoker constantly uses Christian icons against Dracula. He commonly uses a crucifix and has shown communion wafers. The first case of showing religion is at the very beginning of the novel. Johnathan Harker is on his way to Dracula’s castle and he is saying goodbye to an old lady. She hands him a crucifix and demands he wear it for it will protect him. Even before being introduced to Dracula, Stoker has already begun to showcase religion. By having the old lady give Harker the crucifix it immediately puts Dracula on the opposite side as an evil figure. This is shown in the entry that Harker makes in his journal, “Whether it is the old lady’s fear, or the many ghostly tradition of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my as usual.”(13) Even though Harker doesn’t believe in Catholic

A second account of religion is when Van Helsing uses communion wafer. He uses it as a glue so that Lucy Westenra, the vampire, cannot get back into her tomb as part of their plan to kill her. The other men question Van Helsing and when he tells them what they have, John Seward simply says, “we felt individually that in the presence of such earnest purpose as the Professor’s, a purpose which could thus use the to him most sacred of things, it was impossible to distrust.” (187) They trust Van Helsing and what he is doing because of the holy item that he is using. Van Helsing is pitting the body of Christ against the body of an Un-dead and because of that the men follow. Stoker has these men ponder about something holy but almost immediately has them say that it is a good thing and making it seem that with Christianity or Catholic there is no wrong, there is only