Style and Lore within Bram Stoker's Dracula

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Recommended: Dracula and comparisons to gothic literature

A man of the night; a creature of human destruction, Dracula is a force to be reckoned with. Johnathan Harker struggles throughout trying to escape from or stand against the count. Bram Stoker uses his personal styles to create a creature of Transylvanian lore known as Dracula.
Bram uses several different styles to tell his tale of the count and Jonathan. Bram’s novel is written in a gothic style sometimes referred to as a gothic romance (Garen 3). Bram’s use of the supernatural and the vampyric character as the main character. Dracula’s specific attributes underscore Dracula’s inhumanity. “[… After witnessing Dracula scale the castle wall like a lizard” (1). While Jonathan is struggling in the beginning, when he is trapped within the seemingly inescapability is typical of the Gothic style also the various settings including ghostly landscape of Transylvania, graveyards and Lucy’s tomb in London. Bram wrote his Novel in an Epistolary format. Epistolary is a series of letters, and Journal entries. Bram’s novel begins with a journal entry from Mr. Jonathan Harker (Garen 3). “3 May. Bistritz- Left Munich at 8.35 p.m. on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning;” (Stoker 7). Some of the journal entries contain mundane details of his journeys. Bram starts to build suspense; after Jonathan hears warnings from the local residents, Jonathan begins to be concerned for his personal safety (Garen ). “She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offering it to me” (Stoker 11). When Jonathan finally makes it to the castle seeds of doubt and suspense are planted. They grew while Jonathan discovers more information about the count. As Jonathan stays with the count the reader gets more information about Dracula bu...

... middle of paper ...

...sh man’s own character. Bram within his beautiful mind took these things and formed them molded them into a Novel, Creature or legend known simply as Dracula.

Works Cited

Carol A. Senf, “DRACULA: The Unseen Face In The Mirror,” in Journal Of Narrative Technique, Vol. 9, No.3, Fall 1979, pp. 160-70
“Dracula.” Novels for Students. Ed. David A Galens. Vol. 18. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
22-50. Gale Virtual Refrence Library. Web. 8 Oct. 2013
Rebecca Scott, “DRACULA: Novel by Bram Stoker, 1897,” in refrence Guide to
English Literature, 2nd Ed., Edited by D.L. Kirkpatrick, Vol.3, St. James Press, 1991, pp. 1554-55
Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on Dracula, In Novels for Students, Gale, 2003
Senf, Carol. DRACULA: Between Tradition and Modernism. New York: Ywayne,
1998. Print.
Stoker, Bram. DRACULA. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.

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