TThe group then tries to learn all they can about Dracula’s affairs with people. Van Helsing and the others track down the boxes of Earth that the count uses as a sanctuary during the night from Dracula’s castle. Then one of Dr. Seward’s mental patients, Renfield, lets Dracula into the asylum. In the asylum, the people were staying there and then Count Dracula bites Mina. Mina then begins to slowly transitions into a vampire. The men hunt down Count Dracula and realized that Count Dracula had fled to Transylvania. The men pursue to find Count Dracula by dividing their forces and tracking Dracula across land and sea all over Europe. Van Helsing takes Mina with him so that they can kill the three female vampires who tried to seduce Jonathan Harker.
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.’
Batman beats the Joker. Spiderman banishes the Green Goblin. For centuries story tellers have used the basic idea of good beats bad to guide their tales. Stories of blood sucking, human possessions and other tales have been passed down generations and vary between cultures. Among the creators of the famous protagonists is, Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula. 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 betweens the line, 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.
Once Jonathan arrives at the castle, he is met by the mysterious Count Dracula, a man described as strong and pale, with bright ruby lips and sharp white teeth. Although Jonathan is unaware of what Dracula truly is, he can already sense that something is amiss, and he gets worr...
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
This begins with Jonathan Harker's journal, in which he records his adventures in the Carpathians. This is important, because his journal is an important clue in finally determining what exactly is happening. His fiancé, and later wife, Mina transcribes the journal, and then shows it to Dr. Van Helsing, a noted physician, attorney, philosopher, and metaphysicist. Through the journal, Van Helsing is able to determine what exactly happened to Lucy, who earlier in the novel was a victim of The Count. The phonographic journal of Dr. Seward was useful in observing Mr. Renfield, also a victim of Dracula, who the protagonists used in order to locate The Count's London abode.
That morning he is to leave, a crowd is awaiting him and muttering strange things. Harker says, "I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words" (Stoker 6) to address his confusion about what was going on around him. He Count Dracula, a hermit who lives on a cliff, detached from society, strikes at night to find anyone alone--whom he considers easy prey. A prime example of one of these victims is Lucy Westenra, who ends up outside in the middle of the night after she sleeps walks to the town square. When Mina Murray finds her, she describes the discovery, “There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure.”
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
Dracula, the 1931 film directed by Tod Browning is loosely based upon the novel of the same name. Therefore both share similar characteristics but are distinct. The differences between the novel and film occur due to the cinematic choices made as well as the fact that the film is based off of not only the novel Dracula but also the 1924 play Dracula. One major decision made by Browning was to alter the role of Johnathan Harker. In the novel Johnathan is the solicitor who meets with Dracula in Transylvania and narrowly escapes the “veritable prison” and is a changed man due to his experiences there (25). On the other hand, in the film Johnathan never visits Transylvania. Renfield is the one who does so instead. That provides Renfield with a
I’ll Have My Blood Low Fat and Carb Free, Please. Gothic imagery and themes include castles, coffins, monsters and strange lands and pose the background to the classic Gothic novel. The Gothic element is synonymous with the horror and uncanny- a feeling rather than form, in which transgression is the central topic (Wisker 7). The vampire is a figure that transgresses society’s limits to form the central dynamic of the Gothic. “We enjoy seeing the limit transgressed-
What if in between good and evil did not exist? Where would you stand? Today, it is believed that everyone was born with the slightest bit of evil in them. In the Victorian Era, this theory would be considered very wrong, because one would either be all good, or all evil. In Dracula, by Bram Stoker, good versus evil was symbolised throughout the book as two antithetical forces without an in between. By clearly demonstrating the relationship between the dualistic ideas of intuition versus logic, good characters facing figures comparable to the devil, and symbolism within the natural world, Bram Stoker effectively recounts a “holy war” between the antagonistic forces of good and evil.
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 finally kill him. Dracula’s invasion over Renfield also reveals a weakness in the Counts power. Renfield, an obedient servant of Dracula, claims he is ‘here to do Your bidding, Master. I am Your slave’ (Stoker, 88). Renfield’s devotion is quickly reversed when he sees that the Count is taking life from Mina. It is his care for her that causes him to turn against Dracula and try to fight for her. Again Renfield’s actions mimic that of the other men as it becomes their goal to save Mina from the invasion running through her body. The key to this invasion is the blood.
The connection is made when Dracula sees a picture of Mina while Jonathan is held up in Dracula’s castle in Transylvania. With Jonathan trapped Dracula and Mina become quite close and go as far as to fall in love with each other. Throughout the novel, there is no love connection between Dracula and Mina and the only relation they encounter is as he attempts to seduce her to her death in spite of the men meddling with his plans of destruction. In the novel Mina resented Dracula for what he had done to her good friend Lucy Westenra. (Stoker Dracula) (Coppola "Bram Stoker 's Dracula")
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.
He is on his way to Transylvania to complete a property transaction with Dracula at his decaying castle (Swan). Then Jonathan soon realizes he is a prisoner at the castle with Dracula and the three sisters who reveal themselves as vampires to Jonathan (Stoker). But there are differences between the novel and the film with the first being in the movie when Jonathan ask the Count why are you buying houses in these specific locations (Bram Stoker’s)? The movie never answers this question, but the novel explains the fifty boxes that have Transylvanian dirt in them need to be at these locations neighboring London, so Dracula could rest and rebuild his strength which must be in a coffin with his homelands dirt (Bram Stoker’s). Next are the variations of how he became to know the sisters of Dracula (Canby). The movie shows the sisters morphing up through his mattress while he is trying to sleep. Although the novel states he wanders into their room where he sits down to write in his journal when he becomes sleepy and they appear out of nowhere trying to feast on his neck (Canby). Next is the contrasting effect of Jonathans religion. In the novel, he is a devout religious God-fearing man praying and asking Him to help and keep him safe each step of his way while in the movie Jonathan wears the crucifix he received on his carriage ride to the
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.