Heart of Dracula

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.

By examining the character of Kurtz, we see that he comes to represent the degenerating institution of colonialism. Jonathan Dollimore remarks that Kurtz “embodies the paradox which degeneration theory tries to explain but only exacerbates, namely that civilization and progress seem to engender their own regression and ruin” (45). We can see this through the fact that Kurtz goes into the Belgian Congo in order to strengthen the European world, yet is ultimately unable to do so as he comes face to face with the realization of what he must do in order to succeed and survive the degeneration of the world he has known. To do this, Kurtz’s monstrosity, or as close as he comes to monstrosity, stems from the fact that the society which he is a part of and represents is dying a slow death. Therefore, his final words of “The horror! The horror!” can be interpr...

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...gue of Vampirism. Stoker plays upon the irony of England, at this time one of, if not the largest, colonizing countries, being colonized, not by another country but by an intangible immigrant. Dracula’s intent is not of material wealth or power, but of controlling the people and using them as livestock. We can see this when Dracula tells Jonathan Harker that he “[has] come to know your great England, and to know her is to love her. I long to go through the crowded streets of your mighty London, to be in the midst of the whirl and rush of humanity, to share its life, its change, its death, and all that makes it what it is” (Stoker 19). Kane reaffirms this by contending that Dracula is an example of “invasion literature” acting upon the readers on England by playing with “a considerable variety of fears regarding the state of England and the English themselves” (9).