The Analysis Of The Novel "Dracula"

Melton (19) views are on the perspective of vampires that refused to take human blood and prefer to fine other alternative giving the vampire the option to keep the human soul so it could make its way to heaven. Melton states that “during the last generation, vampires becoming the hero or the sympathetic figure with whoever the reader identified, they still want to know more about the vampire feeding off humans. If a vampire renounce the taking of blood from victims, there are few nutritional options remaining: purchasing blood from various sources like animals or artificial blood substitutes, even in some cases feeding of other vampires too which ideally will end that vampires life”.

With this new vampire changed in the new vampire, they will have some limitation in their powers or abilities like changing in to other animals but on a positive note they have no problems being around garlic, crucifixes or the holy water (as long as it doesn’t touch them, if not it will burn their vampire skin).

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Melton’s description really ties in well with Rice’s vampire trades because she introduced the as a stereotypical New vampire who once experience human life before choosing to turn into a vampire making it a little easy when feeling sympathy when drinking human blood and not letting their soul go up to heaven, which in a way it isn’t morally correct even for vampires.The reader see a shift in the Count’s characteristic when Jonathan Harker one of the first characters introduced in the novel comes to Transylvania Count Dracula’s home town to help Dracula buy a property in England Whitby.

Due to where Dracula is based it’s foreign and unknown with different kind of people and their traditions. It seems as though people don’t generally know how to act around him, for example Jonathan because the Count in the beginning was polite but then his vampire ore started coming out and Jonathan could sense the unease vibe when speaking to the count, “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal” this suggests that the vampire ore the Count has is making Jonathan feel anxious. Jonathan’s reaction towards the Count at this point, channels how the Victorians would have act, from seeing this gothic character. The count was the appearance of an undead man fits in with the vampire description of a man that wears black capes, red eyes, “His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell-fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires; the thick eyebrows that met over the nose now seemed like a heaving bar of white-hot metal”.

The use of the noun hell-fire is believe by some religious people that it’s a place where bad people will suffer after they die; the use of “hell-fire” to describe Dracula’s eyes is a metaphor to show that he has power that humans can’t handle and potential kill the human soul just by people looking at his eyes, this glisten red light from the count’s eyes terrifying but fascination enough to makes people want to look at it to see what’s in them, this natural act from the human instincts makes it easier for the Count to hypnotise them. The Count’s white sharp fangs permits him to cut peoples flesh easily and his house being isolated with many secrete rooms which allows him to hide his coffin from outsiders. We get this full image that Dracula looks like the devil or could potentially be the devil himself. This sense of duality with the Count’s nature is also seen in other novels like The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson where the reader can never figure out what is wrong with Mr Hyde character and his monstrous doings within the society.

Both Hyde and Dracula bring out the monstrous traits that humans have in them but don’t want to build upon.The modern portrayal of Rice’s vampire in Interview with the Vampire is written from the main character Louis’s fictional autobiography in which he recalls his life story which he tells a human reporter about including his life before the vampire transformation. This gives several distinctions between the traditional vampire and the modern vampire. In terms of their appearance and abilities; for example Anne’s vampires take on a human appearances of a kind gentle man in a suit while maintain aspects of the traditional vampire appearance with the sharp fangs and pale skin. This appearance reduces the intimidation that may leave a traumatic effect on the reader. Furthermore Rice doesn’t only focuses on her male character aspects, she also created Claudia a child female vampire whose appearance is beautiful with an intensely horrible personality at the same time. In the novel this vampire was a product of Lestat and Louis creation. Since Claudia was created when she was a child human, in her vampiric form she’s more mature mentally but physically stuck in a child’s body.

The count’s arrival in Whitby was the arrival of his mischievous plans to expand his race all over England, starting with his first victim Lucy Westernra a young, pure, pretty woman who the Count controlled by making her sleep walk out of her house in order for him to suck her blood. In chapter 8 Mina wakes up and find out that Lucy is missing and goes off to find her. When Mina arrives at the East cliff she sees a tall dark figure leaning over Lucy who was dressed in her night dress. As side effects for Lucy’s blood lost was that she became terribly sick and loses her pure appearance. (By Dracula draining Lucy’s blood it allows her to explore are sexual side and lets her become open to the taboo nature of the time). To find a cure for her illness, Dr Seward sent for Van Helsing a Dutch doctor and an expert on vampires who is determined to get to the bottom of Lucy’s case, with the intention to save her life. However the damage was too deep that lead to Lucy’s death; after her death Van Helsing does some research on what other powers other than mind control which the count used to lower Lucy to him so they can defeat him. Stoker creating the character Lucy to channel to the readers the pain he went throw during his extremely ill period in his childhood. This helps to give the reader a sense of what his appearance might have been at the time of his condition. Furthermore it informs the modern reads to be aware that at the time science and medicine where not advance and people were not knowledgeable.

Punter and Byron see the Count as a threat to the society, “Count Dracula symbolises the threats for the British society because this foreigner blends just a little too easily into the modern Victorian world, strolling down Piccadilly in full daylight and watching the pretty girls pass by” Their perspectives are key to analysing late Victorian literature as women are viewed in the male gaze as sexual objects in which we see from the way Dracula sucks out Lucy’s purity leaving her with her sexual more venerable character; This act challenges the roles of the New woman. The Count picking Lucy made it seem as though she was the easy target however she was the ideal target because she was once a member in the Victorian society before her vampire character came about making it all seem foreign but familiar, making it easy to communicate and assist the count in his doings to rule over England. The Count’s learning a new language and different culture in order to take over a new land could be seeing as a threat because it shows his determination to keep proceeding his target until he gets a hold of it, which would put the Victorian readers on the edge of not knowing his next step seeing as though he doesn’t have a dairy or journal entry like the other characters. Stoker did this to enhance the terror and effect of expecting the unexpected for the readers.

In the novel interview with the vampire the character Claudia is presented as a very poor girl who met Louis at the pic of the plague during the 18th century in New Orleans. The contrast in her losing both her parents in the plague shows and emotional channel like the one Anne felt when she lost her daughter, making easy to sympathise with Claudia as a fictional character. Claudia is found by Louis who she begging’s him to “wake“ her mother up; at this point of the novel both Anne and the readers can have a mutual emotional relationship towards the strong loss of grief. The verb “Wake” can also be seen as a biblical reference to when Jesus rose from the dead just like how Claudia’s greedy passion is to rise her mother from the dead is also portrayed, which can also be seeing as a binary opposite because Jesus rising from the dead is known to the religious group that he wiped out everyone’s sins (it was for the goof of man) however Claudia just wants her mother so she doesn’t have to feel the loneliness of living without a parent. This aspect of Claudia’s child emotional attachment to her mother emphasises on how females are seen as helpless victims who needs others support just like Mina Harker in Dracula towards chapter 20 she started needing the male characters to protect her even though she was a New woman at the time even though this was because count Dracula was starting to hypnotise her. To conclude vampirism is an enduring and popular myth in literature due to the double minded view it gives us of the vampire having basic element, some fascination that somehow maintain in us both from the old and new vampire portrayed views.