While watching an episode of The X-Files late one night, I noticed Agent Fox Mulder used the term “bloofer” when interpreting a case. While the case was eventually solved on the show, a general consensus about what “bloofer” might mean hasn’t been met. Lucy becomes this mysterious “bloofer lady” to the children she attacks but […]
“Old”, “dusty”, “abandoned”, and “creepy” are often characteristics attributed to contemporary horror settings; each characteristic can be traced back through visual and linguistic examples to the beginning of culture. Dracula provides a template for every house and every monster inhabiting those houses in many forms of culture since the time it was published. Each place Dracula comes […]
Vlad Dracula III, or Vlad the Impaler, was born a prince in Wallachia (modern day Romania) during the 15th century. His father, Vlad II, named his son “Dracul” in honor of his secret society, the Order of the Dragon. In total, he reigned over parts of Transylvania for only 7 years but managed to change […]
Women are usually thought to be the secondary character in novels that have a large number of male characters. This is especially true in Dracula by Bram Stoker. The men are the main players in the story, but the women that do present themselves hold great weight in the stories true meaning, the biggest players […]
Blood, it’s transferred, drunk, and spilled in Dracula. It’s a pivotal part of the story, but why is that so? What makes blood special other than the fact that it runs through our veins? To answer these questions, it’s important to look at the basics of what blood is now and what it used to […]
Throughout the majority of Bran Stoker’s novel there seems to be coursing theme of selective blindness or closed mindedness. The majority of the characters are unable to understand and accept the increasingly obvious supernatural situations they are put into. Through their selective blindness, they are opened up to many unfortunate situations, including the demise of […]
As we find ourselves finished with Bram Stoker’s Dracula I find that the ambiguity (as described in pt. 1) surrounding the motif of mental illness in the novel has dissolved like Dracula in his coffin. In my view of the text it is clear that the characters of Renfield and Seward are vehicles by which Stoker explores the […]
Let me tell you how I first got started on this. In the reading assigned for today, when Dracula visits Renfield at the lunatic asylum in Chapter Twenty-One, Renfield explains how Dracula “began promising [him] things – not in words but by doing them” (Stoker, 239). Renfield then goes on to explain how Dracula did so just “by […]
Dracula has many abilities. He can turn into a bat, control wolves, rats and people, and even control fog. These abilities themselves may be part of what makes him a monster, but I believe that the shapes of the things he controls and turns into help to add to that statement. If Dracula turned into a butterfly rather than a […]
Dracula is capable of some pretty terrifying things. He is able to climb around on the outside of his castle like a lizard, turn into a bat, control fog and wolves, all while maintaining a balanced diet of blood. While all of these are terrifying aspects, one of his most terrifying attributes that is often […]
A theme or commentary of mental illness is threaded through Bram Stoker’s Dracula in the character of Renfield, but it would seem that what this commentary conveys is some what ambiguous. At times Stoker presents the character to the reader in scenes where we can not help but feel sympathetic, and yet at others Renfield acts in […]
Could Renfield be considered a monster? Before answering that question I think it pays to take a look at who he is. It is obvious from the beginning that Renfield suffers from some mental illness, which Dr. Seward is at turns fascinated, horrified and perplexed with: “the case of Renfield grows more interesting the more I…understand the man. […]