I wanted to see why people may be so taken over by Dracula. What does he represent that gets people so infatuated with this story over the Beetle?
“The creatures personify these superstitions and hence cast doubt on the reliability of human reason. Secondly, in biological terms, people tend to believe that they dominate the environmental food chain…In the stories, they try to devour people, both physically and psychologically. For that reason, they can be viewed as opposition against human overconfidence with regard to the people’s supremacy over animals” (Harenda, 171).” So with that in mind, people like to imagine that they are not actually at the top of the food chain; that there is an even greater being out there on Earth that is capable of making people doubt what they are actually seeing, thinking, hearing, and/or feeling. It creates the idea that people may very well not be the strongest even with all of the gadgets we create. Van Helsing even mentions how “All through [the papers on this monster] are signs of his advance; not only of his power but of his knowledge of it” (Stoker, 328). Showing that Dracula is not a normal person he is a monster that has even more power and knowledge than even scientists and to make matters worse Van Helsing goes on to say how he is only getting smarter and stronger as time goes on. So to think of this being that one would think can’t be stopped make people second guess themselves in being at the top of the food chain.
This explains why people are so drawn to Dracula over a normal book about someone’s normal life but it doesn’t explain why people chose to dive deeper into Dracula than the Beetle.
“For instance, vampires may be perceived as representing the danger of succumbing to sexual desires, whereas werewolves can denote the infinite depths of human rage, and ghosts can mean the absence of heaven…An individual may struggle with repressing the noxious urges like lust, anger, greed, envy, or revenge. The creatures show the fall of a human being when s/he gives in to those impulses” (Harenda, 171). Here it is, this explains it. During the original publishment of this novel, people were more conservative than not, and if there was a danger that came to expressing oneself many may be willing to take the risk for a chance to feel something like lust and other sexual desires. Reading this book also provides an outlet for individuals during the late 1890s especially if they were able to talk about it with their friends and/or family. Whereas The Beetle created this kind of off-putting feeling in people that they would rather not think about. Especially because people would rather think of a mysterious pale man than a bug crawling on them. Probably because many people still had to deal with relatively larger bugs crawling around town but many people didn’t have to worry about a tall, unnatural, and strong man running around town sucking blood from people and turning them into vampires that live “forever” with flawless skin and beauty.
https://www.worldsupporter.org/en/blog/74437-vlad-impaler
Source:
Bram Stoker, (1897). “Dracula,” file:///home/chronos/ue21622bed896dc199a148c25879b57a12f2f1562/MyFiles/Downloads/Bram%20Stoker20-%20Dracula%20(1986).pdf
HARENDA, OLIVIER. “CHAPTER ELEVEN BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA: THE MASTER OF TERROR AND HIS IMPACT ON POPULAR CULTURE OLIVIER HARENDA.” https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/56609912/Olivier_Harenda-Chapter_11-_Bram_Stokers_Dracula-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1649955762&Signature=NsaYcrxyaVaHtwLjJwZUOyetgnvNzDbwjeFnIUcVIqTUaygyepjl5UqvnQX3bXNxdJ829v-yvqcJrkFlNtmDpg17LoIVqpkNoITRDr8wxFgOO1er4hE9XwsNaz~zJDqCSy5DJMkeAJUVx9cjMHTfHBTV6TLW~TIBHklfvoEiQpzw7L-gnV3vgiyuT~rGpc-iHt3mh-o8c8O1lxyF94VtURgv9XmP47ImUEdiwiEDRYCcVoqJ3l4wN6d5RpQqFvIHQGPQm7qo4npB2eRkaqzIhOb25i4gMap9g0syi4nU35KxdDCEw3sgX4CHjtZxcIEkIu38lWhdo5hbiBMbxGbA6A_&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
I also talked about vlad the impaler and I found the comparison between him and the dracula in the book really interesting!
Your commonplace books always had a ton of detail, both from the novels and from other sources. I particularly liked Entries 3 and 5, which spoke on the subject of human behavior. Jane Eyre showed how humans can be very close-minded and Jekyll/Hyde brought up the idea of dissociative identity disorder. The concept of childhood trauma brought up in Entry 6 did this as well, providing a really interesting perspective from which to view these texts. You also focused on mental health in the context of Dorian Gray, which really helped understand the character. Overall, your entries were really great to read because they focused on human nature, a perspective that we haven’t discussed as much in class.