Dracula Essay

Anna García
Prof. G. Custodio
AP English
January 29, 2013
One Gothic Novel With All The Works, Please!:
How Bram Stoker’s Dracula embodies a Gothic Novel
Writing a novel is like following a recipe. For the final product to be good, it’s important to have all of the ingredients and follow all of the steps. A picturesque setting, a story dealing with the supernatural, a conflict betweengood and evil, and innocent, non-aristocratic females being corrupted by aristocratic males are the ingredients of Gothic Fiction. Almost as if he had been trying to check these off of a grocery list, Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the epitome of a Gothic Fiction novel; his story about the vampire Count Dracula is the perfect example, having all of the ingredients required to cook up a quality GothicNovel.
The first ingredient necessary in a Gothic Fiction novel recipe is a picturesque setting. Something picturesque is unusual and vivid. Like a talented painter, Stoker does a good job of painting a mental picture of the novel’s setting for his readers. With his descriptions we can sense the eeriness as if we were there ourselves. With his description of Count Dracula’s picturesque castle we feelas if we were the ones there. Upon reading Jonathan’s journal entry, we’re able paint a good, detailed mental picture of the setting. “Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.”(Stoker; Dracula, p. 21) “In the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is.” (Stoker; Dracula, p. 22) With Jonathan’s description, we almost feel as scared as him. We’re able to place ourselves in the picturesque setting, developing a sense of fear for what’s to come.
For our secondingredient we need a story dealing with the supernatural. Supernatural elements are in abundance in this novel. We have vampires and even werewolves. The whole story itself deals with the supernatural. Count Dracula is the main supernatural character. “‘There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings andthe records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples. I admit that at the first I was skeptic. Were it not that through long years I have trained myself to keep an open mind, I could not have believed until such time as that fact thunder on my ear. ‘See! See! I prove, I prove.’” (Stoke; Dracula, p. 338) “The nosferatu do not die like the bee when he sting once. He is only stronger, andbeing stronger, have yet more power to work evil. This vampire which is amongst us is of himself so strong in person as twenty men, he is of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning be the growth of ages, he have still the aids of necromancy, which is, as his etymology imply, the divination by the dead, and all the dead that he can come nigh to are for him at command, he is brute, and more thanbrute, he is devil in callous, and the heart of him is not, he can, within his range, direct the elements, the storm, the fog, the thunder, he can command all the meaner things, the rat, and the owl, and the bat, the moth, and the fox, and the wolf, he can grow and become small, and he can at times vanish and come unknown.” (Stoker; Dracula, p. 338) The way in which Count Dracula is described makes itobvious that he’s not a normal creature. He is clearly supernatural.
A good conflict between good and evil is a necessary ingredient to spice things up. This is whole novel just so happens to be a conflict between good and evil. We have Count Dracula, the evil one, and the Crew of Light, the good ones. The Crew of Light wants to get rid of Count Dracula once and for all. “In the midst of this...