Gothic horror novel Dracula, the title character makes only several relatively short appearances, some of which are while in disguise. Throughout the novel, Stoker keeps Count Dracula in the shadows, both literally and figuratively. This essay will describe these appearances and analyze Stoker’s use of them to determine what effect they might have on the impression of the character and the novel overall. It will be claimed that by keeping his title character hidden for much of the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is made much more frightening to the reader. Human beings tend to fear the unknown, and by leaving Dracula to the imagination,
Knowledge can be Blessings and Curse A teenage girl Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein in the 18th century. A Gothic novel Frankenstein deals with two genres, Gothicism and science fiction. Victor, one of Mary Shelly’s characters represents man’s pursuit of knowledge which ultimately leads towards the path of destruction while another character Robert Walton implemented his knowledge wisely to get benefits for the society. Mary is indicating to the society that mankind has to pay full attention to science and scientific innovations in order to avoid the catastrophic events due to misuse of knowledge.
Jonathan is unsure what to do with the crucifix and it goes to show how much of a role religion plays in his life. Religion does not have any importance in his life. As proven before, Seward is a man of science. There is no proof that superstitions such as vampires exist, thus Seward is the last to believe they exist. When Van Helsing presents the evidence of what is happening to Lucy is because of Dracula, and Sewards says, “I am willing to accept”(287).
Monsters and Narrative : The construction of the fears from within the text in Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Gothic literature, more often than not, deals with monsters. The monster is a representation of the strongest fears and the more hidden desires of the society in which the book is written. In The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as in Frankenstein, this fear is also contrasted with the narration of each story. In other words, the fear represented through each monster is exalted with the way each story is narrated. In both stories the monster is a creation of scientific research but each one threatens the world in different ways.
In the novel Dracula, author Bram Stoker creates a peculiar situation that pushes the main characters to decipher the supernatural from reality. Originally thought of as a myth, Dracula quickly becomes something more than the supernatural. By slowly building the conflict of Dracula himself, Stoker depicts all stages of the change from believing that Dracula is a fictitious character to being face to face with Dracula himself. As he terrorizes the lives of the characters in the novel, they soon come to the realization that Dracula is more than what they formerly believed, and in actuality he is their harsh reality.
She points out that Frankenstein is our culture 's most penetrating literary analysis of the psychology of modern "scientific" man, of the dangers inherent in scientific research, and of the horrifying but predictable consequences of an uncontrolled technological exploitation of nature and the female. She goes on to describe why the media and the average person in the street have mistakenly addressed the monster as Frankenstein, saying that dividing these two characters is quite impossible. The novel has made a great mark in history and is still widely read. It has influenced other authors as well as transcended into other types of media, and the very idea of Frankenstein 's monster has become almost larger than the novel itself.
In Frankenstein, Victor asks Walton for a favor as he lies on his deathbed saying, “I asked you to undertake my unfinished work; and I renew this request now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue” (157). Shelley repeatedly uses the root word “un” in the words “undertake” and “unfinished”, as the root of both words means not, directly contradicting Victor’s claim that he is “only induced by reason and virtue”. Just as Satan is notorious for being deceptive, Victor also uses deception to his advantage in an attempt to convince Walton to carry out his revenge against the Creature after he dies. Victor’s trickery is very similar to Satan’s plan to tempt Adam and Eve into pursuing knowledge. He sneaks into the Garden of Eden disguised as a snake, a creature with a reputation for being notorious trickster who uses deceptive language to play tricks on humans.
‘Dracula’ is a modern play which is adapted, by Liz Lochhead, from the classic horror novel written by Bram Stoker. The play is set during the Victorian era and develops the key themes that were prevalent during this era such as sexual hypocrisy. Lochhead’s unusual approach paces much more significance on the female characters, in particular, Mina and Lucy and puts much less significance on the more well-known and traditional main characters Dracula and Van Helsing. This repression of sexual desires is expressed as Lucy struggles to cope with the social convention of how Victorian women had to behave.
Science and knowledge are two important factors in society around the 19th century. Mary Shelley supports the connection of these two key topics throughout her writing in the novel, Frankenstein. With her style, structure, and Romantic elements portrayed in the novel, she discusses that scientific progress/knowledge is dangerous and harmful as it places man above God and destroys his morals. This is done by examples of appeals to emotion, imagery, and figures of speech that convey her style and ultimately ends up as support of the previous statement.
The concept of good and evil is subjective. Good and evil is just as much of an illusion as a magic trick or a lack of reflection in a mirror. In Bram Stoker’s epistolary, Dracula, Count Dracula himself stands as the natural order of humanity that isn’t influenced by what is considered good or bad and challenges established rules and practices used to control society in religion, science, and moral law, through the interaction with his victims. Through Dracula, he exposes society’s denial to accept what it truly means to be human. Dracula vs Moral Law Growing up, we’re introduced to what is right and what is wrong; what is good and evil.
In the horror film, Young Frankenstein, director Mel Brooks uses several elements of horror to keep the viewer engaged in the movie, as well as to convey varying degrees of fear in an otherwise humorous movie. Within the first five minutes, one of the elements, the unexpected, is employed in the form of an ever-classic jump scare and is repeated several more times throughout. Each of these scenes, often coupled with an equally jarring noise, keep the audience tense and anxious as they never know when a jump scare may occur. The viewers are startled for only a fraction of a second, but that split second still causes their imaginations run wild with dozens of scenarios conditioned into the human mind by previous horror movies.