Dracula
(Bram Stoker)

Good Versus Evil

In many ways, Dracula is a story of the classic struggle of Good versus Evil. Dracula is absolute evil. His name means “the dragon” or “the devil” in Romanian. Later, he even uses the name Count del Ville (sounding like Devil). The human characters, like Harker and Mina and Arthur, are portrayed as extremely good and pure.

Blood and Life

There is a major connection between blood and life in the Vampire mythos. Renfield is also consumed with the idea of gaining immortality by consuming the life of other creatures. Dracula begins the novel looking very old, but when Harker sees him in the streets of London later, he is much younger. Drinking blood seems to give him youth and vigor.

The Scary Foreigner

It interesting that the bad guy of this story is a foreigner. Dracula seems to be very much a story about “West versus East.” Dracula’s strange accent and customs made him much scarier to the English readers of the novel.

Sex and Marriage

There is something strangely sexual about the vampires of the novel. In fact, the argument about Dracula taking blood from you woman having sexual insinuations seems sound. Marriage also seems a prominent theme in the novel. Mina travels across Europe to take care of Harker—and she doesn’t hesitate to marry him, likely so that the nuns of the mission hospital would leave them alone together. Lucy has three young men fighting over her hand in marriage. Even Dracula is married—his three brides staying behind in his castle while he goes to England.

Science and Technology

Stoker includes a lot of technologies that were vey cutting edge in those days, like Seward’s phonograph and blood transfusions. We also see a case of technology versus ancient things throughout the novel. For example, Jonathan Harker tricks Dracula by using short hand in his letters, which Dracual can’t read. Dracula takes forever to get back to East Europe by ship, but the others arrive days earlier because they traveled by train. The men are almost able to catch up to the Slovaks’ boat (carrying Dracula’s last box of dirt) with their fancy steamboat. When the men confront the gypsies, they are able to win because they have rifles and the gypsies only have knives. Dracula send a few letters in the story, but the others can keep in even better contact by using letters and telegrams.