Why Is Bram Stoker's Dracula Popular?
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the most adaptated and greatest horror books of English literature. It was first published in 1897 and became a successful book after the film adaptations. At first Bram Stoker used The Undead as a title but after his research he used Dracula. Dracula is an epistolary novel. The story is told in diary entries, letters and some newspaper extracts and this helps characters learn about the events. The setting of the novel is 19th century England. The story begins with Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction for Count Dracula. He lives in a big castle and in time Jonathan Harker becomes a prisoner in Count’s castle. He is attacked by three vampire women and he is saved by Count Dracula. Then we find him in a hospital and Count is on his way to England. Count arrives in England by a ship called Demeter and the ship is wrecked on the shore. The crew of the ship is dead except only a dog, shape-shifted Count Dracula, is alive and its cargo which is boxes of soil from Transylvania. Then Count attacks Lucy Westenra and Dr. Seward cannot make a diagnosis and he sends for Dr. Van Helsing but they cannot cure her and she becomes a vampire attacking children at nights and she was killed by a stake through her heart and then they cut off her head and fill with garlic. Then Renfield, Dr. Seward’s patient, lets Count Dracula in and he attacks Mina Harker. He makes her suck his blood and this leads Mina to make a telepathically connection with the Count. With the help of Mina they track Dracula and they catch him on his way back home to Transylvania, they open the box that Dracula hides in and they cut off his head with a knife.
Vampirism has appeared in all cultures, in legends. There were poems and short stories telling about vampires before Stoker’s Dracula but in those Romantic Period poems the vampire were not a real character it was symbolic. Male vampires symbolized the sexual predator and the female
Vampirism has appeared in all cultures, in legends. There were poems and short stories telling about vampires before Stoker’s Dracula but in those Romantic Period poems the vampire were not a real character it was symbolic. Male vampires symbolized the sexual predator and the female
Cited: CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, 1997 Mast, Gerald Masters, Anthony. The Natural History of the Vampire. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972 Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2000 Trow, M.J Sutton Pub. Ltd., 2003 Twitchell, James Boks, 1996