Bram Stoker Essays (Examples)

Murray, Paul. From the hadow of Dracula: A Life of Bram toker. New York,

Jonathan Cape. 2004.

This biography of the often secretive and obscure life of Bram toker is based on factual details and evidence. The work also relates the life and times in which he lived to the other literary figures with whom he interacted. The book provides an absorbing insight not only into the man but into the social milieu in which he wrote. For example, the book provides insight into toker's friendships and relationships with figures such as Henry Irving and Conan Doyle.

toker, Bram. 22 November, 2006. http://www.litgothic.com/Authors/stoker.html

This is essentially a links site but it provides valuable sources of information for research; such as background information and biographies on toker. The site also proves links to historical data and information that are unusual and useful in the exploration of toker's works. There are also links to various' etexts'…

ram Stoker's masterwork and greatest novel, Dracula, has been and remains one of the most culturally pervasive novelistic tropes of the last 100 years. Indeed, in multiple film versions as well as in the novel and myriad other mediums, it remains a deeply pervasive cultural idea. Part of the inspiration for the story no doubt takes elements from Stoker's own life and fictionalizes and dramatizes them to the point where the elements of personal struggle remain only as barely audible echoes within the text. Nonetheless, they are there, and particular such issues as his estranged relations with his wife and his long illness as a child are reflected in portions of Dracula. Nonetheless, the main aspect of Dracula that has ensured its continuing popularity is its resonance with the Freudian concepts of Thanatos and Eros, which were some of the most important and prominent ideas in 20th Century Wester culture,…

Film Adaptations of ram Stoker's Dracula Over The Years
The stuff of legends in Eastern Europe, vampires have become a staple of the horror film industry. From Max Schreck's Count Orloff in 1922 to Lugosi's Dracula in 1931, to Lee's unforgettable performances with Hammer studios during the 50's and 60's, the vampire has been primped, gussied up and redressed with every theatrical incarnation. In ram Stoker's Dracula, Gary Oldman dons the fangs and cape and delivers one of the most incredible performances, the count has ever seen. Visually stunning in every detail, Dracula, tells the story of a Romanian prince who slaughtered many in the name of the church only to cradle the broken body of his wife at the conclusion of his conquests. A wife he knew would be safe because of his service to the church. Seeds of betrayal and rage bloomed and in a fit of madness brought…

nineteenth century, the women's suffrage movement was gaining momentum. Appearing out of an era heavily influence by Victorian ideals and beliefs, it was now a question of whether or not women should be allowed to vote, work, eat, and appear as they wished. At this point in history, women were considered significantly inferior to their male counterparts and were not considered so much as citizens of the United States of America according to its constitution. They were recognized as people but fell into a special non-voting category and it wasn't until the 1890s that the first state (yoming) granted women the right to vote. In England, Queen Victoria was in power and supported ideals of blissful motherhood and marriage as an ultimate goal.
In the midst of the suffrage movement, Bram Stoker wrote his immortal novel Dracula. His two leading female characters, Mina Harker and Lucy estenra, though different in…

Allegorical Dracula
It seems strange at first to consider one of the greatest of Victorian gothic novels, and the genesis of the entire modern vampire craze as a masterpiece of Christian fiction. However, it is precisely accurate to do so. If it were written today, it would most certainly be considered Christian niche fiction. The entirety of the novel is filled with appeals to the wisdom, justice, and aid of God, and the protagonists eventually consider themselves to be the righteous warriors of God fighting to save Christian England. There is throughout a very strong sense of evangelicalism in phrases such as "God is merciful and just, and knows your pain and your devotion."(Ch 22) What, one might ask though, is a Christian book doing introducing one of the most seductively evil of modern monster protagonists? The answer is as simple as it is obvious: the vampire Dracula is portrayed…

Though the character is remarkably static for a major character -- he is meant to be seen as completely evil -- he is worth studying as a major character in regards to the origins of his evil and immoral behavior.
n the other side of Dracula, Van Helsing, Dracula's foil is portrayed as an older, educated man who is, nonetheless, moral. While Dracula and Van Helsing share many characteristic, including education and well-mannered social skills. Although Van Helsong changes by the end of the novel, considering Dracula committed to his moral and religious beliefs, Van Helsing offers an interesting contrast to the spectrum of character.

Levels of Horror

ne of the most horrific aspects of Dracula is the aspect of familiarity turned terrific. Through using settings like Whitby and London, settings that seem familiar and comfortable, Stoker establishes that horror and terror can occur anywhere. Similarly, by using ordinary characters like Jonathan,…

Dracula - Bram Stoker's Immortal Count, the Modern Anti-Hero and Fallen Angel of omantic Dreams
Dracula, written by Bram (Abraham) Stoker in 1897, and was originally published by Archibald Constable and Company. The modern version is Published by Penguin Classics, London. Dracula is set in 1893, 4 years prior to the books published date of 1897, Bram Stoker takes the reader from the journey of a young Solicitor named Jonathon Harker through to a series of individual accounts that give the reader the understanding of how Victorian life and how classes were supposed to act.

Stoker has used a mix of narratives using the past tense in the form of Journals, diaries, personal letters and recordings collectively assembled by one of the characters during the book.

Apart from the main character of the book that is Dracula, who is actually absent from the novel for nearly three quarters of the narratives, there are…

Women counted for little, but not everyone agreed with these Victorian standards.
For example, J.S. Mill and Harriet Taylor, a couple who flaunted convention of the time, advocated happiness above all and divorce when necessary (which was unheard of in Victorian times). They write, "If all persons were like these, [happy] or even would be guided by these, morality would be very different from what it must now be; or rather it would not exist at all as morality, since morality and inclinations would coincide" (Mills and Taylor 108). All they advocated was contentment over convention, but it was a radical idea for the time. The couple also advocated the "elevation of women" in society, and recognized the difficulty of being a woman in Victorian society - something which most Victorian men did not understand or agree with at all (Mills and Taylor 109).

Most men held beliefs more like Thomas…

Dracula, By Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker is considered to be the world's most famous horror novelist. Though he has produced a number of short stories, essays and novels, his classic novel Dracula, published in 1897 remains to be his most praised and admired work. Dracula is a story, which focuses on a Transylvanian vampire that comes to London. One of the most pressing themes in the novel, Dracula focuses on the Fulmination of oman Sexual Expression (Themes, (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dracula/themes.html).The theme reinstates how women behavior during that era was delineated by the austere European expectations. Stoker characterizes the status of women and how they were expected to behave by the society through his heroines Mina and Lucy and how their behavior changes to opposite that is unacceptable by the society.

In this fiction Bram Stoker reflects the bigotry and skepticism with which the Victorian Britain espied the Eastern Europeans. During his lifetime Stoker became…

The character of Dracula is both evil and corrupt in the extreme but he is also a source of sympathy to a certain extent. This apparent contradiction is due to the fact that his longings and desires are perverted in comparison to the normal, but they are still recognizable as human qualities even in their distortion and corruption. In the final analysis, it is possibly this strange mixture of the abnormal and the normal that makes this novel and the Gothic genre so interesting.
orks Cited

Craft C. "Kiss Me with those Red Lips": Gender and Inversion in Bram Stoker's

Dracula." Representations, No. 8 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 107-133

Daly N. Modernism, Romance, and the Fin de Siecle: Popular Fiction and British

Culture, 1880-1914. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Dracula and gothic literature: A discussion about the imagery that is used in the novel Dracula that exemplifies gothic literature. July 9, 2009.

Gothic Novels. July 9, 2009.…

Dracula and its psychological perspective. The writer uses aspects of the plot to detail the various psychological aspects of the story itself with a focus on the people whose diaries and journal entries are psychologically driven. The writer offers a psycho-analytic interpretation to Dracula. There were two sources used to complete this paper.
The entire story of Dracula is founded in the need to believe survival is a given with mankind. One of the first things the reader becomes aware of is the underlying common belief that the castle of Dracula is evil. The journal being quoted in chapter one provides this understanding with the reaction of the innkeeper, his wife and the village residents when John sets travel plans to be taken to the castle. The psychological need to be more powerful than evil is something that is as old as time. People have a need to believe that…

Troy Boone writes Van Helsing "affirms a utilitarian view of the vampire-fighter, whose role is to minimize human suffering by combating evil" (Boone). He goes on to explain how Stoker explores this notion by adding to his summation that Van Helsing realizes the different forces at work. Dracula is "finite, though he is powerful to do much harm" (Stoker 320-1) and he cannot be avoided or ignored, he must be stopped. Such a character leaves Van Helsing as a kind of "monster of righteousness" (Bloom), writes Harold Bloom. Van Helsing is the vampire's enemy and opposite and Stoke has situated him in the novel as the only person qualified to fight this evil.
Another way in which Stoker presents Van Helsing as a hero is through the different characters he must face when fighting evil. He is not simply after stopping Dracula. Dracula's women pose the same great threat Dracula…

Dracula
The novel "Dracula" was written by Irish author Bram Stoker in 1897. Set in nineteenth-century Victorian England and other countries of the same time, this novel is told in an epistolary format through a collection of letters, diary entries etc. The main characters include Count Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Dr. Van Helsing. Count Dracula is the antagonist character of the novel, and is a vampire. The group of men and women led by Dr. Van Helsing are the main protagonist characters. The novel talks about Count Dracula's endeavor to relocate from Transylvania to England, and his demise. The story begins with an English lawyer, Jonathan Harker, visiting Dracula's castle to assist him with some real estate issues. During his stay in the castle, Harker discovers that the Count is a vampire and barely escapes with his life. Then the narrative turns into a…

Though the Monster tries to refrain from interfering; "hat chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these people, and I longed to join them, but dared not…[remembering] too well the treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous villagers" (142). The Monster learns how society behaves through the observation of the family, and through the reading of books. Much like Frankenstein, the Monster is greatly influenced by what he reads including Plutarch's Lives, Sorrow of erter, and Paradise Lost. The Monster's innocence and ignorance, at this point, does not allow him to fully understand or relate to any of the characters in the books (166). The Monster eventually relates to Adam in Paradise Lost, not considering himself a monster, because even "Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him" (169). As Adam was created in God's own image, the Monster is a "filthy…

He writes, "Lucy Westenra, but yet how changed. The sweetness was turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty, and the purity to voluptuous wantonness" (Stoker 225). It is clear that wantonness is not a characteristic to be admired in Victorian times, because he compares her wantonness to cruelty, as well. Clearly, both these novels echo the time they were written and society's views on women. Women play insignificant and "wanton" roles in both books, and they are a source of motherly love and distress. One critic, however, feels the novel may be a beacon of change, too. He writes, "Dracula is not only a threat but also imaginative and physical vitality, a catalyst for change. The novel suggests that a new understanding of sexuality and decay is necessary for any attempt to attain social order and growth" (Boone). What is most interesting about these two novels is that they portray relatively…

Lucy and Mina
In Victorian England, when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, the vampire was used as a symbol for, among other things, society's sexual taboos, including overt female sexuality. Nowhere is this idea better explored than in the characters of friends Lucy estenra and Mina Murray. In Stoker's book, Lucy is symbol of the improper female, the one who is coquettish and flirtatious and sparks sexual interest in the male. Mina is her opposite. She is the ideal Victorian woman whose function is to be chaste and supportive of her future husband. Mina's attraction to men is always one of potential wife or mother. These ideas were somewhat diluted in the 1931 film version to make a horror story with less moral and more thrill, although the flirtatious girl still dies and her less sexual counterpart still survives. In the novel, the line between good and evil tends to be unclear.…

record player, which was known in its original inception as a phonograph. This instrument was originally created in 1877 by Thomas Alva Edison 1. This fact is extremely important because it indicates that the record player was invented at the end of the Industrial Revolution 2 and prior to modernity, which began in earnest during the 20th century. The historical context of the record player is important in terms of its design, which primarily reflected functionality. The record player is the first invention that could ever record information outside of conventional writing. Its principal importance is that it signaled the shift in which society stopped collecting physical objects as much as it began collecting information, which influenced its design and its evolution to this very day.
The initial design of the very first phonograph was extremely pragmatic in nature. To truly understand the way it was designed it is necessary…

However, he lives in fear, a fear not much different from his original, impoverished circumstances in a war-torn city as a thief. His morality is equally as questionable as it was so long ago -- Whitehead is just as much of a robber as an industrialist as he was when he was a petty criminal in Warsaw. He is also just as arrogant, as he arranges for another criminal Marty Strauss, to act as his bodyguard, believing that human agents can protect him against the will of Mamoulian, even though Mamoulian can control the undead and control the minds of the living. Whitehead's incestuous relationship with his drug-addicted daughter Carys makes it even more difficult to the reader to sympathize with this character who seems morally unredeemable from beginning to end.
The shadowy figure of Mamoulian who wishes to possess Whitehead seems less realistic and clearly defined than Whitehead the…

marketing recommendations, one must first point out towards the fact that Romania (1) lacks a true branding campaign, such as the ones that Spain, Finland or even ulgaria have undergone during the past years and (2) because it has no branding policies to promote its values abroad and make positive connections in foreigners' minds with Romania, the first things that a foreigner will be able to say about Romania are related to thieves, Ceausescu or the stray dogs in ucharest.
This report will aim at discovering some of the positive elements that Romania has to offer and the adequate means by which these elements can be promoted to the audience we are addressing. The report contains two essential parts: image and branding recommendations, where positive elements about Romania are listed and analyzed, while the marketing approaches describe the channel of communication to be used in order to be able to…

Horror
What is Horror?

According to Sigmund Freud, das unheimliche -- or the uncanny -- can be defined as something that is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. In horror films, the uncanny can be achieved through the depiction of a series of events that will lead a character into a dangerous situation without the implicit description or portrayal of what the danger is. Horror is much more effective if danger and violence is left to the viewer's imagination because it is then influenced by an individual's personal fears. If a director explicitly shows danger or violence, the individual is then forced to accept the director's depiction without psychologically engaging in the suspense as much as they could have done if danger or violence was only implied.

In terms of horror as a genre, the true masters of horror are the writers of Gothic literature who helped to define and differentiate…

Sound in Cinema
The end of the era of silent film and the movement to sound effects was an inevitable occurrence in cinema. As the viewers clamored to identify a more realistic portrayal of subjects in the film, the worldwide industry of cinema transitioned quickly from rudimentary sound effects to the prospect of "talkies" by the 1930s. However, even with the vanguard and innovation of synchronized sounds at the peak of Golden Age cinema, many critics and directors alike were uneasy with this rapid movement from silence to sound.

The beginnings of silent film era produced motion animation based on black and white still photography. The idea of montage became a further artistic expression in the industry, popular amongst experimental photographers and directors of the early 1890s to 1920s (Alexandrov). Once life and movement became achievable in films, however, viewers and filmmakers saw the opportunity to include sound within the work. Many…

Movie: Interview with a Vampire
Before the modern infatuation with vampire, werewolves, and other supernatural things, stories that dealt with the supernatural were often relegated not only to the fantasy genre, but also considered beneath consideration. However, the genre shifted with Anne Rice's 1976 publication of Interview with the Vampire, a novel that told the sweeping story of an vampire Louis, his life as a human being, his transformation into a vampire, and his troubled relationships with his sire, Lestat, and their child, Claudia. The novel, which is often considered the second most influential vampire novel after Bram Stoker's Dracula, did much to change the modern image of the vampire. Rather than being viewed as monstrous and evil, Anne Rice's portrayal of Louis characterized him as a victim who did not understand his immortality when he received it, and, as a result, simultaneously feared and embraced death. The book developed…

Cinema as art serves several functions, not least of which is visual impact. Yet because motion pictures are inherently multimedia, soundscape, theater, and writing converge with the elements of visual cinematography and mis-en-scene. Film is often dichotomized, placed into an artificial binary of art films versus films made for a popular audience and designed for entertainment. However, many movies in the history of cinema prove that the line between art and entertainment is at its blurriest with filmmaking. Some films have also reached the level of being considered "classics," either in their specific genre or in the gamut of filmmaking. One of those films is the original 1922 version of Nosferatu. Directed by F.. Murnau, the 1922 film Nosferatu exemplifies surreal and haunting cinematography, deft use of timing, pacing, and editing, as well as integration of sonic elements.
Murnau's Nosferatu has been called the "best and most artistically-realized" film about vampires…

Recognizing that the film's title functions on both of these levels is important because it reveals how Alfredson deploys common vampire tropes in novel ways which serve to elevate the emotional content of the film, so that the "rules" surrounding vampires become metaphors for the emotional development both characters undergo. Thus, following Hakan's death, Eli goes to Oscar and he invites her into his room at the same moment that she implicitly invites him into her life, revealing to him the first explicit hints that she is something other than a twelve-year-old girl. From this point on, the two work to protect and comfort each other while providing each other with the confidence and companionship they need in order to be happy. Oscar confronts his bullies, and after a period of initial unhappiness, Eli gains a friend who accepts her as a vampire.

Though Eli initially has far more agency and…

Gothic Fiction
Dracula is a far more traditional Gothic novel in the classic sense than the four books of the Twilight series, in which Bella Swan and her vampire lover Edward Cullen never even fully consummate their relationship until they are married in the third book Eclipse, and Bella does not finally get her wish to become a vampire until the fourth and final book Breaking Dawn. Far from being Edward's victim, or used as a pawn and discarded, she is eager to leave her dull, empty middle class life behind and become part of the Cullen vampire family. When she nearly dies giving birth to their half-vampire daughter, Edward finally does 'turn' her to save her life, and to paraphrase the title of the old song, we can only hope that she is satisfied. Bella in fact is a very traditional and conservative character, including her religion and even her…

Victorian literature was remarkably concerned with the idea of childhood, but to a large degree we must understand the Victorian concept of childhood and youth as being, in some way, a revisionary response to the early nineteenth century Romantic conception. Here we must, to a certain degree, accept Harold Bloom's thesis that Victorian poetry represents a revisionary response to the revolutionary aesthetic of Romanticism, and particularly that of ordsworth. The simplest way to summarize the ordsworthian child is to recall that well-known line from a short lyric (which would be appended as epigraph to later printings of ordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality, from Recollections of Early Childhood") -- "the child is father of the man." Here, self-definition in adulthood, and indeed the poetic vocation, are founded in the perceived imaginative freedom of childhood.
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,

hy with such earnest pains…

Iago in Othello
Othello is one of the most important and popular Shakespeare tragedies where the playwright highlights the maliciousness of human nature and the way it can destroy some naive souls. Iago is the villain in this play who is presented as an epitome of deceit and malice. However this has been done while keeping the character wrapped in thick clouds of honesty and truthfulness. This is a strange paradox as the on the surface we are repeatedly told that Iago is an honest man and he also considers himself to be so, while beneath all this fake honesty, he is always trying to stab someone in the back.

Because of his crafty nature, this character can also be considered a true Machiavellian figure. Close reading of Machiavelli's work reveals certain link between Iago and Machiavellian prince. Yet despite all his slyness, the character repeatedly claims to be an honest person…

All without distinction were branded as fanatics and phantasts; not only those, whose wild and exorbitant imaginations had actually engendered only extravagant and grotesque phantasms, and whose productions were, for the most part, poor copies and gross caricatures of genuine inspiration; but the truly inspired likewise, the originals themselves. And this for no other reason, but because they were the unlearned, men of humble and obscure occupations. (Coleridge iographia IX)
To a certain extent, Coleridge's polemical point here is consistent with his early radical politics, and his emergence from the lively intellectual community of London's "dissenting academies" at a time when religious non-conformists (like the Unitarian Coleridge) were not permitted to attend Oxford or Cambridge: he is correct that science and philosophy were more active among "humble and obscure" persons, like Joseph Priestley or Anna Letitia arbauld, who had emerged from the dissenting academies because barred (by religion or gender)…