The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Bram Stoker wrote the original Dracula story. I read a bit on his life and as a child he was very sick and part of his treatment was bloodletting. Clearly, that had a huge impact on him! The book is written as a series of diary entries from different characters we meet in the book. It starts with a man who is at Dracula’s castle on business, the business helps Dracula relocate to outside of London. Once in London, the characters come together by the realization that Dracula drinks the blood of humans and transforms them. From there, our Dracula hunters are put together and devise a plan to rid the world of Dracula.

There is a lot written about what this book means. I have attempted to stay away from literary reviews of the work so that I could form my own opinion. The only thing that I did see was that this book is a commentary on women’s changing role in society. I am not entirely in agreement with that sentiment. I think Stoker gives us a beautiful example of the complementary natures of men and women and how both are capable of so much good and so much evil.

The Good – First, it is Dracula. Probably enough said right there.

But, I can add … the approach used was somewhat unique in the following of diary entries to tell the story. I noticed he used the switch of author to either quicken or slow down the pace of the book. At the end, the frequent shifts led to a rapid feeling pace, whereas in the middle we were given a large amount of detail by staying with a single voice.

The story uses a lot of religious elements to fight the evil. The story show us the fight being between good and evil, with most of the characters making frequent reference to God and his power. The symbols of faith represent the depth to which the church influenced the author and shaped his character creation. In the book, I believe Stoker used vampirism to represent sin. Mina’s mark on her forehead reminded me of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. As long as that mark was on Mina’ s head, she was in sin. Once the sin had been killed, the mark was gone.

While Stoker protrayed traditional male and female roles adn their repective customs of the time, he also made Mina have an incredible amount of depth. She was often the one who figured out the puzzles, she was the one they looked to for strength with their moods often changed by her actions and reactions. You can juxtapose Mina’s character against Lucy’s character. Lucy did not seem to have the depth of character that Mina did and then succumbed to Dracula.

The Bad – There were parts in the middle that were slower to read. I had to reread a few times because I would think something wasn’t important and then realize it was. I really thought the character of Arthur Holmwood deserved much more than he got. He seemed a footnote with little to no personality. But, he represents money.

There were also a few times that I didn’t understand exactly what was happening. Characters would allude to Dracula being able to go places by day, but then he couldn’t. Or, it seemed they said he was the wolf that ran from the boat, but it wasn’t really clear. I did want to learn more about how vampires functioned and really wanted the book to give me the rules.

The Ugly – Nothing really ugly here. A few moments for different characters where the three female vampires were described in overtly sexual ways. There are also some kids that Lucy uses as a food source. I would probably not have any issue with my kids reading this.

Book on Amazon