Dracula’s Message and Theme

Dracula's message and theme

The words of dracula mean more than is read by most. The Symbols throughout Dracula, have often been thought to mean many diffrent things throughout history. It is believed by most that a large number of the themes are catholic oriented, Which is very understandable due to the books time period and what the book consists of. Also a number of the symbols stood against females being anything but a mother or wife. The battle of good versus evil, in this book, stood for much more than most would pick up, saying that God will protect you and that Christianity will always combat the evils of the world. The constant theme of blood througout the book also shows it connection to the Bible and Jesus.

The charachter of Dracula is actually modeled after a real person according to this excerpt " In this a new ,updated, and revised edition of In search of Dracula, a pioneering popular study of the historical Dracula which found readers throughout the world. Little did the coauthors realize at the time they embarked upon this project over a glass of plum brandy in bucharest more than 25 years ago, that thier work would result in the discovery of the authentic , blood thirsty prototype for Bram Stoker's famous novel Dracula, one of the best selling novels of all time." (ix, McNally & Flaoresc)

Some of the Symbols in the book directed towards the Christian Faith are; The cross which according to many, signifies the good and Christian redemtion, through which will protect one from evil.

The Christian icons of worship appear throughout the novel often. In the first couple chapters, the peasants offer Harker crucifixes to protect him against the dark future that awaits him. Later, Van

Helsingcomes with crosses and other holy items. You can tell by the way Bram Stoker returns to these images that Van Helsing’s mission as a religious one. As he says near the end of the novel “minister of

God’s own wish.”, meaning he is fighting the evil of dracula for God and God alone.

A number of symbols showed what they thought victorian women could be. During the novel you can tell that Victorian women were looked upon as either one of these, either a wife and a mother,

pure, or a harlot. This was shown by the concept of good and evil in the book which centered around female sexuality. The Wierd sisters ,in the book, Represented the incorporationof the dreamand

nightmares of the Victorian man's imagination of of sexually aggressive woman. The men desired the sister because they were not accepted by society in a social or moral way during this age thanks to thier

open sexuality. The weird sister are made to fufill a man of the victourian ages every want. for instance when the offer harker sexual favors so much so in two paragraphs that not even his wife to be is

comparable in this way. Because the women who are exceptionally over aggresive, such as