The Balance Of Forces In Bram Stoker's Dracula

The yin-yang symbol has its roots in the Chinese philosophical religion of Daoism. Yin and Yang represent the balance of everything within the universe. They represent the sun and the moon, the summer and winter, and the good and the evil. One force cannot exist without the other. Bram Stoker, a well renowned gothic novel author, depicts the balance of forces represented by yin-yang in his novel, Dracula. England and Romania are the two fundamental settings within the book Dracula, and each place differs in their own ways, representing different ideas, and each showing their own meaning of the work through what they contrast. Bram Stoker knew that when he was writing his novel Dracula, that he wanted two separate settings, each having

In the first chapter, we are introduced to one of the main characters, Johnathan Harker, who is on his way to Count Dracula’s castle in Romania. He gets picked up by a carriage in the middle of the night, and while on his way, he witnesses “A faint flickering blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment. He at once checked the horses, and jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer. But while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey” (Stoker 10). It is through the paranormal activities like this one in Romania, that we understand the full potential of the power of Count Dracula. Often times, the abnormal activities occur at night, when the powers of the evil forces are at their maxim power, rendering any victim nearly helpless. In contrast, Bram Stoker chose England to be a place of

England shows us an example of a spiritual world full of Christ, a world that will lead us through to the kingdom of God, while Romania shows us an example of a world full of material wealth, a world full of distractions that stray us off the path to righteousness. They both show us the two extremes of people that we will encounter in our lives. England presents to us illustrations of those who will only bring us back up, like how Johnathan Harker’s acquaintances nurtured him all the way to his full health after his encounter with Dracula. On the other end of the spectrum, Romania presents to us the people who will only drag us down with them. Romania was where Count Dracula acted upon Johnathan Harker like a parasitic organism, draining every drop of sanity out of the poor soul. Bram Stoker most likely did not know it at the time of writing his book, but the Daoism symbol of yin-yang was incorporated beautifully within his novel. This visual symbol expresses the light and the dark exceptionally well, England being the white, and Romania the black. The white dot within the black represents when the assembly of colleagues invaded Romania to kill Dracula, and the white dot within the black whole represents how Dracula invaded the clean state of England to carry out his atrocious deeds. It is how in every good, there is a little evil, and in every evil, there is a little