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Theme Of Deception In Bram Stoker's Dracula

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According to the Victorian Web, a new and budding author named Bram Stoker entered the world in the year 1847, on the eighth of November. From a young age, Stoker loved to read about folklore, and later on in life he aspired to be an author. Although Stoker published several stories, only in the year 1897 did he publish his most well-known novel, Dracula. After this success, Stoker went on to write several other novels, and eventually died in the year 1912. (Scarborough) His novel, Dracula, tells the tale of five people who encounter and have to deal with the evil undead vampire Count Dracula, who terrorizes them and even causes two out of the five to become undead like himself. Thankfully, the group eventually discovers a way to eventually vanquish Dracula once and for all, and by the end of the book they destroy him, preventing him from terrorizing the people of Europe once and for all. Stoker explores several significant themes in this book, including the theme of deception. In Dracula, Stoker uses the theme of deception with the characterization of Dracula, …show more content…

For example, one of Dracula’s first victims, named Lucy Westernra, becomes undead after being killed by Dracula. While she lied in bed dying, she asked her husband Arthur to kiss her before she died. However, this kiss had its own sinister meaning, as if Arthur had accepted this kiss he too would become an undead. Additionally, after her death, the undead Lucy continued to attempt to trick Arthur into joining her in undeath, and attempted to lure him to her tomb in order to kill him. Thankfully, both times the doctor Van Helsing stopped Arthur before he could do anything unwise. Dracula’s deceitful traits carry over to his victims that become

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Everybody knows the classic tale of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is most famous for its introduction of the character of Count Dracula into both deep-rooted and contemporary literature and media. One critic claimed,” Bram Stoker set the ground rules for what a vampire should be.” It follows the story of Jonathan Harker, an English solicitor who visits Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania – soon realising that he is being kept as a prisoner. Dracula forms a liking to the character of Lucy which ultimately leads to her death.

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Dracula has been famous by many people for centuries and count Dracula has become a major figure of horror movie and novel that it also has become one of the most popular characters to cosplay in Halloween. Because of its popularity and existence as representative character in field of horror, many scholars have been analyzing in various ways to find any hidden meanings beyond its massive plot. The novel, Dracula, brings up many different meanings according to how it is analyzed. Analyzing sexuality in Dracula is one way to figure connotative meanings out from Dracula. In this perspective, I would like to identify the desires of Victorian in that period through sexuality represented in the text.

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Try to think of a very famous vampire. Chances are the first vampire anyone would think of is some version of Dracula. This famous vampire was originally conceived in the mind of Bram Stoker in his novel Dracula, published in 1897. In Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula, many elements of the Victorian Era and his own life are prevalent such as the Victorians’ ideas of sexuality, the struggle between science and religion and the time period being the height of jingoism or extreme patriotism, commercial and military expansion, and the time period’s medical practices. Also, the novel contains an element of Stoker’s personal life-his relationship with his good friend Henry

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Bram Stoker uses the symbolism in Dracula to compare Dracula to an Anti-Christ or Demonic figure. Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland 1847. Bram Stoker graduated from Dublin Trinity College with a law degree. He worked as a civil servant for several years before moving to London in 1876. Stoker wrote 18 novels over his career including Dracula, which

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Dracula, by Bram Stoker, is told by way of letters, ships logs, and other media accounts that offer insight into the events surrounding Count Dracula. Dracula makes use of its framing to inevitably force the reader to question the integrity of their own modern scientific perspective. This framing which abstains from having a primary narrator or third person narrator to provide insight to the reader as to how to perceive each of the events recorded, leads to an uncertainty about each event, in addition to a necessity for the reader to make the ultimate decision about what the truth is. This uncertainty and stress created by Stokers framing in Dracula concerning the logs and ambiguous nature of the truth leads the readers to first become uncertain

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He creates an imaginary where Dracula doesn’t have a soul and is not real to the livings. He does not stop to think that it might be the reality of his own self. The notion that the humans in Dracula fear the vampires because he shows them what they really are inside is true because Dracula and the three daughters symbolize the hidden-self of humans. When Jonathan Harker first arrived at Count Dracula’s castle, he saw "tall old man, clean shaven, save for a long white mustache and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere” (Stoker 16) standing. Thus, Count Dracula’s outfit is colored all black.

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Christianity in Europe before the Victorian Era was a part of everyday life and widespread throughout the country. With historians analyzing the bible for accuracy and the publishing of Darwin’s, The Origin of Species, many educated churchgoers began to question their faith. In the novel Dracula, Bram Stoker incorporates religious symbols along with references to Christianity to communicate his position on the issue of fleeting faith. By expressing the power religious symbols have, the effectiveness of superstition compared to science, and spiritual character actions; Stoker creates a pro-Christian piece of propaganda to express the need for religious faith in a society with increasing reliance on scientific reasoning.

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Bram Stokers Dracula is a novel that can be presented and interpreted in a number of different ways. Throughout the story, there are several themes that can be identified, such as womens rights, the importance of teamwork, and even the struggle between good and evil. However, considering Dracula to be a religious novel is quite debatable. Because of the several references and ties to religious thoughts and beliefs in the novel, Dracula should in fact be considered a religious novel, as the religious objects in the story are pivotal to the success of the protagonists, and Stoker is meaning to strengthen the power of these beliefs of the townsfolk.

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The horror genre of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, combined with mild eroticism is able to draw in readers due to the fact that Stoker is able to intricately weave suspenseful sexual scenes/scenes of desire throughout the novel—making it clear that

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At first glance, the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker appears to be a typical gothic horror novel set in the late 1890s that gives readers an exciting look into the fight between good and evil. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that Dracula is a statement piece about gender roles and expectations for men and women during the Victorian age. Looking at the personalities, actions, and character development of each of the characters in Dracula bring to light startling revelations about Victorian society and how Stoker viewed the roles of men and women during this time period. To really understand Dracula, it is important to note that this novel was written during a time “of political and social upheaval, with anxieties not just about the

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Carmilla is the most obvious counter to the assumption that vampire horror stories began with Bram Stoker. In fact, Western Europe had been raking it in for at least a century before Count Dracula, thanks to terrors stemming from religious misgivings about the crazy amount of imperialism going on at the time. (More on that in a minute.) Remember that summer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley spent in Lake Geneva with her baby-daddy/future husband Percy and several other writers in 1816, during which she wrote Frankenstein. Poet Lord Byron, also in attendance, and his physician John William Polidori both came away from the summer-long ghost story competition with vampire stories very similar to those later tales credited with the genre’s genesis.

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Dracula is dead, yet despite this, he declares victory. The fact that Dracula declared triumph suggests that the anxieties and worries that he represents proceed even after his demise. Dracula’s influence continues to live throughout the lives of those he has encountered. The actions and occurrences that have taken place throughout the narrative reveal the Westerners' true character, but they choose to disregard it due to their sense of superiority. Carol Senf argues, “The narrators insist that they are agents of God and are able to ignore their similarity to the vampire because their

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Gothic horror novel Dracula, the title character makes only several relatively short appearances, some of which are while in disguise. Throughout the novel, Stoker keeps Count Dracula in the shadows, both literally and figuratively. This essay will describe these appearances and analyze Stoker’s use of them to determine what effect they might have on the impression of the character and the novel overall. It will be claimed that by keeping his title character hidden for much of the novel, Stoker’s Dracula is made much more frightening to the reader. Human beings tend to fear the unknown, and by leaving Dracula to the imagination,

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“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights”(Stoker). Dracula is a book written in 1897 by Bram Stoker. The book is a story about Jonathan Harker's journey in the late 19th century to Transylvania in order to fix up some documentation for Dracula so he can own real estate England. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire Count Dracula is wrongfully portrayed as a villain by Bram Stoker.

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During the Victorian period in which Dracula was written, morals and ethics were often strictly enforced. Some of the morals that were upheld had to do with personal duty, hard work, honesty, as well as sexual proprietary. It was very important during this period that one was proper in their sexual behaviors and conventional in whom they had sexual relations with. However, during this period, many authors sought to challenge the ‘norm’ with ideas of reform and change and Bram Stoker was no exception to this. In his novel, Dracula, Stoker provides a critique of this rigidity in his portrayal of Dracula and Dracula’s relationship with Jonathan Harker.

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