Skip to main content

Dracula by Bram Stoker

 

Genre: Horror

Publication Date: 1897

Number of pages: 415

Geographical Setting: Transylvania and Whitby, England

Time Period: 1890's

Subject Headings: Vampires--Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Dracula, Count (Ficticious Character), Horror tales

Three Descriptive Terms: Epistolary, Dark, Foreboding

Plot Summary:

The story opens with the account of Jonathan Harker traveling from England to Transylvania to meet a business client. His journey takes him to a remote castle in the Carpathian mountains where he meets Count Dracula and immediately is on edge with a sense of foreboding recorded in his journal.  Sure enough, events take a turn for the worse. He barely escapes the castle with his life, while the Count uses his identity to travel to Harker's home in England. Next, we are introduced to Mina, Jonathan's fiancée, and her friend, Lucy, through their correspondence. These letters also introduce Dr. John Seward, American Quincy Morris, and Arthur Holmwood, Lucy's fiancé. In short order, Mina takes off to meet Jonathan Harker who is recovering in Budapest and Lucy's begins to suffer from a curious case of blood loss. Concern for the patient prompts Dr. Seward to consult his friend, Professor Van Helsing. Van Helsing alone knows the source of Lucy's decline, but is frustratingly unable to remedy the situation. Eventually, he forms a team of all these characters to take down Dracula once and for all. This effort requires a harrowing commitment from all involved and escalates into a race for time traveling back to the eerie castle in Transylvania.

Horror Appeal Factors:

    Tone: The tone of Dracula is tense and foreboding. The reader knows characters are making mistakes but are helpless to warn them creating a sense of dread throughout the story.

    Setting: The remote isolation of Count Dracula's castle is eerie.  His properties in England are stark and cold. The atmospheric descriptions of the settings add to the creepiness of the story. 

    Writing Style: Dracula's epistolary style of diary entries and written correspondence adds a sense of reality which accentuates the disturbing events.

    Characters: The protagonists in Dracula are sleep-deprived and grief-stricken, but must soldier on in their quest to to stop the vampire. The menacing antagonist remains "vague and hard to know" as described in Wyatt & Saricks' chapter on horror (2019).

Horror Read-Alikes: 

   The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is a gothic horror story based on the Dracula legend and is similarly atmospheric, but written more recently and with an element of mystery added.

   The Beetle by Richard Marsh was published the same year as Stoker's Dracula.  Both feature a predatory supernatural menace and take place in England.

    Bloodline by Kate Cary is also told in epistolary style and features the discovery of a vampire. In fact, both protagonists and antagonist are descendants of the original Dracula characters set in the backdrop of World War I.

Related Non-fiction:

In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires by Raymond T. McNally details the true history of Prince Vlad of Transylvania, also known as Vlad the Impaler who served as the inspiration for Stoker's Dracula.

    The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead by J. Gordon Melton includes vampire lore from over 30 cultures. This title cites vampires sightings in film, opera, ballet, and books.

Other Genre Read-Alikes:

    Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a classic work of gothic fiction that is atmospheric and compelling, but is considered psychological suspense rather than horror.

    Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco is a gothic murder mystery that takes place in Victorian England and features a menacing villain who is a serial killer rather than a vampire.

Sources

Novelist. (n.d.). https://www.ebsco.com/novelist

Wyatt, N, & Saricks, J. G. (2019). The readers’ advisory guide to genre fiction. Chicago: ALA.

Comments

  1. VictoriaFebruary 18, 2024 at 11:32 AM

    I thought I knew the general story of Dracula, but your summary showed me that there is definitely more to it than I thought! I've been wanting to read the original story for a long time, and I might have to bump it up on my TBR. Your read a-likes are also really good! The Vampire Book caught my attention; I think it would be interesting to read about vampire lore form different cultures. Stalking Jack the Ripper has been on my TBR for a while too, that whole series sounds intriguing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 15 - Connecting Books and Readers

What do you think are the best ways to market your library's fiction collection? Name and describe three ways you do or would like to market your library or your future library's fiction. These can be tools, programs, services, displays - anything that you see as getting the word out. My little library puts some effort into promoting the collection, but there is a lot of room for improvement! One method I think we do well is book displays. We have one main round display in a prominent place that is changed out every two weeks. The person in charge of this display does a great job and is very creative with themes and props. Our patrons are often take time to browse the display and also take books from it.  I am responsible for a display of children's chapter books, and there is also a picture book display area. I wish we had room for more because they very effective in getting books to circ with our patrons.  Two services I would like to add are book highlighting and a r...
8 comments
Read more

Week 14 Prompt - Better Together

Consider yourself part of the collection management committee of your local library, or a library at which you would like to work. You must decide whether or not to separate LGBTQ fiction and Urban Fiction from the general collection to its own special place. Some patrons have requested this, yet many staff are uncomfortable with the idea - saying it promotes segregation and disrupts serendipitous discovery of an author who might be different from the reader. Do you separate them? Do you separate one and not the other? Why or why not? In my library (a small rural public library), I would not separate either LGBTQ or Urban Fiction from the main collection.   Reason #1:  Due to limited building size, we only have so much shelving space that does not allow us to separate our collection into smaller categories. All our adult fiction is shelved together to save space. I do not see the case for these two genres as strong enough to change up our system as it already is. R...
7 comments
Read more

Secret Shopper

For my reader's advisory secret shopper experience, I asked a librarian for horror book suggestions for someone who is new to the horror genre. The librarian was kind and helpful, but also seemed a little terrified by my request.  She asked if I had ever read Stephen King. This turned out to be the only question she asked of me.  She managed to think of two horror books from her own experience that were short in length, thinking that would be a good feature for a someone new to horror. After a bit of thinking, she remembered that the library had printed genre pamphlets in the stacks. Together we walked over and found the horror pamphlet. The book suggestions were divided into the following categories: Gothic Horror, Historical Horror, Apocalyptic Horror, Ghost Stories, Psychological Horror, Vampire Stories, Possession Stories, and Witchcraft & Occultism. The librarian left me with this list to browse on my own, which was fine with me.  I selected a book from the list ...
6 comments
Read more