Firstly there is an obvious element which is present of life VS death within the novel, this contrast is shown through the characters, language and imagery. Light and Dark is shown through life Vs death and day VS night.
One point contained in the novel that suggests a contrast between the two extremes is that it is only during the night, when supernatural, strange things occur in contrast to daytime when nothing seems to go wrong.
When Lucy is bitten she acts as a human, during the day but during night time her physical appearance dramatically changes because ‘her teeth were longer and her gums retracted’, this shows that evil is associated with night and good is associated with day. Although darkness is associated with evil, there are moments in the novel that contradict this because the reader can spot the evil characters by their descriptions ‘pale or white skin’.
It can be argued that the theme of light VS darkness is used to good effect because the language creates an image which is easy to understand.
Throughout the novel there are very little references to light in contrast to darkness where there are many, this is due to the constant presence of evil in the book, the title is a constant reminder that evil is present as it means ‘Prince of Darkness’.
Between chapters 5 and 6 when Dracula’s presence is rarely mentioned there is happiness and a vaster presence of light. Between chapters 1-4 and when the ‘storm’ comes to Whitby there is a sense of evil, this is shown through the comment by old man swales, ‘the angel of death is drawing near’.
Another theme which is similar to ‘light VS darkness and good VS evil’ is ‘right and wrong’ these things all share common preferences, one is that they both have two extremes in contrast to one another, but stoker did not agree with that of the extreme which was a social comment of ‘the normal’ that most of the population lived by.
This opinion of stokers some might believe is conveyed through the repetition of ‘grey’ in chapter 6 because it is neither black or white, this greyness some may think resembles Dracula because stoker is showing Dracula is in a way both ‘good and evil’ and also ‘dead AND alive’.
Another fact that shows the state of ‘in-between ness’ is Lucy, when she is bitten she behaves both, human in daytime and vampiric at night time. Because she is both good and evil, she can be summarised as ‘between the extremes’ so is acting as an example of stokers views.
In conclusion ‘light VS darkness’ is just one example of an extreme contained within the novel and shows the contrast between characters, JH,JS,VH,MM are closely associated with light and Dracula is associated with darkness, but Lucy on the other hand is both as she is stuck between the two extremes and has vital characteristics of both. ‘Evil in night when it is dark is one of the extremes that Lucy is attached to but during the day she is good when it is light. This theme is used to good effect as there are other extremes within the novel which all relate to each other.
