Dracula Appropriation

Authors Avatar

                Dean Exikanas

Dracula Appropriation

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the famous 19th century novel that started the phenomenon that was the vampire genre. Many authors have expanded on the vampire genre, adding their own ideas to the legend. Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Dracula’ are only two such appropriations of the original Dracula. Some major values that appear in these texts are that of good versus evil, the nature of religion and the role of women.

During the Victorian era, many people had a ‘black and white’ view of good and evil. Stoker represents this in his novel through the creation of the monster that is Dracula. The novel is written in first person accounts from all the characters except Dracula himself, creating a menacing and foreboding feeling as the characters and the readers both uncertain in the true nature of Dracula. To add to this, Bram Stoker creates the monster that is Dracula in the first few chapters emphasised by the accounts of Harker “A terrible desire came upon me to rid the world of such a monster”. Small occurrences lead the reader to believe that Dracula is evil such as the time when Dracula gives the baby to the three female vampires “there was a gasp and a low wail, as a half-smothered child…I was aghast with horror”. This scene shows the evil in Dracula, and the absence of any human emotions. There is not only a fear of the monster, but being infected by the evil of the monster, emphasised by Van Helsing’s line “we henceforth become foul things of the night like him”. This shows that there is a fear in the power of the evil.

In later appropriations, though, the monster is no longer seen as pure evil; rather the monster has more human emotions. In Coppola’s ‘Dracula’, Coppola places the opening scene to show the creation of Dracula. By portraying Dracula as a human, it gives the audience a reason for the existence of the creature, but more importantly, it blurs the lines between good and evil, giving Dracula human emotions of love. This complex monster is further expanded in the scene with Mina and Dracula in the cinema, where Dracula is inflicted with pity and the audience empathise with him. Yet at the same time, the audience is still aware that Dracula is still the evil monster of the story, emphasised by the line of Van Helsing “a monster” and a splice to Dracula with a blood-stained mouth.

Join now!

In Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire the vampires are also rationalised. While Lestat is still the murderous vampires of the stories, Louis is still inflicted with human emotions and morals. The struggle throughout the book has been the struggle inside Louis to reject his vampiric instincts, instead following the morals of a human. This struggle is very important for the modern audience as it allows us to connect and empathise with the main character. This blurring between good and evil is important an important value of the vampiric genre as it questions the nature of the monster and reflects ...

This is a preview of the whole essay