One of the strongest human drives is a desire for power. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Abraham Van Helsing is a classic example of this behavior. Throughout the novel, Van Helsing seeks to gain power over others believing that he is to carry out God’s message by ridding the world of evil. This is exemplified in his killing of Lucy Westenra, leading the other men to destroy vampires alongside him, and in introducing Catholicism into the lives of the English. By integrating himself into the circle of characters, Van Helsing seeks to exert power over the others as the figurehead of unwavering righteousness. Abraham Van Helsing comes into the lives of the cast of Dracula through association with Dr. John Seward. An intelligent, skilled, and well-balanced
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A Catholic man, Van Helsing personally views Count Dracula as not only a threat to western Europe, but as a threat to his religion and what he views as morally right. Even the Count’s act of drinking blood perverses the Christian ritual of communion; moreover, his appearance rivals that of Satan with flaming red eyes and fanged teeth. As such, Van Helsing becomes determined to rid the world of Dracula’s influence by enlisting the help of the others, and by establishing himself as the figurehead of the group due in part to his superior knowledge, Van Helsing encaptures their devotion to the cause. As his namesake, Abraham, was the patriarch of the Israelites, Abraham Van Helsing is the self-established leader of the vampire hunters, and he provides the others with moral inspiration to defeat the vampiric reign of terror. By the end of the novel, the other characters, such as Mina and Jonathan Harker, have come to incorporate aspects of Catholicism into their own lives, if not have symbolically converted. For example, the …show more content…
Fully exemplifying that one of the strongest human drives is a desire for power, Van Helsing seeks to gain power over others in the process of ridding the world of vampires through his moral righteousness and religious commitment. Threatened by both Count Dracula as well as the idea of the modern woman, Van Helsing may live by up to date technologies, but still lives very morally in the past Victorian values, and he seeks to punish those who choose to defy what he sees as right. By aggrandizing himself to the point of envisioning his crew of vampire hunters as "ministers of God 's own wish," Van Helsing integrates himself into their collective and seeks to exert power over the others as the figurehead of unwavering
A Catholic man, Van Helsing personally views Count Dracula as not only a threat to western Europe, but as a threat to his religion and what he views as morally right. Even the Count’s act of drinking blood perverses the Christian ritual of communion; moreover, his appearance rivals that of Satan with flaming red eyes and fanged teeth. As such, Van Helsing becomes determined to rid the world of Dracula’s influence by enlisting the help of the others, and by establishing himself as the figurehead of the group due in part to his superior knowledge, Van Helsing encaptures their devotion to the cause. As his namesake, Abraham, was the patriarch of the Israelites, Abraham Van Helsing is the self-established leader of the vampire hunters, and he provides the others with moral inspiration to defeat the vampiric reign of terror. By the end of the novel, the other characters, such as Mina and Jonathan Harker, have come to incorporate aspects of Catholicism into their own lives, if not have symbolically converted. For example, the …show more content…
Fully exemplifying that one of the strongest human drives is a desire for power, Van Helsing seeks to gain power over others in the process of ridding the world of vampires through his moral righteousness and religious commitment. Threatened by both Count Dracula as well as the idea of the modern woman, Van Helsing may live by up to date technologies, but still lives very morally in the past Victorian values, and he seeks to punish those who choose to defy what he sees as right. By aggrandizing himself to the point of envisioning his crew of vampire hunters as "ministers of God 's own wish," Van Helsing integrates himself into their collective and seeks to exert power over the others as the figurehead of unwavering