Morris Venden

Comparing Characterization Movies that feature characters adapted from novels often change personality traits in order to suit the film’s plot. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was no exception; Mina Harker and the Invisible Man had drastic changes made to their personality in order to better suit the storyline. Both of these characters were estranged from society. Mina Harker had few friends outside of her close circle and the Invisible Man isolated himself from the people of Iping. The…

Dracula is a horror novel set in Europe in the mid 1800’s. The book starts with Johnathon Harker heading to Transylvania on a business trip to sell Dracula, a wealthy count in Transylvania, real estate in London. After strange incidents of Count Dracula attempting to suck Johnathon’s blood, and imprison him, Johnathon escapes. The novel then switches to Mina Murray’s, Johnathon’s fiancé, and her friend, Lucy Westenra’s, points of view through their letters. It is mostly just gossip, but there…

The attitude of the Victorian age and its gender roles is ingrained into Bram Stoker's Dracula. In the novel, it is transparent that men hold the authoritative position while women are expected to comply with their demands. Stroker often writes about both genders behaving either more feminine or masculine and the repercussions that follow. Today there's a lot of stress on both genders to look and act a certain way; but when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula there was much more stress on people to fit…

Vampires have changed over the years and the depictions of vampires through the years give us an idea about the anxieties of that time period, the way the people viewed the pressing issues of that time period. I am going to discuss the similarities and the differences between Bram stoker’s Dracula and the film Nosferatu. Dracula was portrayed as a tall old man with a white moustache who appeared to be a human and he had a charm about him normally associated with aristocrats whereas in the film…

One of the pioneering and most influential works of horror fiction, Dracula by Bram Stoker has been rediscovered in the late 20th century from the gender studies perspective. Many scholars have pointed out since then that under a classic adventurous vampire story Stoker managed to hide his contrasting understanding of the gender roles of late Victorian Britain, especially the contradicting images of femininity. While Stoker’s attitude toward women is a debatable topic, with some scholars viewing…

The Truth Is Not Always What It Seems “Our need to believe what we want to believe is stronger than our need for the truth.” by Errol Morris from the documentary Thin Blue Line. The truth is ambiguous. In the Thin Blue Line, the truth was so ambiguous that it resulted in the imprisonment of an innocent man. In October of 1976, 28-year-old Randal Adams and his brother were driving from Ohio to California when they arrived in Dallas, Texas. David Harris, a 16-year-old boy, stole his father’s…

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a Gothic horror novel about a vampire named Count Dracula, who plans to move from Transylvania to England. Stoker published his novel in 1897, and his work draws from many historical events that are displayed throughout his novel. The concept of immigration was popular during this time; it gave rise to a huge debate regarding racial purity versus racial deterioration. In addition to the concept of immigration, another significant event during this time was the rise of…

Diary entries act as a window to the true thoughts dwelling in the mind of a person with the lack of fear of offending another and due to the exceptional way writing on paper allows the words to flow freely and allow lengthy, humanistic thinking. Dracula by Bram Stoker consists of these unadulterated thoughts along with factual reporting from Newspaper clippings. Along with this, letters between characters offer a connection and interaction that generally would not translate well with only diary…

Analysis of Dramatic Meaning in Dracula Dracula, performed by Shake & Stir Theatre Company, examines the 1897 Gothic novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. This production follows Jonathan Harker as he travels to Castle Dracula where he is imprisoned. When Dracula is not satisfied with simply Jonathan, he pursues Jonathan’s love interest, Mina, in a quest for love, but most importantly blood. This production explored the theme of love utilising the gothic conventions of isolation and the ‘Other’. The…

In Dracula, Stoker presents a stark representation of women and attacks the “New Women”, through the voice of the main women characters, Lucy Westenra and Mina Murray, later known as Mrs. Harker. In the Longman Cultural Edition of Dracula, the term “New Woman” is defined as a “single urban young woman, often working in a new clerical job; she smoked cigars and rode a bicycle and ventured, scandalously into the world on her own” (Blake, Dracula 413). Mina is the epitome of the idealized virtuous…