Literary Criticism

Ryne Tremmel
November 5, 2010
Literary Criticism Essay

Echoes of Dracula

    In Dr. Kathy Davis Patterson's essay, 'Echoes of Dracula: Racial Politics and the Failure of Segregated Speace in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend', she discusses the idea that vampires have been used to represent racial politics in politics for quite some time, and introduces the idea by noting that 1954 was both the year of the Supreme Court's ruling on the Brown vs. Board of Education case, as well as the year in which Richard Matheson's I Am Legend was first published.  "Coincidence?", she writes.  It would seems as though Patterson doesn't think so.   She writes that "The link between literary vampires and racialized constructions of monstrostrosity is nothing new" (Patterson, 19), and uses the rest of her essay to reinforce this idea.
    The first example that she references is Bram Stoker's Dracula.  According to Patterson, "Numerous studies of [Dracula] have explored the characterization of Bram Stoker's infamous Count as an allegorical representation of late nineteenth-centure British anxieties regarding the influx of large numbers of Eastern European Jewish immigrants on English soil." (Patterson, 19)  She goes on to discuss the way in which gothic fiction is connected to xenophobia.  While Dracula was a representation of cultural anxieties in England at the time, Patterson suggests that I Am Legend is, in the same way, a commentary on cultural anxieties of white America during the Civil Rights Movement.  Patterson writes that "white Americans relied on their constructions of blackness, literary and otherwise, as  keys to defining their own white identies." (Patterson, 20)
    The essay then goes on to discuss the ways in which the plot of I Am Legend reflects these concepts through the treatment of the its vampiric characters.  It is first noted that the main character Neville's race is made known very early on in the novel.  He is described as being tall and white (English-German, to be more specific).  However, Patterson then goes on how to discuss that even though the vampire creatures have no obvious racial attributes, they are associated with 'blackness' time and time again.  Through multiple quotes from the novel, she illustrates that I Am Legend often associates blackness with that which is unholy or evil.
    Patterson discusses the nature of Neville's attraction to the female vampires, as well, and relates it back to the concept of whiteness and blackness in American society at the time.  She writes how, like John Harker of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Neville is somewhat helplessly attracted to the female vampires.  She writes that "the intense desire that he feels for the vampire women, when considered in terms of his whiteness and their "blackness," carries echoes of the very real sexual exploitation of black femal bodies by white men during the era of slavery and beyond." (Patterson, 21)
    Later, Neville's perspective on blood in I Am Legend is discussed as a representation of racial purity.  "In Neville's worldview, hybrid blood equals contaminated blood.  His obsessiev studies of blood and his efforts to identify, prevent, and possibly cure blood contamination reflect a desperate desire to restore homgeneity and, with, a social order that he recongnizes." (Patterson, 23)  Throughout the novel, this contamination of his "pure blood" is the ultimate 'worst case scenario', and it is something that he is constantly trying to avoid.  This is related in the essay to people during the Civil Rights movement (and other social movements), who are resistant to change because they find familiarity and order in their own culture.
    Overall, I think that Patterson intended this essay to be something that makes us look deeper into the nature of gothic horror and what makes it so scary.  While there are many theories regarding this, I think that this racial segregation concept is very interesting.  While I find myself still somewhat doubting some of the connections made in the essay, it is hard to deny that vampiric writing is at least somewhat of a product of social anxieties and situations that have been an important parts of society in the past.

Works Cited

Davis Patterson, Kathy. Echoes of Dracula: Racial Politics and the Failure of Segregated Spaces in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. Print.

"I am legend."

I think that the last line in I Am Legend did a really good job of summing up many of the themes that we’ve been discussing in this class.  When he said “I am Legend”, it shows us that Neville finally understood what was going on, although it took him the entire book to figure it out.  Basically, the world was changing.  Since the introduction of the virus, everything changed which becomes apparent right away (and is to be expected in this kind of post-apocalyptic story).

At first, the major change seems to be that Neville is now all alone in the world.  He is the last surviving, uninfected human.  I feel like the point of these kinds of stories is to pose the question, “What would it be like if the world you knew was suddenly turned upside down?”  It seems to be a ‘worst case scenario’.  Most of us would have no idea how to deal with such a situation in the first place, and, speaking personally, I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t have the know-how to survive for more than 10 minutes in a similar situation.  I think that this element is what introducing the first feeling of the unknown, which in turn gives us our first feeling of fear in the novel, and is carried on by the way the Neville has to push himself everyday, just to survive.  It’s a pretty scary situation.

Things really start to get interesting as the story drew closer and closer to its conclusion.  Before Neville delivers his last lines, he meets a woman who changes everything for him.  After having her locked up for a while, and then setting her free, Neville is knocked out by a woman who he suspected of being infected.  When he wakes up, he finds a note from the girl, Ruth, which explains everything to him.  He finds out the infected had already begun to rebuild society, and that they have actually come to fear Neville because of how many infected he had killed.

This twist in the book really drove home a lot of the underlying themes of this book.  The entire book, Neville has the mindset that he is the last living human being.  But then he finds out that he is actually just the last human of his kind, but that the rest of the world has already started to move on without him.  This could be reflective of race relations in America at the time, and how people were dealing with it.  The world was changing a lot during that time period, and, for better or worse, some people just weren’t ready for it, and many people resisted it.

This is how Neville fit into the new society.  He spends the entire book thinking about how threatening the vampiric creatures are to him, but he never considered that he was actually affecting the development of what would probably eventually become the new world.  At the end of the book, Ruth comes back to Neville and all of this becomes clear to him.  She says that his execution will be necessary, and she brings him 2 pills to “make it easier”.  As he takes them, he says those last lines to himself. “I am legend.”  He realized that there is no longer a place for him in the world.  He seemingly sees the irony in his situation as he chuckles to himself before he dies; while he spent the entire book thinking that he was surround by monsters, he now realizes that, in the new society, he himself with be built up as a monster himself.

Dracula, Part 2

The concept that vampires could be considered more “alive” than the living was very interesting to me.  While they are sometimes seemingly ghostly figures, vampires have certain characteristics that suggest that they live a life beyond what a human life is capable of being.

Physically, they always seem to be nearly invulnerable.  Whether it be holy water, a spike through the heart, or cutting of the head, in most cases some kind of special criteria is required to kill a vampire that goes far beyond what is required to kill an average person.  This suggests a certain vitality that goes far beyond human life.  Another example of this vitality is shown in their ability to live for an extremely long time.  Not only does this provide the vampires with more life in terms of years, but it would also most likely give them a wealth of experience and wisdom, which only adds to their cunning and manipulative nature.

I think that sexuality is another way in which vampires show more “life” than humans.  I thought that this was illustrated well by Lucy’s transformation into a vampire.  Her illness caused by Dracula’s attack made her very sickly looking.  However, when she seemed to pass on, all of her beauty returned.  It is even stated that Holmwood finds himself surprisingly attracted to her when he first sees her.  Then, to add to her sexuality, she begs him for a kiss.  While her beauty and sexuality is represented as a result of Dracula’s evil, it doesn’t change the fact the it makes Lucy more vigorous and uninhibited, which some may these days call “being alive”.

Now that I’m done talking about the question of the week, though, I’d like to briefly move on to what I thought of the book.  This has definitely been the most exciting book we’ve read so far this semester.  I was constantly surprised by how often it kept “on the edge of my seat”, if you will.  While Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights was an interesting character, I never really felt as though I was grasping the full weight of his character.  Dracula, on the other hand, seemed much more in line with what I was expecting from this class.  He was a true figure of terror, which is something that I wasn’t really expecting.  Given the books age, I thought it would be more atmospherically scary than anything else, sort of like Wuthering Heights, but I’m glad that I was wrong.  Especially the ending! Wow!  That was much more intense than I was expecting (and probably my favorite part of the entire book).

Online Artifact Essay

Well, I kind of forgot that my artifact was due this week, so I ended up writing a blog post as well.  Oh well!  Guess I'll have to pay more attention from now on.

Anyway, Enjoy!

Vlad Tepes vs. Count Dracula:

Man vs, Myth

For my online artifact essay, I chose to look into the origins of the now infamous Count Dracula as he was initially portrayed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  Like some of the other characters we have discussed this semester, it seems as though the character of Count Dracula was actually based on a real person—a Wallachian ruler by the name of Vlad Tepes (which apparently translates to “Vlad the Impaler”).  I say “seems”, because, from what I have read, this connection is mostly alleged or assumed, despite the fact that there is little evidence to support the claim.  According to Elizabeth Miller’s online article, “Dracula: The History of Myth and the Myth of History”, it is stated that “. . . there has been much speculation about the exact nature of the connection between Vlad and the Count Dracula of Bram Stoker's classic novel”.  I hope to use Miller’s article to discuss the similarities and differences between Vlad and the Count in order to distinguish between the man and the myth.

The easiest place to start would probably be at the name of Dracula itself.  According to Miller’s article, “The name "Dracula" has links with the Romanian word "drac" (derived from the Latin "draco") which can mean both "dragon" and "devil".  Most Romanians still refer to Vlad as ‘Vlad Tepes’ rather than ‘Vlad Dracul”, however, there are multiple documents signed by Vlad himself that use the term “Dracula”, or variations of it.  While the name was actually first bestowed upon Vlad’s father, Vlad Dracul, by something called “The Order of the Dragon” in the 1430’s, the name seems to have stuck with the ruler (mostly in the west) as a testament to his “blood steeped” military career.  When considering all of that, “Dracula” seems to be a very intimidating word that suggests both violence as well as the unknown.  While the idea that Bram Stoker started building the character of Count Dracula based solely on a name seems unlikely, the nature of the word nonetheless seems to serve as a good foundation for understand the character of the Count.

Vlad the Impaler’s military history is another possible reason why Bram Stoker chose to base Count Dracula on him (if he did intentionally choose Vlad at all).  In Romania, Vlad Tepes is mostly known as a national hero of sorts.  At least that seems to be the way in which Romania would like him to be portrayed, although there is certainly a good amount of debate, which seems to have stemmed from the nature of Vlad’s military history.  According to Miller’s article, renowned historian Ion Bogdan’s treatise Vlad Tepes (1896) presented Vlad as “a bloodthirsty tyrant whose cruelty could only be accounted for in terms of mental aberration, a sick man who killed and tortured out of sadistic pleasure”.  This duality is another feature that can be associated with both Vlad and the fictional Count.  In Dracula, it seemed as though the Count was always very concerned with keeping up the appearance that he is nothing more than a kindly host.  However, we come to know better as the story goes on and we find out about the Count’s secret darkness.  To me, this revelation closely resembles the way in which recorded history itself works. (A good example of this would be the comparison between the way the Christopher Columbus used to be viewed and the way the he is viewed today).

The character of the Count was first shaped by the history of Vlad, but in more recent years, it would seem as though the fiction of Bram Stoker’s Dracula has begun to shape what people think about the real figure of Vlad Tepes.  The fictional Count Dracula was actually virtually unknown in Romania until the fall of communism, however, in the few decades since then, Romanian tourism has greatly benefitted from the myth.  Consequently, though, as is stated in Miller’s article, “This has created an interesting dilemma for Romanians: how to accommodate this demand while at the same time keeping clear the distinction between the fictional vampire and their own national hero”.  According to Miller, this has cost the Romanian people a lot in the area of maintaining their own history.  She states that “A far more serious problem [than tourists getting fact and fiction confused with each other], in my opinion, is a tendency on the part of some enterprising Romanians to cash in on the confusion, at the expense of their own history and culture.”  She states that at various locations on different “Dracula tours” in Romania, she found things that further the confusion between the real Vlad Tepes and count Dracula.   In her travels, she encountered things like “a T-shirt depicting Vlad Tepes with fangs extended, leaning over a bare-breasted and willing female victim”.  She even stated that in the courtyard of Vlad’s birthhouse, there is “a life-sized model of Vlad where tourists were invited to have their "bloody photo taken"”.  While this is mostly a testament to the overwhelming power of commercialism, I think it also attests to the power of Stoker’s Count.

Vlad Tepes certainly did have some similarities to the character of Dracula.  It is easy to see why Stoker chose to model his horror icon after a man like Vlad.  Both Vlad and the Count have a certain ambiguity and mystery to them which I think is essential to any form of art that is supposed to instill fear in its audience.  It is just human nature to fear the unknown.  Also, while the Count’s continued prevalence in our culture is definitely a testament to Stoker’s success in creating a truly horrific figure, it is somewhat of a shame to see the way in which it has effect Romanian culture and history.

Sources Cited

Miller, E. (2005). Dracula, myth and history. Retrieved from http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/myth.html

Dracula, Part 1

Bram Stoker’s Dracula seems to touch a lot on the themes that we’ve talked about so far in this class.  Whereas Wuthering Heights had some Gothic elements that were pretty spooky at time, I think that Dracula has more obvious gothic themes, which in turn keeps the book pretty scary.  The wolves, the creepy old castle, the count himself—it seems as though these are all things that stuck with us through years.  I mean, look at Halloween.

I also had no idea how much sexual repression played into the development of vampirism.  Seeing female vampires licking their lips in vampire movies used to just give me the impression that Hollywood added that aspect to vampirism and vampire movies with the whole ‘sex sells’ thing in mind.  It’s very interesting to see that the sexuality in vampirism actually comes from a much more interesting social situation.

Considering the way that sexuality was perceived in Victiorian culture, I would imagine that the ‘brides of Dracula’ were downright terrifying when this book was first published.  The way that Jonathan was simultaneous repelled and drawn in by them was a good example of the power that people thought that sexuality had over people’s minds.  Also, I think they provide a strong counterpoint to the much purer female protagonists of the story.  Seeing what ‘good’ Victorian women were supposed to be like made the ‘bad’ vampire women that much scarier.

Overall, I am enjoying this movie for multiple reasons.  It’s pacing is a bit quicker than some of the other readings we’ve done, which is nice.  Also, it’s pretty spooky, which is also nice (especially with Halloween right around the corner).  Most importantly, though, I think that Dracula is really helping to drive home some of the themes and ideas that we’ve been talking about.  I think that Carmilla made it easier to understand the themes of sexual repression in Victorian culture, and it’s similarities to Wuthering Heights is helping me to understand many of the themes associated with gothic literature.

Victorian culture and vampirism

Tamar Heller’s essay “The Vampire in the House” was quite interesting.  At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I suppose I was just expecting a bunch of weird, ill-defined connections between vampirism and female hysteria in Victorian culture.  Sometimes these essays that make connections between fiction and reality are kind of a stretch (for example, for a film class we discussed an essay linking the Western movie “High Noon” to the McCarthy era or communism or something).  However, while some of it was a bit hard for me to follow, I was pleasantly surprised.  This essay contained a lot of insight into Victorian culture and how it relates to “Carmilla” and vampirism in general.

To be honest, thought, I found it hard at times to follow all of the concepts presented in the essay.  Whether it was due to the essay’s language or its abstract concepts, I’m afraid I was only able to get away with a few main points and notes.  To me, the thing that was most interesting to read about was how little people knew about medicine and the human body in those days.  It seemed as though female repression in Victorian culture lead to many misconceptions about women and sexuality.

“Since Victorian culture associated menstruation with the incursion of unruly desires, we can read Carmilla’s advent in the story—the entry of the woman who drains blood—as symbolizing the menarche of the adolescent narrator.” (82)

“First associated solely with boys, but then, from the 1860s onward, increasingly linked with girls, masturbation was the target of a vehement and weel-organized nineteenth-century medical campaign arguing that autoeroticism caused hysteria in girls and was encouraged by such practices as eating red meat.” (83)

Passages like those were very interesting.  It would be very hard to make a connection like that today, but when looking at the writing in the context of the time period in which it was written, this kind of stuff starts to make sense.  These concepts now just seem completely ridiculous.  Associating menstruation with “the incursion of unruly desires”?  Autoeroticism “encouraged by such practices as eating red meat”?  These things are obviously very dated ways of thinking, but it is easy to tell that their purpose was to scare women into acting a certain way rather than to actually inform.

So, while most of the connections presented in “The Vampire in the House” seemed to be mostly based on misinformation of the Victorian era, they certainly provided a lot of insight on when the book was written, and the mindset of people in society at that time.  While I didn’t fully understand all of the information presented, I think I got enough of it to be able to better understand the underlying themes that were present in “Carmilla”.

"Wuthering Heights" and it's place among vampire stories

Of all of the questions for our blogs this week, I thought that Question #4 would be interesting to discuss.  Should Wuthering Heights be read in a class about vampires?  I don’t think there is really any straight forward “yes or no” answer.  In some ways, it feels right at home among vampire stories.  It definitely has the gothic qualities that Krishnan references in the following passage from “Why am I so changed?”: Vampiric Selves and Gothic Doubleness in Wuthering Heights:

“. . . the Gothic persistently emphasized the presence of darkness and despair, of ambiguity and uncertainty amidst seemingly definite surroundings.”

Also, if the ‘Byronic hero’ turns out to be a big figure throughout the semester, then that would be another thing that Wuthering Heights has in common with vampire novels.  Heathcliff definitely seems to fit the description of a Byronic hero, however, I’m not sure if that quality is enough to link him to vampire stories.  After all, we have only read one vampire story with a Byronic hero at this point, so it’s hard to tell how prevalent it will be in the genre as a whole.

Beyond that, however, I can’t say that I completely understand the link between Wuthering Heights and vampire novels.  I mean, I see how they are similar, but if the question is ‘do I think it fits in with a class full of vampire novels’, I think my answer would probably have to be ‘no’.  But, to be fair, I don’t consider that to be an informed decision.  I think that it may be a little too early in the semester for me to be able to really appreciate the link between Wuthering Heights and the rest of the material that we’ll be studying (maybe just due to the fact that, at this point, our class has spent more time on stories with no vampires at all than on actual vampire stories).

All things considered, I think that Wuthering Heights is probably a good example of the dark and mysterious tone that early vampire novels had.  However, I would say that the more that vampire stories change, the less Wuthering Heights becomes relevant to the genre as a whole.  It would seem that the genre has undergone many changes over the years—from gothic, to straight-up horror, and now even more towards the realm of romance.  I remember reading another student’s blog that reminded me of this point where the student says that even though Wuthering Heights is referenced in comparison to Twilight, they are actually quite different.

I suppose I’d probably give the book a 7 out of 10.  Not because I didn’t think that it was well-written—the characters were interesting and deep, and the narrative was very emotionally powerful at times, but in the end, the difficult wording and excessively negative subject matter just weren’t my cup of tea.