In Brom Stoker's gothic horror novel Dracula, vampires are not pretty and nice. Count Dracula has proven to me that vampires are indeed evil, bloodsucking creatures. Coming from being a Twilight fan, I'm not sure if I can ever truly love vampires again. With comparing the two, I have come to this conclusion: vampires suck.
In Twilight, we all know that the vampires don't sleep. Dracula, however, is asleep all day long in a box of dirt, and from sunset to sunrise is scheming his evil plan to take over London, and maybe even further. The Cullen vampires cannot change into bats, whereas the Count can turn into a bat or a wolf, and controls packs of wolves with only the wave of his hand (pg. 62). The Count can only change form at sunrise or sunset, and can control many variables in the weather as well. A likeness between the two vampire types is that they can both manipulate their victims. How they come about it, however, is the difference. Whereas the Cullen's are very attractive and have lovely faces, Dracula is described in a way that makes him seem unattractive (pg.27-28), though each of his vampire brides is described as being extremely beautiful (pg.49-50). The vampires in Twilight lure in their victims with their faces and can manipulate them with just that much, whereas Dracula manipulates the mind of his victim while his victim is sleeping. All of the items that Edward says do not affect the Cullens, such as garlic, crosses, wafers, etcetera can be used to repel Dracula. Mina Harker, who was one of Dracula's victims and came close to becoming a vampire, was affected by a Sacred Wafer being placed on her forehead (pg. 335). Van Helsing placed the wafer on her forehead to ask God to protect her, but instead the wafer burned a mark into her forehead. One last difference is that Dracula, being the first vampire, has no rules and gives no rules to those he changes into vampires. The Cullens, however, are not the first of their kind and must listen to the rules of the Volturi, which sets them apart from Dracula.
Dracula is about how a group of people with different experiences come together with their own individual talent to put into the mess of getting rid of the Count. It starts with Jonathan Harker going to Dracula's castle to talk to him about buying a property in London. Through Jonathan's experience with the vampire, we come back to London where his fiance, Mina, is going to be staying with her friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy begins to sleepwalk, which we later find out is caused by Dracula calling her to come to him. Eventually, Lucy becomes extremely ill and her own fince, Lord Godalming, asks his friend Dr. Seward to come to help her. Dr. Seward eventually calls Professor Van Helsing to come to see about Lucy, and Van Helsing discovers what is happening to her, and that it is Dracula drinking from her and turning her into a vampire. When Lucy dies and becomes a vampire, Van Helsing brings Lord Godalming, Dr. Seward, and Mr. Morris to help put Lucy back into a peaceful rest. It is then when the men decide that they will do whatever it takes to kill Count Dracula and rid the world of his bad nature, which they end up succeeding in doing.
Interestingly enough, Dracula still has an impact on modern day culture. For example, Dracula uses the name Mr. de Ville (pg. 394) multiple times, including when he asked Immanuel Hildesheim to pick up his box of dirt that he sleeps in, which caused the name de Ville to be associated with evil and devilish things. The last name de Ville is used many times for villians and demon-creatures, one of the most well-known movie characters being Cruella de Ville in the Disney movie 101 Dalmations. Another impact the book has made is the way that vampires were looked at. Before the horrible Dracula was created, vampires were much simpler. Pre-Dracula vampires were more like zombies with bloodlust, who didn't even need blood to survive. Pre-Dracula vampires also had their strange quirks such as it was thought that if you scattered seeds when one was chasing you, they had to stop and pick them up before they could continue pursuit and that they actually looked like decaying bodies. You don't normally hear about these vampires, however they are used in the book 'My Swordhand Is Singing' by Marcus Sedgewick. Many traditions started because of vampires, such as the holiday St. Andrews Eve, when the people in Transylvania board up their windows and doors and paint their doors black because of superstition. Many of the people in Transylvania firmly beleive in vampires and they throw all kinds of festivals for them.
The book Dracula was very entertaining and gave me a new way to look at vampires.
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