Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 4994027" data-attributes="member: 2205">I'm familiar with the text; I've read Dracula three or four times.  I think the takeaway I get from it is that Dracula does not look like any old eastern European aristocrat.  There's always weird quirks about him; a pervading and ubiquitous sense of wrongness, that Harker is always trying to discount and blow off, because he's a skeptic.  But, keep in mind that Harker is a skeptic, and the narration (of the first half of the book, anyway) is in his words.  You do have to read between the lines a little bit.Certainly his first description of the count includes a number of really bizarre physical features that might not necessarily be monstrous, but they were certainly unnerving, and became moreso as the narrative progressed.Dracula's not overtly monstrous, he's subtley twisted, wrong and hideous.EDIT: In fact, that's part of Stoker's literary toolkit, to have Harker be a skeptic who discounts the strangeness of Dracula himself.  It's obvious to the reader that something about Dracula is immediately wrong, and every single time he's on "screen" that impression is strengthened.  But by having it be obvious to the reader, but not the narrative voice, Harker in other words, he increases the tension.  It's the same principle as in a modern slasher flick when the kids decide to go searching through the old house shouting someone else's name, and the camera flashes to Michael Myers hiding in the shadowy corner or whatever.  The fact that audience can sense the obvious threat but that the character can't is what creates the tension.To me, Dracula was always obviously terrifying, hideous and twisted, and it's clear that he's meant to be.  Harker clearly didn't think so, or he minimized the extent to which he thought so in his letters and diary.  But that's not to suggest that taking a few of Harker's descriptions out of context are a slam-dunk case for Dracula not being monstrous.  I think it's pretty obvious that he's meant to be.</blockquote>

Verification