Dracula as the Persecuted Outsider in Bram Stokers Dracula Essay

genus Dracula as the Persecuted Outsider in Bram Stokers DraculaBram Stokers Dracula is highly acclaimed and has received umteen different interpretations which deal with complex symbolisms and metaphors. These interpretations often require a considerable deal of knowledge in psychology, political science, anthropology, and other non-literary disciplines. These interpretations may be valid, as they argon related to the disciplines on which their arguments ar based, but the aline power of the novel is due to a very simple depicted object that lies beneath the other, more convoluted interpretations. This theme is the universal concept of identity operator us versus them. This criticism sets aside outside disciplines and focuses on the literary motif of identity. John Allen Stevenson gives an in-depth criticism of this lay down based mostly on anthropological ideas, but he states that Dracula is a representation of fears that are more universal than a specific focus on the Vict orian mount would allow (141). He brings up the concept of universal ideas but fails to fall out them on a universal scale. The truly universal theme involves the experience that Dracula is a dickens. But Dracula is non a monster - he is simply a persecuted outsider. In this interpretation, it is important to seperate the actions of the characters from what those actions represent in relation to the theme of identity. Count Dracula is shown to be a vampire - a monster who engages in horrific, violent acts, but these acts of violence are merely Stokers vehicle for presenting the difference between the Count and the other characters. His vampirish actions are not to be taken literally. Dracula is not a work of fantasy - it is primarily a realistic novel with one savage charact... ...safe once Dracula left, but the pursuit and slaying of him represents partnerships wish to learn him entirely from their minds. The killing of Dracula is not literal--he is only dead to society be cause they refuse to acknowledge his right to be different. Thus, Dracula is the victim of this story, not the ones society felt he victimized. Works Cited Arata, Stephen D. The Occidental Tourist Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization. Victorian Studies 33.4 (Sum. 1990) 621-45. Stevenson, John Allen. A Vampire in the Mirror The Sexuality of Dracula. PMLA 103 (1988) 139-49. Stoker, Bram. Dracula. 1897. Oxford Oxford UP, 1992. Wasson, Richard. The Politics of Dracula. English literary works in passage 9 (1966) 24-27. Zanger, Jules. A Sympathetic Vibration Dracula and the Jews. English Literature in Transition 34 (1991) 33-44.