In 1897, Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, the story of a monstrous Transylvanian count who terrorized local villages and fed on the peasants who lived in them. The book is today widely recognized as a historically significant literary work, and its importance has caused many scholars to debate whether Bram Stoker’s main character Dracula was actually inspired by real historical figures. Although all evidence used in the debate is somewhat unreliable, it can be established that Bram Stoker based his character Count Dracula on historical figures to a certain extent. Many scholars believe that Vlad the 3rd or Vlad the Impaler was the direct inspiration for Count Dracula. Vlad the 3rd was the son of King Vlad the 2nd Dracul and as Prince, was the heir …show more content…
These strategies ranged from sending his own soldiers who were infected with the bubonic plague into enemy camps, to impaling all of the captured enemy soldiers around his castle as a threat to the next wave of enemy soldiers. So while Count Dracula is not characterized by Stoker as being a good military leader, being extremely violent and creating fear in all around him is very consistent between Vlad the 3rd and Count Dracula. But perhaps the single item that makes the best case for Vlad the 3rd being the inspiration for Stoker’s character Count Dracula is the fact that when Vlad the 3rd was 11 years old his, he and his younger brother were kidnapped by the Ottoman Empire who then attempted to force them to convert their beliefs. Vlad III refused to convert while his younger Radu converted, making him a traitor. This was mentioned in Dracula on page 30 when Count Dracula begins to talk about his family’s bloodline. “This was a Dracula indeed. Who was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them!” (Stoker …show more content…
Interestingly enough, after people discovered these murders she had committed, she was never put on trial, instead she was locked away in her castle till the day she died, which was on August 21, 1614. Like Dracula, Elizabeth was well educated and she was taught to read and write in several different languages, including the language of the peasants. Like Count Dracula, Elizabeth Bathory’s status as a noble person gave her almost complete control over the peasants who lived in the villages she controlled. Elizabeth Bathory was able to bring young girls into her castle by offering food and money ("Elizabeth Bathory" 0:6:17-0:7:00), but when these girls never returned home it wasn’t noticed or cared about by the King because the massive debt the King owed to her and her family ("Elizabeth Bathory"
In the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker, there is much evidence of foreshadowing and parallels to other myths. Dracula was not the first story featuring a vampire myth, nor was it the last. Some would even argue that it was not the best. However, it was the most original, using foreshadowing and mood to create horrific imagery, mythical parallels to draw upon a source of superstition, and original narrative elements that make this story unique.
While Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Polidori’s The Vampyre share some minor details, mostly regarding the basics of vampires and the location and date in which the stories take place, the majority of the stories differ greatly. The Vampyre was published almost a hundred years earlier, so it is easy to see how some details of that story can be seen in Dracula. Bram Stoker no doubt must have used The Vampyre as an influence, but only as an influence, as his story has its own unique details regarding characters and plot. I will discuss how the stories of The Vampyre and Dracula begin in a similar fashion, and then explain how there are key differences in narration,
Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a. Vlad III, Dracula, Drakulya, or Tepes, was born in late 1431, in the citadel of Sighisoara, Transylvania, the son of Vlad II or Dracul, a military governor, appointed by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund. Vlad Dracul was also a knight in the Order of the Dragon, a secret fraternity created in 1387 by the Emperor, sworn to uphold Christianity and defend the empire against the Islamic Turks. Transylvania, along with Moldavia, and Wallachia, are now joined together as Romania. The name Dracul can be interpreted in two ways, the first translation from Romanian would be "Dragon", but it sometimes also means "Devil". Vlad was not called Tepes, which means ""spike" in Romanian, until after
The first writer to introduce the vampire in literature was Lord Byron in the eighteenth century, but the most significant writer to develop the myth was Bram Stoker. He is the „father” of the vampire as he gave a complete description of the vampire in his most famous book” Dracula”. After the release of the book, the myth of the vampire became extremely popular amongst writers and as a consequence the books whose main
Desire and fear some of the most prominent emotions exhibited in Dracula. Bram Stoker, Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, Dracula, Tod Browning, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Francis Ford Coppola. “Human characters are caught up in the struggle between these emotions when it comes to vampires; this opposition drives forward the different plots… vampire attributes such as physical attraction, sexuality, power and thoughtless violence are common threads throughout the studied works. Characters in these stories fear the powerful abilities of vampires, yet show an unmistakable pull towards them. The vampires in all of these works incorporate physical attraction, sensuality, and awesome power. They often use this superhuman strength
The novel, Dracula, was written by Bram Stoker in the late eighteen hundreds. The setting of Dracula is during the end of the nineteenth century, in England and Eastern Europe. The entirety of the novel is based on a vampire with heinous intentions that he casts upon a group of English citizens whom decide to rid the town of his evil. While reading the novel it is apparent that the genre is horror and gothic and that the tone is very dark and dramatic. Bram Stoker does this in a very intentional way. Therefore, discovering the ways Stoker implements Dracula into the criteria of the gothic fiction genre is simple.
When his name is uttered, people who know it quake with fear of his evil. He has the strength of twenty men and likes to use it on unsuspecting victims. He makes diabolical plans and wants to slowly devour the population of London. He kidnaped people, kills and turns some into vampires. In the novel, he fed a baby to three hungry women as the mother of the child was looking for it. Because of this, Count Dracula has become one of the most influential examples of evil in literature. From the show Vampire Diaries, you can compare Damon to Dracula because of how sadistic he is and how he manipulates people into doing what he tells you to do. He compels people to follow him like a slave. But the closest comparison to Dracula would be from The Originals Niklaus who always wants to be king and the ruler. Like Dracula, Klaus is the strongest of his kind and the first. He does everything in his power to control things and like to make people suffer for his own sake. But Klaus is also loyal to his family. He and Dracula both manipulate others by getting into their head and even turning them into vampires so they can rule. The only difference is that Klaus cannot be killed or doesn’t get killed because he is that strong unlike how Dracula was killed at the end. Dracula is devoid of empathy for the people that suffer at his hand in the novel. For example, when he is holding Jonathan Harker prisoner, he doesn’t take a
To start off, the manner Arnold Friend and Dracula 's facial and physiological traits are described allow us to compare how monstrous they really are. The Count is said to be a tall thin old man with a shaved face, except for his heavy mustache. His face is a strong aquiline with a high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils. Stoker notes that his ears are pale and pointed, his chin is broad and strong and his cheeks firm and thin. There is an insistence on Dracula 's mouth that is fixed and cruel-looking with sharp white teeth that protruded over his vital-looking lips. His eyebrows are massive, almost meeting over his nose and he has bushy hair that grows around his temples and his lofty domed forehead. Another element that is focused on in Stoker 's novel is the vampire 's extreme pallor. This description is not particularly frightening since we immediately know the character is a monster : he does not look human at all and is not hiding it. There is no place for
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a story of horror, suspense, and repulsion. The main antagonist, Count Dracula, is depicted as an evil, repulsive creature that ends and perverts life to keep himself alive and youthful. To most onlookers that may be the case, but most people fail to see one crucial element to this character. Dracula is a character that, though it may be long gone, was once human, and thus has many human emotions and motives still within him. Let us delve into these emotions of a historically based monster.
Vlad Dracula was born in the winter of 1431 in Sighisoura,Transylvania. Vlad’s father who is Vlad II came from a family of princes from the state of Wallacia. In the same year Vlad III was born, his father traveled to Nuremberg, Germany and became a member of the Order of the Dragon. The Order of the Dragon was select group of European royalty appointed by the head of the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Sigismund ,who held power over most of Western Europe. These men were dedicated to crusading against the Ottoman Turks, whose faith was Islam, and defending the Empire in the name of the Cross . Sigismund made Vlad II head of the Order and promised that he would be Prince of Wallacia when he returned . After this day, Vlad II became known as
Comparing the 1931 version of Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi, with Frances Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula 1993 version yields some similarities. Both films are of the same genre: Horror. Both films are set around the same time period. Also, both deal with a vampire coming to England and causing disruptions in people's lives. Beyond these few similarities are
Blood sucking, shapeshifting, killer… These are just some of the myths attached to Count Dracula. Dracula is a vampire, and as we all know, vampires consume blood. In the novel, the author Bram Stoker never mentions how Dracula became a vampire (every other vampire was created off of Dracula), however Van Helsing thinks that he made a deal with the Devil and traded his mortality for that of a cursed soul in return for something else. A lot of myths are attached to Dracula, which is
Vlad Dracul II or better known as Vlad the Impaler was born in Sigisohara on November 4th 1431. He was the son of prince Vlad and grew up as a troublesome child who had a lust for blood. Vlad seized his father's throne in 1448 and permanently in 1456. In 1459 Vlad lived in the city of Brasov where he had over 30,000 Impaled, then in 1460 he moved onto the city of Sibiu and had over 10,000 impaled. In 1462 Vlad was deposed by the ottoman Sultan Mahammad II. Vlad Dracula was betrayed by his ally the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinos. He was imprisoned in Hungary for 12 years where he adopted the Catholic Religion even though he was Romanian. In 1476 Vlad Dracula regained the throne, but Vlad Dracula was killed by the Ottoman ally Laiota Basarab. Now I'm going to go through them separately to give you a grasp of just how hateful and nasty the citizens of Transylvania portrayed and depicted him as.
“Many of Dracula’s characteristics come to mind immediately on hearing the word ‘vampire’. Stoker made the vampire an active part of modern society” (Cordes 10-11.) This quote is that of the article by Rebecca Cordes titled The Vampire-Myth Established—Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”, this quote comes to the conclusion that: all vampires are cliche, for the most part, although there are slight variations occasionally concerning the nocturnal monsters, they all have a majority of the same characteristics and traits as the rest do. In Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, the iconic vampire was born with characteristics of this creature still evident across many forms of contemporary film and literature
Interestingly enough, after people discovered these murders she had committed, she was never put on trial, instead she was locked away in her castle till the day she died, which was on August 21, 1614. Like Dracula, Elizabeth was well educated and she was taught to read and write in several different languages, including the language of the peasants. Like Count Dracula, Elizabeth Bathory’s status as a noble person gave her almost complete control over the peasants who lived in the villages she controlled. Elizabeth Bathory was able to bring young girls into her castle by offering food and money ("Elizabeth Bathory" 0:6:17-0:7:00), but when these girls never returned home it wasn’t noticed or cared about by the King because the massive debt the King owed to her and her family("Elizabeth Bathory"