Dracula is essentially an old vampire that attacked people for blood. I haven’t encountered Dracula in the reading form at all before this course. I have seen a really old movie of Dracula however where he turns into a bat and takes in pretty women in order to taste their blood. Who doesn’t know about Dracula though? He’s in very modern forms of media and if people don’t know exactly who he is they know similar kinds of vampires like Dracula such as vampire diaries, count chocula, and true blood. The media today has sexualized vampires and their no longer scary creatures of the night, but beings that walk among us whom we could fall in love with.
The story starts off with Jonathon Harker. He overly criticizes every piece of information that he come in contact with from the spices that people use in food to the way that Dracula appears physically. Every sign is telling Jonathon Harker to turn the opposite way and run, but instead he waits until the last possible second. Even the townspeople are scared for him and tell him not to leave. Jonathons encounter with Dracula seems like a set up since his friend knew Dracula and purposefully sent him to Dracula.
I was expecting a lot more violence and blood sucking. The closest thing that I got to something horrible happening as a reader was Dracula scaling down a wall and threatening Johnathon. What perplexes me is why Dracula would allow Jonathon to leave. It was easy prey.
I find the journal entries were interesting. The detail in which he describes people made him seem idiodic. In situations where I’m not sure what’s going on and I feel uneasy, I find it best to follow my gut instinct. However, I feel that Johnathon ignoring signs makes the reader more engaged because I just want to shake him and tell him wtf and point him in the right direction. But, we are reading a book of horror so I guess there has to be a little bit of ignorance.
This is my first time reading the book and the way Dracula is described is completely different from what I always imagined. I guess that does go back to how sexualized vampires are today. Most shows or movies involving them have been turned into a love story. I enjoyed the journal entries because it gives different points of view on similar events; however, they were very hard to follow because they were out of order from each other and the book skips to different characters. It is hard for me to remember what happened to each character on what day. Jonathan's character does irritate me but that is only because of the irony and the fact he is so blind to all the signs, but like we said in class, without a clueless character the story would be four pages long.
ReplyDeleteI too have never read Dracula before this class. But I agree, I also was expecting a lot more violence and blood sucking. I think that was because of the way vampires are portrayed now. I like the way they are portrayed, I like the violence that comes with the blood sucking. The journal entries were interesting, It kept me engaged. I think it helps me with understanding what's going on
ReplyDelete