Literary Devices in Dracula
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
This one is practically a no-brainer – of course blood is important in a vampire book. But what, exactly, do all the references to blood mean? Renfield is the only character to really explain...
Setting
Time and place are super important in Dracula. Why? Basically, the world (or at least the continent of Europe) was seen as a newly-shrunken place in ultra-modern 1897... and London was starting...
Narrator Point of View
Bram Stoker clearly lived by the ethos of "the more the merrier." There are definitely more narrators in this bad boy than in your average novel.The novel is composed of a series of journal entries...
Genre
Dracula is a novel. But what, exactly, is a novel? "Novel" is one of the loosest categories to describe literature out there. A novel is a work of fiction, usually written in prose (not poetry),...
Tone
This is hardly surprising, since the novel is composed of a series of personal letters and journal entries. Supposedly, the writers of the letters and journals didn't intend them for anyone else's...
Writing Style
Dracula is composed as a collection of journal entries, letters, telegrams, and memos. The idea, Stoker tells us in the note at the beginning of the novel, is to present the events of the story "as...
What's Up With the Title?
The name "Dracula" is synonymous with vampires for most people. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone, anywhere, who doesn't immediately know who "Count Dracula" is. (If you do, they're probably a v...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
How these papers have been placed in sequence will be made manifest in the reading of them. All needless matters have been eliminated, so that a history almost at variance with the possibilities of...
What's Up With the Ending?
Some folks complain that the final chapters of Dracula are boring—after all, the "chase" really just involves Van Helsing, Harker, Mina, Arthur, Dr. Seward, and Quincey Morris twiddling their thu...
Tough-o-Meter
Dracula is an action-packed story about vampires and how to kill them without being bitten. Because it's told from multiple points of view through a collection of diary entries, letters, and notes,...
Plot Analysis
Count Dracula is planning to come to England from Transylvania.Jonathan Harker, an English lawyer, travels to Transylvania to help hammer out the logistical details for a wealthy nobleman, Count...
Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis: Overcoming the Monster
Dracula Moves to England from TransylvaniaJonathan Harker gradually realizes that the Transylvanian count he's helping to purchase a house in England is actually a vampire... and intends to...
Three Act Plot Analysis
Dracula arrives in England and starts feeding on Lucy Westenra.Dr. Seward and Van Helsing give her blood transfusions, but she turns into a vampire anyway. They kill her and start laying plans t...
Trivia
Bram Stoker was educated to be a clerk, but his love of the arts (and his intense admiration of Henry Irving, the actor) led him to become the business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London. (Sou...
Steaminess Rating
Just about every story featuring vampires is at least a little steamy, and Dracula is no exception. A lot of the blood-sucking and vampire-killing in Dracula is described in obviously sexual terms....
Allusions
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (7.1) Deuteronomy 12:23: "The blood is the life" (11.54)Lord Byron, Don Juan (15.1)William Shakespeare, King Lear: "That way madness li...