ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
British Literature Videos 176 videos
Meet Charles Darnay, the nobleman who spends more time on trial and in prison than attending balls and drinking expensive wine. Don't feel too bad...
Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...
Dracula: Father of the Modern Vampire 17556 Views
Share It!
Description:
There are plenty of famous vampires that send chills up our spines, but Dracula was and still is the king of them all. No one else can touch him. Not Count Orlok, not Lestat... not even the Count from Sesame Street . Even if some of us find numbers pretty terrifying.
Transcript
- 00:01
Dracula, a la Shmoop. Dracula…the originator of the vampire myth
- 00:14
in literature.
- 00:15
This guy didn’t sit around brooding in a black trench coat or sparkling in the sun.
- 00:22
Dracula is not a guy you’d play basketball with…
- 00:24
…or invite to prom, and not just because he’s a few hundred years old and the age
Full Transcript
- 00:29
difference would be creepy.
- 00:35
He lurks in the shadows, kills people and drinks their blood.
- 00:41
But is he a total Big Bad, or can we scrounge up a little bit of sympathy for the batty
- 00:46
old coot? For one thing, we don't actually know much
- 00:51
about the guy.
- 00:53
He’s usually up in his castle, hanging out with his vampire brides.
- 00:57
He’s not exactly one for socialization, and we don’t get a huge long back story,
- 01:04
either.
- 01:05
It's a little hard to sympathize with a guy you don't know, and the mystery around him
- 01:10
makes him seem like nothing but a villain.
- 01:12
Plus, a vampire polygamist living in a creepy castle doesn’t exactly scream… good guy.
- 01:19
And yet, he does tell us… I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past.
- 01:27
Aww, how sweet.
- 01:29
But what past? It's possible that Dracula has loved and lost in his past… and that's
- 01:42
why he's so damaged and deranged in the present.
- 01:45
Unfortunately, we have to use our imagination to cook up whatever tragic past Dracula might
- 01:45
have experienced.
- 01:45
Hmm, perhaps a tragic love affair with one… or all… of his vampire wives.
- 01:50
Stoker isn’t giving us any more details. No matter what happened to the Count, when
- 01:55
we think of him this way, we can almost sorta kinda relate to him.
- 02:00
At least, to the loving and losing part.
- 02:03
Not so much the bloodsucking and fond attachment to Middle Age torture devices.
- 02:07
Maybe the fact that there's so much mystery surrounding his story actually could evoke
- 02:12
sympathy.
- 02:12
Or at least curiosity.
- 02:13
After all, how can we judge someone we don't really know?
- 02:16
We wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, so why should we judge a bat by its… fangs?
- 02:20
Without a thorough back story, we can hardly get to know him.
- 02:22
But he does speak of love and loss, which might almost make you shed a tear.
- 02:23
So is Dracula 100 percent bad?
- 02:25
Or is it okay to feel a little sorry for the bloodsucker?
- 02:30
Shmoop amongst yourselves.
Related Videos
They say that honesty is the best policy, but Jack lies about his identity and still gets the girl. Does that mean we should all lie to get what we...
Ever wish you could remember everything that you ever studied? How about everything that everyone has ever studied? Yeah, pretty sure our brains ju...
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is an American classic. Hope you're not expecting any exciting shower scenes though. It's not that kind of book.
Do not go gentle into that good night. In fact, if it's past your curfew, don't go at all into that good night. You just stay in your good bed and...
