[ SECRET POST #3588 ]

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⌈ Secret Post #3588 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 62 secrets from Secret Submission Post #513.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Book club - DRACULA discussion post!

[diet_poison]

So the book was a bit of a slog at some points especially at the beginning, and probably longer than it needed to be, but still a good read and enthralling at certain points.

Dracula himself was quite a scary fellow but got very little page time, so to speak. I think it was the thought of him that haunted everyone that brought the most fear. I guess I don't really get fear from books, so as a "horror" novel it didn't do much for me (but they never really do), but it made for an interesting situation.

I think I was most interested in how Dracula set some of the "rules" for vampires in literature and some of the now-seen-as-colloquial vampirisms (driving a wooden stake through the heart, aversion to garlic, etc.) might have been more novel then - and more grisly, especially the stake, and the blood-sucking. The shock factor would have done a lot more then than it does now, when vampires and their many variations are a common aspect of horror and fantasy, and people grow up knowing some of the lore. What was interesting to me at the end was apparently the wooden stake thing was not a hard and fast rule, since Quincey killed the Dracula himself with a Bowie knife, lol. That was really not what I expected. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was sunset? And the simultaneous head-chopping on Jonathan's part?

I thought the most horrifying part of the story was probably meant to be Lucy's slow demise, and it was pretty bad, but to me the scariest part was when Jonathan was trapped in Dracula's castle. I wish we'd seen specifically how he escaped though - he talked about climbing down the walls and then next we see him he's already in the convent recovering with Sister Agatha (I think that was her name). I guess the climbing must have been successful?

Mina was probably my favorite character, in large part because she was clearly really, really smart and the men recognized and respected it and she was able to actively contribute to their mission in that way rather than just sitting around as The Damsel In Distress (obviously she played that role too, but not only that role). At first she was mostly just a secretary, but she wound up contributing some of the planning and puzzle-solving to the mission and that was cool. Of course it makes me roll my eyes that they constantly recognized her intelligence as saying she has "a man's brain" because of course it can't be normal for women to be smart, but that - and all the other ridiculous gender essentialism, mostly spouted by Van Helsing - was, I am sure, largely a product of its time. (The book was in many ways extremely Victorian, almost stiflingly so...)

The ending was tense and for a while I would have been sure Mina would die if the table of contents had not indicated the last chapter was one of her journal entries. I'm so glad she and Jonathan both lived because I shipped them hard by the end of the book and can only imagine what kind of bond they must have had after going through all that hell together.

Van Helsing was really cool at first, and while I still liked him as a character towards the end, I got really annoyed with his monologuing lol. I liked that he spoke in a way (even if it wasn't completely consistent) that made it clear that he wasn't a native English speaker - that was a well-done detail - but the fact that he just went on for so long got boring to read, and it was dumb too that he droned on and on when they were supposedly pressed for time.

I enjoyed the details of the castle, Jonathan's rooms, and the descriptions of the insides of the old houses Dracula inhabited in London.

It's too bad that Quincey was a throwaway character. I liked the juxtaposition of the American cowboy with the culture of Victorian England, and would have liked that to be explored more. I'm not in the least surprised he was the one to die the heroic death, but he was paid less attention than any of the other main characters throughout the book; I think it would have been better set up - especially since his death marked the final sentence (except the one-page epilogue) - had his character been more developed.

Perhaps the most interesting character was Renfield. I'm still not sure I understand the significance of everything he did or said, but some of it was possibly just to demonstrate to the reader that he was truly mad. His death was a sad one, especially since if he'd been released it would have been avoided, and he truly had Mina's (and the others') best wishes at heart. It's interesting that the moment of spiritual lucidity that allowed him to try to warn Seward and the others of the threat that existed to Mina, when he begged to be released, coincided with a moment of mental lucidity at the same time. I also predicted that his vague warning had to do with danger to Mina, and was correct. (that scene was pretty freaky, and well-written.) Also, I wondered at first why Renfield didn't just tell Seward the nature of the danger, but then I realized he had no idea that the others knew about the Count's identity, and he must have realized, in his lucidity, that telling the truth would have just made him seem more mad and been written off as a product of his madness (sort of like why Van Helsing didn't tell the others the truth until they could see it with their own eyes with Lucy, except he at least had some credibility as a professor; Renfield was a lunatic and anything from his mouth would have been met not just with skepticism but with a certainty that it was only a madman's ravings and thus must be false).

I'll leave it at that for now - I want to hear some of your thoughts! Some questions to get you going: was the book scary to you, and why or why not? What vampire tropes do you like in the book, and which ones do you like to see persisted in other vampire novels? What do you think of the individual characters and their relationships? What about Stoker's writing style? Any other thoughts, interesting things you noticed, etc.?

Comment away and I'll check back soon!