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Discuss Dracula part 4.

Chapter 16 is my favorite! This is the classic vampire scene I've been waiting for. I read this book nearly ten years ago, so it wasn't very fresh in my mind, but this is sort of The Moment. The terror here is brilliant, enough so that it even overcomes the 'clunky' prose I complained of earlier.

"...and the lovely blood-stained mouth grew to an open square as in the passion masks of the Greeks and Japanese."

I love that. Horrifying. I can see it so clearly!

I wish there was more Dracula. It being the title of the book, I expected him to be present a lot more. My favorite chapters so far were the first four: I found them eerie, exciting, and scary. Since then I've been pretty bored. Dracula was so interesting; I wish we saw more of him first-hand instead of hearing of his effects on people second-hand.

I was trying to figure out why I was so bored and I think there are two reasons: (1) Since everything is written down after the fact, the immediacy (and therefore suspense) is much decreased. We know whoever's writing made it through okay, and Stoker usually has them start the diary/letter with a brief summary (I am so sad, I was so frightened, I am now so relieved), so we already know what to expect and the curiosity is gone. Still the first four chapters were interesting even though this was the structure, which leads me to:
Reason (2) Bland Characters. Dracula and the asylum patient are the most three-dimensional and interesting, and they appear the least. Everyone else is very prim and proper and perfect, which is very boring to read. I prefer my characters more like real people: flawed and complicated. They can still be virtuous and have some flaws.

I also feel if a group of people encountered a plague of vampires, they would not react so politely. Where is the chaos that comes with great fear? Everyone seems to have quite a level head for such scary circumstances.

"The world seems full of good men - even if there ARE monsters in it." Mina Harker's diary, Sep 29.

Somehow that really struck me. It's very hopeful. Even though she's talking about monsters in the classical demonic sense, the idea that there are good men in the world, even in the midst of terrors and chaos we face, is very hopeful and encouraging. I know that's something pretty random to draw from this book but it struck me today somehow.

I've really been enjoying it. I agree, a lot of the characters are rather flat and the most interesting part was when we didn't know what had happened to Jonathan Harker and Mina kept talking about how concerned she was. The suspense built up that we did not know in what state we would find him again, whether a victim of Dracula or a corpse at the bottom of the wall of the castle, dead but with his soul intact. I, knowing very little of the lore of vampires, have very much enjoyed all the sections about the garlic and the stake and how the evil develops, etc. While it's comical today because we're so saturated in it, it's fascinating to see where some of that came from.