Life Lessons from The Thirstiest Transylvanian in History
Knock knock. Who’s there? … Someone. Someone who? … Someone who needs to be invited in. (㇏(•ᵥᵥ•)ノ)
Blood red lips and pale skin. Dracula almost sounds like a struggling Victoria Secret model. But throughout the book, we never really know how the Count feels. Dracula by Bram Stoker is the only book I’ve read where the story is told from every character’s point of view, except the protagonist himself.
Everyone gets their say, but Drac? Nah.
So, in honor of Bram Stoker’s 175th birthday (yeah yeah yeah, I know I’m late), let’s shine some sunlight on history’s favourite goblin-mode Transylvanian of gore.
Where’s…Who’s…Why is Count Dracula?
The answer to this question can equally be found in the Avengers i.e Thor. Count Drac became what he was because of a proud fighting spirit which became twisted into blood lust. This fighting spirit, he claims, was passed onto his race by none other than Mr. Lightning Bolt.
And what is temporal victory compared to eternal?
Nothing.
Accordingly, Dracula dies to his humanity to birth a corrupted essence— kind of like Voldemort — an immortal but shifting essence which needs life to be poured into it.
Fun fact! Did you know the reason Jews don’t eat strangled meat was because the animal would die with all its blood inside? Blood is considered the seat of the soul’s life. And so, it is forbidden, in a sense, to consume ‘life’.
Okay, back to Drac. How do you liven up an undead corpse hoping to expand his reign? Easy, find a creature with the kind of soul-life closest to yours, and it’s bottoms up mosquito-style!
A Trinity of Unfortunate Events and Life Lessons
Bram Stoker wrote between the lines of Dracula’s unfortunate existence, the same sort of lessons one could draw from Aristotle.
- The duality of humans: Lucy is Dracula’s main prey. He uses a seductive spell to draw her to him. Gradually, his bites transform this personal all-you-can-eat buffet into a vampire. With the help of Van Heisling, her friends and fiance discover this and realise that Lucy must go through two deaths. One for her body and one to free her soul from Dracula’s evil.
Our materialist world of careless empiricism leaves no space to allow for another plane of existence besides this physical one. BUT human experience has always leaned toward the presence of something immaterial or spiritual in man. Perhaps its nature remains a bone of contention, but if there’s something Bram Stoker brings to the forefront of Dracula it’s that there is indeed something beyond matter about man.
Consider this for yourself.
- No one wins alone: Before he became the original walking dead, Dracula was a general of nobility who led the Szekelys to invade Turkey. He, however, abandoned his men to a slaughter because he considered himself too important for victory to die.
Anyway, Dracula’s self-centeredness ultimately played a great part in his death. Having brought Mina (Lucy’s best friend) into a cursed connection with him through the Vampire’s baptism, he withdrew his hold from her in the end to direct his energies toward his personal movements. He could have used her as a weapon against the team (which she was part of) coming to end him.
Well, teamwork makes the dream work because Van Heising and his crew took that sucker — pun intended — down.
- Manliness is really about virtue: Imagine literally living for thousands of years and someone says you have a child-brain? Ouch! Dracula was many things, and according to the other characters, immature was chief of them.
You could miss the reasons behind this opinion of the Count, if you don’t pay attention the way Stoker described Quincey Jones, Jonathan etc. The latter were considered epitomes of manliness because of their virtues.
Then it hit me! Virtue comes from the Latin word vir which means man. Thus, to have virtues was considered by the ancient Romans (who copied the Greeks) as being manly. Morbidly selfish Dracula could never relate.
Well, that’s it! But one last thing:
Do you think creatures like Dracula exist in some world (perhaps not our own)?
There is always some truth in legends. Hopefully, in this case, it's not the giant-bat-blood-sucking-type.
Either way, it’s worth it to be nice to Catholics. If vampires come for us, where else are we gonna get holy water?
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Well, well, well, if it isn’t a pair of eyes that would enjoy reading this next.
