Ext 1 English Text-Dracula by Bram Stoker. Thoughts? (1 Viewer)

[ciaobella17]

We're doing Gothic/Horror for our Ext. 1 English course this year. Our first novel is Dracula by Bram Stoker, thought it might be good to get a discussion happening on it. I'm not very far into it yet, but I'm struggling to get into it. Has anyone read/studied it and want to give me some ideas?

 

[davidbarnes]

I read most of it for English. It is a hard book to get into.

 

[x_cp3]

Blood sucking vampires. Gotta admit. It is quite a thick book.

 

[Deep Blue]

I thought it was great. I read it at the end of last year and we are also studying it this term for ext eng. When you are reading it, take particular notice of how the text reflects the culture and values of the context.

 

[b33g_boss]

i only read like 50 pages of it before i had to return it to library, quite interesting though, but i think it will take time to analyze the novel and retract recurring themes.

 

[mirakon]

Themes include sexuality (possibly homosexuality, predatory behaviour), immigration (there was a view that foreigners were 'invading' the country, Dracula and his vampires are secretly coming in coffins and 'pervading' society with their influence and culture), female liberation (Lucy gets turned into a vampire is sexually liberated, consequences of sexual liberation and Mina is often compared to a 'man', headstrong woman at risk of vampirism), spirituality being usurped by technology (the power of the supernatural, religion being the only thing that can stop the vampires not fancy technology).

Sorry, haven't read it in a while, so can't remember the rest, but i can recall the above themes.

 

[ciaobella17]

Themes include sexuality (possibly homosexuality, predatory behaviour), immigration (there was a view that foreigners were 'invading' the country, Dracula and his vampires are secretly coming in coffins and 'pervading' society with their influence and culture), female liberation (Lucy gets turned into a vampire is sexually liberated, consequences of sexual liberation and Mina is often compared to a 'man', headstrong woman at risk of vampirism), spirituality being usurped by technology (the power of the supernatural, religion being the only thing that can stop the vampires not fancy technology).

Sorry, haven't read it in a while, so can't remember the rest, but i can recall the above themes.

I think you've done pretty well. Thank you haha

 

[AAEldar]

I don't do Extension, but we had to read it for Advanced. It was very hard to get into but by the time I'd finished I thought it was pretty decent, and I was glad that I did read it. There are a lot of themes as mentioned above, with foreigners/immigration being a pretty big one (imo).

Make sure you read the whole thing and don't give up though.

 

[S_A_M_U_t]

Well to be honest, I never finished that book last year.... I KNOW! But we had a really krap teacher (she knew her stuff, yet didn't know how to teach it) so it didn't really matter. Well from what I remember for reading it was that Dracula not only represented the conservative values and religious beliefs of late nineteenth century Britain, but the subtlety and profound description of each character in which Stoker had used. The various techniques of perspectives and diary entries, themes of denomic creatures and virtues, and the structure of the societal mores and ethics all represented both historic and social views of the time in which the text was developed in. Our class then compared and contrasted that to contemporary society and how our values all correspond to greed, power, rebillious authority. We even studied texts such as Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and analysed how their values and social structures opposed those of Dracula. Dracula defiently defeats both Twilight and Buffy mainly becuase Dracula gives real depth of character, whlist Twilight reads the word "vampire, Vampire, VAMPIRE!". Also the feministic role within both texts and how they differ over time was acknowledged. So those are just some techniques in which used to study Dracula. Hope this helps, confused me a little bit.... lol.