How Does Bram Stoker Use Gothic Elements

Gothic can be defined as “literature dealing with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in the reader.” (Pickering, 2004, p. 1425) Gothic literature generally presents the same themes and motifs: love lost, hidden secrets, love and death hand in hand, beauty, youth, grotesque characters, macabre eroticism, etc. Gothic literature also explores taboo subjects such as murder, suicide and incest. “A Rose for Emily”, by William Faulkner, is representative of the Southern Gothic stories since the themes of love lost, death, and murder are present in it. There are many elements that hint at the Gothic nature of the story: Emily’s description, her house, the poison she bought, and finally the ending.

Gothic writers are well known for their works that induce grotesque and demented images to enter a reader’s brain. However, blood and gore is not the only way that Gothic writers can make your skin crawl, and the hair on the back of your neck rise. Gothic literary works contain themes of supernatural occurrences, and entrapment to induce feelings of fear, and mystery into the reader.

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.” Poe believed that a story had to have the reality of horror with in. All of his stories had gothic horror in them. Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories, “The Black Cat” and “The Masque of the Red Death” are good examples of gothic literature because they involve paranormal activity, insane characters, and terrifying deaths.

Gothic literature uses wide ranging themes and gothic elements to convey its story. Gothic literature short stories can range from romance to horror to supernatural occurrences. Horacio Quiroga’s “The Feather Pillow,” Richard Matheson’s “Prey,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” all incorporate the following gothic elements: violence, revenge, hallucinations, nightmares, and psychological issues.

Bram Stoker’s use of characterization and imagery to convey one of his many themes in the book Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the author uses characterization and imagery to convey the theme, Follow your instincts.

The novel Dracula is a very popular book that was written in the form of Gothic Literature. This novel was written by Bram Stoker in the Victorian Age. A large portion of this piece of writing deals with many famous Gothic motifs. Gothic Literature combines the usual Gothic horror with fiction and Romanticism (Wikipedia). A motif is a distinctive symbol or dominant idea used in literature. So therefore, a Gothic motif is a literary symbol that usually combines fiction with either horror or romance. Bram Stoker’s usage of Gothic motifs not only helps define Dracula as a piece of Gothic Literature, but also helps the reader become better acquainted with what is happening in the novel. Gothic motifs are found in many different forms in pieces of work, and if readers are already accustomed to these motifs, it makes reading Dracula clearer and easier. Stoker uses many different Gothic motifs throughout this novel, but there are only a few that are the more important and stand out from the rest. These motifs are: castles and strange places, power and constraint, and revenants.

Gothic literature has been criticized as being a dreary, dark, and death-involving subset of Romanticism (a literary movement accentuating human individuality, imagination, and subjectivity). In addition, gothic lit incorporates several themes- not all about deathly acts - but includes some emotional and surprising themes such as dreams, nightmares, or hallucinations, and grotesque or bizarre occurrences. Two short stories, both written by Edgar Allan Poe, entitled “The Raven,” and “The Black Cat,” as well as the novel The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, all encompass these gothic elements, found throughout each story.

The novel Dracula had, and still has an immense effect on horror through its use of literary elements which are observable in horror movies. Bram Stoker's Dracula was revolutionary in its use of literary devices such as dramatic irony, to convey suspense, and the use of sexuality in literature. These devices were adapted to film in early horror movies and continue to appear till today. Dracula was very influential to the film industry when it comes to horror movies because horror movies draw a lot of devices used in Dracula and use them in their movies, this can be seen in movies such as Halloween, Friday the 13th, and the movie adaptation of Dracula.

The gothic elements presented in the novel constitute the idea that the novel could be about vampires. The embedded idea of the supernatural in her novel aids her in displaying her message regarding how love never stops. The vampire motif begins when Catherine becomes ill. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor (Foster) it is evident that diseases and sicknesses are an efficacious literary tool in a novel. According to Foster, one of the factors that constitute a “prime literary disease” is that it should be picturesque. For if someone had tuberculosis for example, “the skin becomes almost translucent, they eye sockets dark, so that the sufferer take on the appearance of a martyr in medieval paintings” (Foster 216). This bizarre beauty-

Throughout the novel Dracula, the text prominently features the ‘uncanny.’ In literature and other texts, the uncanny refers to an unfamiliarity that is frightening familiar. It’s presence in Dracula is obvious as we and the novel characters see Dracula as uncanny. Both appropriations of Dracula, Nosferatu (1922) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), reflect their context and hence reflect the values, idea and themes prominent in their context. Nosferatu resembles its isolated German Expressionist Cinema context through its jewish propaganda portrayed by many techniques, most notably its heavy use of dramatic lighting. Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s contrasting themes include its romanticisation of Dracula which expresses the romantic notions prominent

Gothic literature is dominated by gothic horror, for instance dark and mysterious objects or events. It is a type of literature that combines fiction, horror, and romanticism. As Bram Stoker wrote his famous novel, Dracula he makes sure to include many different characteristics of gothic literature. Three important motifs that are stated in Dracula which also fit into the gothic literature category would be; blood, dreaming or nightmares, and superstition. This particular novel has many gothic motifs, but these are three that I believe really stand out.

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a true Gothic novel that belongs on any gothic literature course. Focusing in on the recurring themes, characters and settings used throughout the novel one sees how Dracula has set the standard for Gothic literature today.

A strong example of Gothic Literature is “The Fall of the House of Usher”, by Edgar Allen Poe. This is a strong example of Gothic Literature because, Roderick is a mentally ill man who asks his friend, the narrator, to come visit because he’s always nervous. Roderick, and with the assistance of the narrator, buried his sister, Madeline, alive. She eventually came back and haunted Roderick and killed him. Based on this, That plot contains several elements of Gothic Literature. As well as some of the things the narrator said. For example, at the beginning of the story, when the narrator shows up at the House of Usher, he describes the feeling he gets while looking at the house. The narrator says, “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of imagination could torture into aught of the sublime” (14). The narrator’s feelings of the house are a superb example of Gothic Literature because, his description being very dark and gloomy display some of the elements of Gothic Literature. Therefore, “The Fall of

Stephen King's The Boogeyman was my favorite piece of gothic literature that we read. I was trying to figure the story out all the way until the end and had to re-read some of it to fully understand. It was suspenseful, scary, but also had a good story to listen to. The Boogeyman was full of gloomy settings, monsters, characters in distress, and intense emotions. These 4 things are just a couple elements that make up gothic literature.

The central theme of all Gothic novels is the presence and symbolism of the Gothic castle. Depiction of ruinous abbeys, monasteries, subterranean passages, vaults, secret panels, and the trapdoors is a standard method of achieving the atmosphere. Howells sees the Gothic castle as being ‘a shadowy world of ruins and twilight scenery lit up from time to time by lurid flashes of passion and violence ’(6). Therefore, the gloominess of the exterior and interior environment is illuminated by intense emotional and passionate moments of the characters that inhabit the castle. As Sage claims, the castle is ‘the lair of the villain’(166), and it is an accurate reflection of his dark and frightening character. Gloomy, dark, and dangerous, the castle reflects the emotions and psychological experience of many of the novel’s characters.