Twilight. Different people react differently to the word. Some people bend over and pretend to gag, while teenage girls tend to swoon or start babbling about how romantic the main male character is. After Stephenie Meyer made a fortune from this book, a trend began; The Vampire Diaries, Vampire Academy, Vampire Journals... the question is, where did these creatures first make their appearance in our literature?
The answer lies in the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. Vampires were part of ancient mythology and folklore for a long time, but it wasn’t until Dracula was published that they appeared in print. When I read this novel, I found many reasons to recommend it to my friends and peers, but I found two of them to be the most prominent.
First, even without its acclaim as a ageless classic, Dracula is a great story for readers in the 19th and 21st centuries alike. The book defines the supernatural horror genre. Whenever the excitement appears to dwindle, something else happens which raises the stakes and heightens the intensity of the story. Also, the language allows you to picture everything in your mind, “The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood.“ Bram Stoker has crafted a truly mysterious web of events and people that all boil down to Dracula’s last stand.
Second, I was not only intrigued by the story itself, but I also found it interesting to compare Count Dracula to the fictional vampires you see in books today. In most modern vampire novels, the creatures don’t sleep in coffins or have a vulnerability to holy objects, but they still have pale skin, fangs, dark hair and a penchant for blood. Traditionally, there are many different versions of vampires in archaic folklore, but this image stuck because it corresponded with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. When seeing these stories on the bookstore shelves, I wonder to myself, how would these authors have written these books if the original Count Dracula had blonde hair, a dark tan and wore clothes like Elvis Presley?
Dracula is a must-read for bookworms of all ages. Even for those people who say that horror isn’t their cup of tea, the suspense and excitement is bound to have them hooked by the first chapter. True, reading this novel will leave you tossing and turning in bed with nerve-racking nightmares, but the read will definitely be worth it.