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Dracula Q3: Garden of Eden
To my mind, the story has elements of the Garden of Eden. The great tempter, associated with sin and sex, comes to the women and they fall from grace. The corrupted women in turn attempt to spread the corruption to their men. But in this version, the men draw strength and wisdom from knowledge, in the form of the "archangel" van Helsing, and defeat the tempter and remain in the blessed land.
What do you think of this reading?
If man's knowledge is usurping the position of God in this story, what does it say about the place of the divine in the world of the book? Contrast this with the powerful Christian ideas throughout the book. And compare this to the deus ex machina of War of the Worlds, where God's protection is replaced by science (in the form of germs) (and the 1950s American film where God is God, and Independence Day where people are God, creating the computer virus).
Could (or should) you include such large, thematic underpinnings in your own RPG situations?
Comments
Again it's an interesting question. On the face of it the problem faced by the women is, perhaps, a little bit different. In Genesis, Eve was presented with the opportunity to deliberately flout an explicitly command, to which she yielded following some weasly words by the serpent that God's command didn't really mean what it seemed to. Here, the women were worn down by a kind of war of attrition, mostly happening while they were asleep and so unable to resist, and often exposed to danger by others around (eg the mother removing the garlic because she thought it untidy). It's not clear that there is a parallel to an act of disobedience: almost the opposite as Mina is persistently determined not to allow herself to be consumed by Dracula, and urges the men around her to kill her if this looks like it's happening.
Now, that's a kind of superficial reading of Genesis, and CS Lewis (in Perelandra) posits the question "what if the event presented as a single episode in Genesis was in fact simply a highly abbreviated summary of a lengthy period of temptation and moral pressure?" (he does it much more eloquently than that
)
Perelandra is arguably in some ways an attempt to write a kind of Dracula novel - the antagonist is not inherently a supernatural being, but becomes rapidly and irremediably corrupted through the books, And again the protagonist can't just prayer but has to use action as well.
OMG - the comparison to Perelandra - one of my all time favorites - is brilliant. I'd never seen it before, and the parallels are very close. Dracula was also not inherently supernatural, but became horribly corrupted - this is the wrongness I spoke of in Q1 - just as Weston becomes corrupted in Perelandra. Weston's cruel and casual maiming of the frogs is a sign of his wrongness. Fascinating take, Richard!
I don't really see it. Dracula strikes me as more of a Wagnerian tale suitable to reassure modern audiences that the eruptions of traditional society will be beaten back by the heroic modern individual. BS, but nevertheless popular.