Ok, So Dracula Is Actually Scary

Well, it has been a very busy past few weeks! I feel really bad that I haven't written since before I went on spring break, but Spectrum (literary arts magazine) is in the final stages before being published, and a lot of professors are throwing mid-term papers at us. I was always told that junior year is the hardest and I haven’t been let down yet. Reading is a really good counterbalance to the all the writing and projects.

At the moment I’m reading Dracula by Bram Stoker, and might I say wow! Do you ever have those books that just effect your mood while you’re reading them? Only three chapters in I’ve discovered that Dracula is one of those books for me. Spending time in that giant castle in Transylvania just seems to make me paranoid in real life.

I’m actually really surprised with myself that I haven’t read Dracula before. But now that I’ve started I’ve found that it’s pretty hard to put down. I’ve seen images of the count in pop culture growing up. Count Chocula, NBC’s Dracula (who is played by John Rhys Meyers), and countless portrayals of vampires in books and tv have really impacted my inner-picture of Count Dracula. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen an old Dracula movie.) When I read the actual description of Dracula, I was completely shocked. If you don’t know, he’s described as older, aquiline, and, even more impressively, has a white moustache.

Did anyone else ever picture the brooding, terrifying Dracula having white moustache?! I sure didn’t. And it kind of ruined my picture of him as some kind of monster. Like, yeah, the pointed ears and reddish eyes are scary, but the moustache just makes me think of him as a frail old man. Granted, the farther I read and more active Dracula becomes in Jonathon Harker’s story, the more evil he becomes. But why is it always that pop culture images I have of the classic stories never fit in with the author’s actual picture? (This same thing happened when I read Frankenstein last year) It really beats me why people change these amazing literary creations so much that when people read the novel, it’s hard to recognize. But true to my English major heart, I think the books are better than any recreation I have seen.