ruined chapel, which had evidently been used as a graveyard.
perhaps not a trope but definitely a common theme
270 Matching Annotations
- Nov 2022
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annotatingdracula.commons.gc.cuny.edu annotatingdracula.commons.gc.cuny.edu
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I felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts;
This whole sequence I find very interesting and I think it's gone past the whole unreliable narrator thing and is just straight up showing us "oh yeah he's actually lost his mind now" because this isn't even explicitly vampiric activity anymore this is just... he's lost it, poor guy
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I watched them with a sense of soothing
poor guy is just so bored
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24 June,
something that I just considered is that perhaps the dates between his diary entries are because he didn't have the paper that he had had before, as well that hamlet reference from earlier might have been foreshadowing a bit.
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hetman
A Polish or Cossack military commander
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17 June.
Excuse you sir #1 it's been two and a half weeks and you say NOTHING? #2 AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO BE POSSIBLY DEAD BY NOW
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Szgany are gipsies
Ah yes I was wondering when we would see some era-appropriate racism. obviously because this takes place in Romania I had a feeling there would be some Romani racism but like why... why is that necessary.
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the Count must have carried me here
so, originally I wasn't going to do much more than highlight this, because I thought this was like 'ooh cute' or whatever but coming back to it after having read the next couple of journal entries I realized something and it was that: the Count is not mad at Jonathan for breaking the rule of not going into other rooms and sleeping in those rooms... at least not that he shows. i've noticed a pattern in vamp lit of vampires not generally getting mad when the object of their interest breaks their rules (of which they generally have many) and I've seen it before stated that they can't blame humans for being human, but I also think it's kind of sweet. Perhaps the Count is more enraged at the women than he is at Jonathan. Additionally this concept of the vampire not getting mad at the prey that way is not consistent, particularly in Anne Rice's writing; she writes her vampires as much more aggressive, however she also writes far more vampire-on-vampire interaction--I think that's part of why.
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suavest tones
Remember what I said about the siren trope?
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As my eyes opened involuntarily I saw his strong hand grasp the slender neck of the fair woman and with giant’s power draw it back, the blue eyes transformed with fury, the white teeth champing with rage, and the fair cheeks blazing red with passion. But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing.
not just what I've annotated here but this whole sequence of him describing the Count's rage is just so homosexual (perhaps there is some sort of glamour going on?) like no perfectly straight man describes a man flying into a fury with such delicate detai
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wolves
ah yes so this is what was with the constant wolf references
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silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips
Trope 16- vampires are sometimes shown to be similar to sirens, particularly female vampires (though sometimes also male vampires- really has to do with the era of vamp). Partially this is due to the erotic history of vampires that actually precedes Bram Stoker's Dracula. I could go into more detail about this if this wasn't just an annotation but it has something to do with the initial perceptions of some of the first "real" vampires during the vampire scare in America, and also closely ties with homosexuality as a theme. The siren trope is less common these days than it was in older vampire literature; now what we see instead is the glamour trope which is where vampires will physically charm people into into being their prey with their ~irresistible looks~ rather than a sing-songy voice.
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they threw no shadow on the floor
Trope 15
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My tablets! quick, my tablets!’Tis meet that I put it down,” etc.,
I find it really interesting that in this text which we so often reference that he references another separate text
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Here I am, sitting at a little oak table where in old times possibly some fair lady sat to pen, with much thought and many blushes, her ill-spelt love-letter, and writing in my diary in shorthand all that has happened since I closed it last
I really like that here he seems to relate to the woman in this situation that he has imagined
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And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere “modernity” cannot kill.
this is a really beautiful sentence and even though I can't quite figure out what it's supposed to mean I can tell that it has a very weighty meaning that I would actually enjoy should I understand it
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occupied by the ladies in bygone days
I like how this phrase could both mean the ladies of eons ago or it could also mean when the Count had ladies... in those bygone days where he had ladies that he now does not have...
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I am now a full-blown solicitor!
his excitement that he's now a solicitor is SO precious.
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face down with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.
trope 12, 13, 14: Inhuman movement, cloaks, wings.
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just as a lizard moves along a wall.
this is really interesting to me that he's actually moving like a lizard because it's so often in media that if vampires have any sort of unnatural movement it's either unnatural human-like speed or like... the only sort of creeping that we really get like this in vampire media is Nosferatu but even then it's still not explicitly lizard-like... that's very strange that that trope didn't make it as far as the others that Stoker suggests, even compared to those that weren't rooted in age-old mythos.
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In any case I could not mistake the hands which I had had so many opportunities of studying
This is SO q/Queer
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I am beginning to feel this nocturnal existence tell on me
Obviously some of this is Dracula's doing on purpose but I think it's interesting that you don't really notice this happening with any sort of purpose it's just happened gradually like he's gradually becoming nocturnal
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crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.
I find this part interesting because Jewish monster scholars have noted that the the vampiric fear of Christianity and crucifixes is coded Jewishly (naturally) however I feel as though his reaction to the crucifix is not so much terror or repelling as it is calming.
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he motioned with his hands as if he were washing them
Conjures up a very different image with an oddly related history now than it did then. This gesture didn't always mean this, but the history of monsters as a whole is both sadly and unsurprisingly often rife with antisemitism. https://www.adl.org/resources/hate-symbol/happy-merchant
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I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters. It will doubtless please your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to getting home to them. Is it not so?”
Oh wow, this is such blatant manipulation. I'm almost impressed.
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I must not confuse them with experiences which will have to rest on my own observation, or my memory of them
I'd say this is not only where he fears for his sanity but also where he admits to being, from here on out, an unreliable narrator.
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Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them!
The fact that he's so connected to his history is already coded Jewishly, but the addition that he had a brother (so to speak? Only so?) who sold his people into slavery is straight out of the Torah.
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this Dracula
Is this different than the A Dracula from the previous sentence? 'This' implying himself, or perhaps intentionally ambiguous?
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Wodin
Refreshing to see Odin spelled properly.
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grasping anything on which he laid his hands as though he would crush it by main strength
Trope 11- inhuman strength. Now we're getting out of traditional vampire territory and into what has continued to be more... Twilight territory. I'm certain monster scholars (yes, tis a beautiful thing!) have discussed this, but I see there being two kinds of vampires at a minimum: Strigoi- the terrifying, dead things; and well, Twilight vampires. It's more of a venn diagram if anything, and it's quite fun to see which elements of each various authors pick up because they forward their plot or simply characterizations.
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a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him
Vampire trope #1
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strange intonation
Vampire trope #2
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“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own will!” He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed as cold as ice—more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:— “Welcome to my house. Come freely.
vampire trope #3 & 4: Can't enter without permission; cold body
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lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort.
Vampire trope #5: Avoids light even in the home
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His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.
aaaand here's vampire trope#6 where the vampire appearance is overtly antisemitic (there are so many articles about this it's hard to cite just one so I'd recommend just googling "vampire appearance antisemitism" as I did). vampires were not originally antisemitic; but they came to hold these features (there are more I'll discuss later) through the political climate at the time of writing.
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gold
Trope#7:rich
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But still in none of the rooms is there a mirror.
Trope 8: No mirrors
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I have not seen the Count eat or drink.
trope #9- how has he not realized this yet??
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crucifix, of the garlic, of the wild rose, of the mountain ash?
Trope #10
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and he!—I fear I am myself the only living soul within the place
Ah yes the fear he's dead is setting in
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I had not seen him, since the reflection of the glass covered the whole room behind me
Ahh yes vampires cannot be seen in mirrors trope
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which is like
This is linguistically a really neat thing! Interrogative like has been used for the last couple hundred years, particularly in Ireland actually, so when people get all up in arms about it it's not really a good show of prescriptivism; I have a feeling it's connected to anti Irish sentiment.
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He took my arm
Gay and unnecessary (and therefore gay)
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Count stayed with me, chatting and asking questions on every conceivable subject, hour after hour
That is so romantic??
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century
Because he knows what it's like to live one!
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The Count smiled, and as his lips ran back over his gums, the long, sharp, canine teeth showed out strangely;
Weirdly romantic but ok GAYS (I'm gay I can say that)
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You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go.
Beauty and the beast???
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boyar
Highest nobility in eastern europe
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But alas! as yet I only know your tongue through books. To you, my friend, I look that I know it to speak.” “But, Count,” I said, “you know and speak English thoroughly!” He bowed gravely.
this is such a precious (and vaguely tender) interaction of "my English isn't good" "no it's perfect!"
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wolves
Yo what is this obsession w wolves what is the symbolism!!!
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toilet glass on my table, and I had to get the little shaving glass
A toilet glass was a mirror that was a different shape to the shaving glass, which would've been more of a hand mirror, however these terms are not often recorded.
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It is again early morning, but I have rested and enjoyed the last twenty-four hours. I slept till late in the day, and awoke of my own accord. When I had dressed myself I went into the room where we had supped, and found a cold breakfast laid out, with coffee kept hot by the pot being placed on the hearth. There was a card on the table, on which was written:— “I have to be absent for a while. Do not wait for me.—D.”
It's difficult to explain, but this scene is very Queer. he's slept in this house, alone, after a night of weirdly romantically tense interaction with a new man that he's unsure if he likes then he decides it was great, and awakes to a made breakfast left for him and a sweet note saying he'll be back later. These are the actions of a lover!
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I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!
This is absolutely gay he is having a homosexual experience
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Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make
An emo staple phrase; here's a sample of it I really like from a song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGg7sW9Qc64
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drew back
They're REALLY close in this scene- Jonathan is refusing his... Advances.
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his breath was rank
Appalled that I can't find memes about Dracula's foul breath
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the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye
Charm #3
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goitre
Goiter, the medical term.
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Mittel Land
Swiss canal through the Carpathians
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gotza
This book is the only instance I can locate of this word.
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could not but be touched
And again the second time he gives away his convictions because people are nice to him.
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he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye
This is the second count of a charm, counting the crucifix as the first.
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London cat’s meat!
this was usually horse meat that was brought to cats and dogs.
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I am writing
change in tense
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Sleep well to-night
Honestly the language he's using here is very... lover coded, if that makes sense. Like, you wouldn't tell someone you're only vaguely acquainted with or just a regular friend to sleep well etc.
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Borgo Pass
This place is actually called the Tihuta pass, and this name was seemingly made up by Stoker though I can't find any definitive explanation of this.
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more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains
Lol nothing has changed
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recipe
https://www.copymethat.com/r/L4wnj7yjw/impletata-eggplant-stuffed-with-forcemea/
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Bistritz
Capital city of Bistrita-Nasaud county in the Northern region of Transylvania.
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Bukovina
Modern day split between Ukraine and Romania. Wasn't a country but a region.
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