Independent reading project (3)

“The struggle to achieve dominance over others frequently appears in fiction.” Choose a novel in which such a struggle for dominance occurs, and write an essay showing for what purposes the author uses the struggle. Do not merely retell the story.

        In the book Dracula by Bram Stoker we can see the characters are fighting for dominance over Lucy and Mina’s body. The two forces are Dracula and the people that is Mina and Lucy’s friend. Dracula repeatedly take blood from the two women wanting them to become a vampire like him, while Lucy and Mina’s friend keep transferring blood to them to help them stay alive and out of the Dracula’s control.

        In the first body paragraph I will start by explaining how one of the purpose of the struggle for dominance is to show us how the good side always win the evil side. In the novel, even though Lucy for a period of time had become a vampire and had make the story look like the Dracula had won, but later they put a stake through her heart and release her from being undead. After they put a stake through her heart she is “no longer the foul thing that we had dreaded and grown to hate, but Lucy as we had seen her in life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity”. This passage shows that even though Lucy has fallen to evil ways for a time but she has come back to the lovely girl that she use to be, and so the good side won the evil side.

        In the second body paragraph I will explain how this struggle of dominance of the two women reflects how men think of women at that time; they think that married women is more noble and good. I will explain this by pointing out Lucy dies while Mina did not even though they met the same kind of problem. Lucy was not married and the author make her into someone that tries to seduce people, on the other hand Mina is married and the author describes her as very supportive of her husband. In the graveyard when Van Helsing is showing the others that Lucy had become a vampire they caught her outside the safety of her coffin and so she tries to seduce her fiancée, Arthur, to go to her. She is said to “advance to him with outstretch arms and a wanton smile and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, says, ‘come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you’”. The author makes her look evil because she is not yet married when she dies. But for Mina the author makes her look very devoted to her husband, we can see this in the end of the novel when her husband and the others are fighting to kill Dracula. When she is describing what is happening her main focus was on her husband, saying things like “Jonathan’s impetuosity, and the manifest singleness of his purpose, seemed to overawe those in front of him”.

        In the third body paragraph I will explain how the struggle for dominance over the two women is to show suspense. In the first struggle to win back Lucy; the men fails, it makes the reader feel the suspense in the end when they do not know if the men are going to be able to save Mina or if they will lose her to the evil side too. This kind of suspense causes readers to be more interested in the novel, not as if the good side will always win the battle, the battle might be lost too.  

Independent reading project (2)

In a novel or play, a confidant (male) or a confidante (female) is a character, often a friend or relative of the hero or heroine, whose role is to be present when the hero or heroine needs a sympathetic listener to confide in. Frequently the result is, as Henry James remarked, that the confidant or confidante can be as much “the reader’s friend as the protagonist’s”. However, the author sometimes uses this character for other purposes as well. Choose a confidant or confidante from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you discuss the various ways this character functions in the work. You may write your essay on one of the following novels or plays or on another of comparable quality. Do not write on short story.

        The book that I am suggesting being added to the reading list is Dracula by Bram Stoker. The confidant in this novel is Van Helsing, a doctor that tries to help Lucy and Mina when they are being harmed by Dracula. We can say that Van Helsing is a confidant because when Mina is worried about her husband, Jonathan, afraid that he had lost his mind because of the supernatural experience he recorded down in his journal, it was Van Helsing who comforted her and told her Jonathan is not crazy.

        The prompt asks me to explain what the other purpose of this confidant is, so I will be listing three purposes when I write the essay. Each purpose of the character Van Helsing will be one body paragraph. For the first paragraph I will explain how Van Helsing acts as a leader of the group of people fighting against the Dracula. He is always the one that knows what to do and leads the other who is helpless against Dracula. When Arthur, Lucy’s fiancée, faces the vampire Lucy he is helpless at what he should do; he turns to Van Helsing for help, saying “My true friend, from the bottom of my broken heart I thank you. Tell me what I am to do, and I shall not falter!”. People in the novel turns to Van Helsing for guidance and he provides it to them.

        In my second paragraph I will explain how Van Helsing also acts as a wise man of the story. I will use the part where Mina goes to see Van Helsing and ask about her husband’s condition and telling him about Jonathan’s experience. Van Helsing listens to the incredible account of Jonathan’s experience, even though it is hard to believe, he readily accepts what Mina says. Telling her that “strange and terrible as it is, it is true!”. Then I will use Steward, another doctor that tries to help Lucy stay alive and his reaction to the idea of vampire existing even when the evidence is right before his eyes. His reaction even after he had seen an empty coffin at night and a coffin with Lucy’s body in it at day time is to say “I could not accept such an overwhelming idea as he suggested”. Comparing this two men’s reaction to the same thing I will be able to show why Van Helsing is a wise men.

        In my third body paragraph I will explain how Van Helsing also acts as a father figure in the novel. When Mina goes to see him about her husband she “throws herself on to her knees and holds her hands to him and implores him to make her husband well again”. Van Helsing’s reaction to this outburst was to “hold her hand in his, and said, ‘I promise you that I will gladly do all for him that I can, all to make his life strong and manly, and your life a happy one’”. Using this conversation between Mina and Van Helsing I can show the reader how caring a like a father Van Helsing is.

Independent reading project (1)

In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake.  Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence.  In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work.  Avoid plot summary.

      For this prompt I will explain how the scenes of violence in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker contributes to the overall meaning of the book. There are three scenes of violence in this book, so I will be explaining each scene of violence in each body paragraph and what there meaning is. The first scene of violence we encounter is when Arthur has to stab Lucy, the undead that use to be his fiancée, in the heart to make Lucy die again. He was described as “a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it”. We can see from previous chapters that Arthur loves Lucy a lot but here he kills her because if he do not, then there will be a lot of people being harmed by her. This scene of violence is the author telling us that when we are confronted with a struggle between duty and love we should choose to do our duty.

      In the second body paragraph I will explain the part when Van Helsing is trying to kill the three beautiful vampires and how this scene contributes to the overall meaning of the novel. When he saw the vampires he says that “she is so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion”. From this quote I can explain that Van Helsing desires the vampires when he looks at their beautiful face. Then I will use the passage that says “Had I not been nerved by thought of other dead, and of the living over whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone on” to explain how even though Van Helsing desires the beautiful vampires he still kills them dutifully. I will then explain that the author is trying to tell us we should not fall for our desires but we should always place our duty to others in the first place.

      In the third body paragraph I will explain how the last scene of violence where Dracula was killed contributes to the overall meaning of the novel. In this scene of violence the gypsy group that is protecting      Dracula’s coffin comes into conflict with Van Helsing’s group because one side wants to destroy the coffin and kill Dracula while the other side wants to protect it. During the fight Dracula lays in his coffin and looks at the sky and “the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph”. The author makes us fear that Dracula will wake and kill everyone at the scene, but the next passage immediately makes us lose our fear. In the next passage it says “on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan’s great knife. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris’s bowie knife plunged into the heart”. In this scene of violence Dracula almost won the battle but at the last moment he is killed. This scene contributes to the overall meaning by telling us evil will never be able to win the good.