“It’s not scary.” That’s what I have been told, on more than one occasion. Indeed Bram Stoker’s Dracula might not scare some people, but I suspect it is not scary for a certain kind of person in particular. You may well ask, “What kind of person?” To which I would answer, “The kind of person with an underdeveloped imagination.” For it is impossible to read Dracula with a strong imagination and not resonate with the numinous danger dripping off of every page.
The numinous, something which C. S. Lewis waxed eloquently upon in more than one essay, is that sense of other worldly danger which is altogether different from the more mundane kind of dangers a man may face in this life. The world in its regular course never fails to offer us real things to be afraid of. A man who grows up in certain parts of Africa may have an appropriate fear of lions and, being faced with one, he will surely feel the acute sense of peril that comes with that encounter in the wild. A man who grows up in a large urban area might be keenly aware of the danger of walking through a certain park after a certain time and, if caught in that situation, would surely feel breathtaking dread when facing down a barrel and having his wallet demanded of him. Even so, those kinds of dangers, real as they may be and have been for some, are mundane. They are worldly fears.
The numinous is not a fear of worldly dangers, it is a fear of that which does not belong to the normal order of this world. It is an encounter with something that doesn’t obey the rules. The numinous cannot simply be avoided by running faster, it cannot be killed by mortal weaponry, it cannot be dealt with as one deals with a lion or a thug, it is something other. The way in which we feel fear towards one thing can be qualitatively different from the way we feel fear towards another. The fear of a gun is different from the fear of falling off of a cliff. The fear of a lion in the plains of Africa is different from the fear of a ghost hovering over our bed.
It is, in fact, possible to not be afraid of things which we ought to fear. I will always remember watching a video where an older toddler, standing on the porch of her house, was saying over and over, “Can I go pet dat dawg!?” while gesturing to what turned out to be a brown bear in her yard. She simply didn’t know the danger she was facing because she had no frame of reference for it. Her imagination had not been informed by scenes or descriptions of what a bear can do to a person. It’s possible, I suppose, that someone might not find Dracula scary for that reason, they are unable to read the dangers of the story like the toddler was unable to read the bear, but I doubt that is most people’s problem who say the book isn’t scary.
I suspect that most who don’t find the book scary have a different kind of underdeveloped imagination. One way to have an underdeveloped imagination is to be like a toddler, just not having seen or heard enough yet to conceive the situation rightly. Another way is to have imaginative atrophy. Rather than simply lacking sufficient materials to feed their imagination such people in this latter category have glutted themselves on a steady diet of imaginative garbage. In some cases this may be bad books but in most cases it is movies and television which have done this to them.
There is a kind of bad book, and some people read many of them, which develops none of the characters and none of the world in which they live, but which simply moves from one danger and reaction to the next. Many today, though, read little at all and only take in stories through movies and television. However the story is being delivered, too many people are used to being spoon-fed constant excitement and shocking visuals as opposed to quality stories. This accounts for why some foolish people even say “The Lord of the Rings is boring” and it is why many of those same would say, “Dracula isn’t even scary.” They are so used to gorging upon constant action and being shocked with images that they can’t handle a moment of story development. To describe a world or its characters becomes boring because it is too slow. To dwell on being forced into utter isolation in a castle with a vampire isn’t as “scary” as having an ax swung at one’s head by a madman while leaping over a lava pit.
C. S. Lewis in his essay, On Stories, addresses this notion when discussing the great book King Solomon’s Mines being made into a movie.
To those whose literary experiences are at all like my own the distinction which I am trying to make between two kinds of pleasure will probably be clear enough from this one example. But to make it doubly clear I will add another. I was once taken to see a film version of King Solomon's Mines. Of its many sins--not least the introduction of a totally irrelevant young woman in shorts who accompanied the three adventurers wherever they went--only one here concerns us. At the end of Haggard's book, as everyone remembers, the heroes are awaiting death entombed in a rock chamber and surrounded by the mummified kings of that land. The maker of the film version, however, apparently thought this tame. He substituted a subterranean volcanic eruption, and then went one better by adding an earthquake. Perhaps we should not blame him. Perhaps the scene in the original was not 'cinematic' and the man was right, by the canons of his own art, in altering it. But it would have been better not to have chosen in the first place a story which could be adapted to the screen only by being ruined. Ruined, at least, for me. No doubt if sheer excitement is all you want from a story, and if increase of dangers increases excitement, then a rapidly changing series of two risks (that of being burned alive and that of being crushed to bits) would be better than the single prolonged danger of starving to death in a cave. But that is just the point. There must be a pleasure in such stories distinct from mere excitement or I should not feel that I had been cheated in being given the earthquake instead of Haggard's actual scene. What I lose is the whole sense of the deathly (quite a different thing from simple danger of death)--the cold, the silence, and the surrounding faces of the ancient, the crowned and sceptred, dead. You may, if you please, say that Rider Haggard's effect is quite as 'crude' or 'vulgar' or 'sensational' as that which the film substituted for it. I am not at present discussing that. The point is that it is extremely different. The one lays a hushing spell on the imagination; the other excites a rapid flutter of the nerves. In reading that chapter of the book curiosity or suspense about the escape of the heroes from their death-trap makes a very minor part of one's experience. The trap I remember for ever: how they got out I have long since forgotten.1
The person who doesn’t find Dracula scary is likely the kind of person who has had too much imaginative junk food. They simply demand action and constant scenes of danger and more and more graphic gore. They can’t stomach something better for them which makes them have to think about the situation and what it would be like to live it themselves. The modern horror industry, with films like Scream and Saw and their numerous sequels, not to mention many other even more horrendous films which try to delight their viewers with progressively more shocking scenes of indescribable shredding of human bodies, has convinced people that Stoker’s book is actually pretty tame.
Dracula is not an action slasher story, it’s true, but it is something far better than that. Dracula offers readers the psychological horror of having to come to grips with, and face, something other than the dangers you can normally meet in the regular world. Dracula is evil incarnate. He is evil fluttering like a bat outside your window. He is evil that cannot be killed with a gun or a knife…it’s just not that simple. He is an evil that is ancient, brilliant, sinister in the extreme, and seemingly always ahead of your plans to stop him. Dracula is supernaturally strong and has supernatural powers by which he controls beasts, hearts, and minds. Who can stop him? Who can save you and the ones you love from his irrepressible grasp once he has set his sight upon you or someone you love? Dracula is terrifying.
If you cannot see that, then feel that. If you cannot feel that then perhaps you have become desensitized to the meat and potatoes of true horror by the candy of action slasher stories. Take a moment to detox and put yourself in Jonathan Harker’s place when he is trapped in an inescapable castle with vampires. Put yourself in Lucy’s place when she has been chosen by the dark lord of Transylvania to be his next bride. Put yourself in Mina’s place when Dracula has seeped into your own dreams and you can’t get him out of your own head. Where can you run from this numinous horror? Where you will be really, truly, and finally safe? Nowhere, it seems.
There is no safety to be found as long as evil is allowed to roam free and unchecked. This is exactly what the brave men and women of this story realize as they commit themselves, with the guidance of Dr. Van Helsing, to bring Dracula to an end no matter the personal cost.
Perhaps the greatest virtue of this story is the starkness of its portrayals. Good and evil are utterly clear and there is no gray. Dracula and his brides are utterly depraved in every way. The band who opposes them are self-sacrificing good people. The men in the story are masculine and the women are feminine. Dracula is a picture of broken and warped masculinity, what a man looks like when he has been utterly absorbed in vice and the brokenness of lust has consumed him. Contrariwise, we see the selfless sacrifice of three men on behalf of the same woman, Lucy, and how they bind themselves together in friendship and courage in an attempt to save her. They serve and honor her rather than seek to consume her. The contrasts of those things which ought to be with those with ought not to be are pure and extreme in this book. Some might criticize the story as unbelievable on this very front, but I would argue it is exactly as it should be. What can overcome real evil but real good?
Dracula is an important book for teaching us what evil is like, how it consumes and dominates all who come under its sway, as well as teach us about the kind of people we must be if we want to oppose evil and win. This book deserves a wider reading than it gets among Christians today. Criticisms against reading Dracula because it glorifies the occult are simply misguided. Count Dracula is presented to us by Stoker as one to be utterly and totally despised, not as an object to glorify. Modern horror stories have often glorified and romanticized vampirism. Sinful minds have latched on to vampirism as a kind of Christless eternal life (though this is just everlasting death). Lustful hearts have made much of the voluptuous undead vampiresses and told stories to fantasize about them. All of this, however, says more about some people’s own sinful hearts than it does Stoker’s own story. Movie versions of this story have often fallen into these same kind of errors, but none of this should count agains the book itself. Those who loved vampires after reading Dracula thoroughly missed the point of Stoker’s work. Read rightly this book will teach you to love courage and selflessness and to hate untethered lust for power and pleasure.
So pick up this book and read a story of good men and women kicking evil right in its nasty fangs. Read a story about beheading the ancient serpent yet once again. Come read a story with all of your imagination, be afraid, and then conquer fear with the perfect and selfless love which drives out all fear.
Below you will find links to each section of the study guide for Bram Stoker’s Dracula as they become available. If you would like to pick up a copy of the book to join in the study you may do so by clicking HERE. To see a list of other Great Books study guides already available, in development, or planned for the future you can click HERE.
Ch. 1 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal”
Ch. 2 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal (Continued)”
Ch. 3 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal (Continued)”
Ch. 4 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal (Continued)”
Ch. 5 “Letters from Miss Mina Murray to Miss Lucy Westenra”
Ch. 7 “Cutting from ‘The Dailygraph’”
Ch. 9 “Letter, Mina Harker to Lucy Westenra”
Ch. 10 “Letter, Dr. Seward to Hon. Arthur Holmwood”
Ch. 11 “Lucy Westenra’s Diary”
Ch. 13 “Dr. Seward’s Diary (Continued)”
Ch. 14 “Mina Harker’s Journal”
Ch. 15 “Dr. Seward’s Diary (Continued)”
Ch. 16 “Dr. Seward’s Diary (Continued)”
Ch. 17 “Dr. Seward’s Diary (Continued)”
Ch. 19 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal”
Ch. 20 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal”
Ch. 22 “Jonathan Harker’s Journal”
Ch. 24 “Dr. Seward’s Phonograph Diary, Spoken by Van Helsing”
Ch. 27 "Mina Harker's Journal" and "Note"
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C. S. Lewis, On Stories, London: Oxford University Press, 1947 ["Essays Presented to Charles Williams", pp. 90-105
Makes me want read Dracula again! 😊👍
I agree with your insightful analysis of Bram Stoker’s book, Dracula.
A more recent movie about vampires that I think is really fine is The Lost Boys. It’s a great film because it shows how evil makes itself attractive so that we mere mortals will be drawn to it, and in this movie evil is disguised as “the cool kids” - young vampires who try to entice and seduce the town’s newcomers into joining their motorcycle gang. Their hairstyles, earrings and leather jackets serve to disguise who and what they really are. True good is embodied first in a couple of young teens who are vampire hunters, trying to figure who the vampires are so they can eliminate them.