Bram Stokers Dracula Essay, Research Paper

In Dracula by Bram Stoker there are many characters that could be called a hero. Some of these heroes could be John Harker for identifying The Count and helping to kill him. Quicy for helping to kill The Count and Sacrificing himself in the end, or even Van Helsing for finding the facts about Dracula and how he must die. But upon closer examination there is no real hero in Dracula.

Harker and Morris may have helped rid the world of such an evil, and Van Helsing may have Noticed the threat and helped to prevent it, but is that really heroism, or is it just common bigotry, or was it even evil to begin with? Dracula was in a constant fight for survival. Wherever he went he was persecuted and hated. Though Dracula had to kill to survive, he had to live. In doing so he did things that made him seem evil and different. Humans are afraid of things that are different so they did what felt natural and they killed him.

These facts, that Dracula was persecuted for being different, are the same things that we try to stop today. Dracula did kill people. Which makes him sound like an evil thing. But in war, we call our soldiers heroes and we say that they did great things to help humanity and they are in general great people. What soldiers in war do is no different than what Dracula had to do. So, in turn, if one would look at heroism in that perspective then Dracula could very well be the hero in the book. He killed to keep himself alive and to keep his people alive and if that’s wrong so is fighting for our right to survive.

So, in the end, who is the hero in Bram Stoker’s Dracula? There is not one. One could argue that Harker, Quincy, or even Van Helsing is the hero of the book, but if one looks deeper into the story and changes their perspective those men are simply bigots who kill things that are different which makes them, in turn, the evil ones.