Role Of The Other In Dracula English Literature Essay

Role Of The otherwise In Dracula English Literature EssayBram relief pitchers Dracula and Kate Chopins The Awakening centralises on the characters of Count Dracula and Edna Pontellier in the respective novels, characters marked as the separate for their distinction in racial and heathenish traits and their transgression to strict blue(a) well-disposed codes of conduct in the late nineteenth century. This essay explores the position and presentation of the Other in Count Dracula and Edna Pontellier on the issues race, culture, brotherhood and how the Other is represented by literary techniques much(prenominal) as language, symbolism, vision and narrative strategies.In Dracula, Stoker uses visual imaging in his commentary of the Count, of his strange and undeniable racial foreignness in his terrorening port and physical features, where his eyebrows were very massivebushy h air travel that seem to curl in its own profusion (Stoker 17). In Jonathan Harkers report, he furt her nonices of Dracula Strange to say, in that respect were hairs in the centre of the palm and the nails were longto a sharp point (Stoker 18), features associated with immoral whitlows and offensive beings that lack spiritual values and moral standards. A shepherds crook is what Professor Van Helsing describes Dracula as This criminal has non enough man-brainbe of child-brain in much (Stoker 341), followed by Mina Harker The Count is a criminal and of criminal type (Stoker 342) Stoker models Dracula as a profuse criminal that poses serious danger to the society and uses Draculas intimidating features to represent his criminality, increase his racial Otherness.In The Awakening, Chopin uses the same narrative technique of visual imagery where she describes Edna Pontellier as rather handsome than beautifulcertain frankness of expressioncontradictory subtle play of features (Chopin 5). Chopin brings step forward Ednas racial foreignness by comparing and contrasting her beaut y and personify forms to that of Adele Ragtinolle, a Creole descent who is the embodiment of every womanly embroider and charm (Chopin 10). Ednas distinct attractiveness, being an American from Kentucky and different from the physical strange dispositions of Creole women stands her out as different, whose form of beauty attracts men such as Robert and Victor Lebrun as well as Alcee Arobin.In his novel, Stoker portrays Draculas outsider status, contrasting his archaic Transylvanian ethnical origins in Eastern europium to that of modernized Western Europe where Jonathan Harker comes from. On his arrival in Bistritz, Jonathan describes the uninitiated land where things were new to him, such as the peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine and Slovaks with their-coloured sheepskinscarryingtheir long staves, with axe at end (Stoker 8). He comp ars the unfamiliar Eastern superstition to his internal Western rationality when a woman offers him her crucifix for his safety against Dracula, for he has been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous (Stoker 5). Different in every respect from English nobles, Dracula asserts Jonathans and his cultural disparity We are in Transylvania and Transylvania is non England. Our styluss are not your ways, and there shall be to you many strange things (Stoker 21).As a solitudinarian American woman who marries a Creole from New Orleans, Edna experiences cultural dissimilarity and struggles to come to terms with the cultural norms of the Creole society, where a womans place and point is restricted in the domestic realm. Just as Adele Ragtinolle positions Edna as an Other she is not one of us she is not like us (Chopin 23), Edna is surprise by the Creoles entire absence of prudery and freedom of expression (Chopin 12), where suggest conversations such as childbirth are openly discussed, sex to women are considered not for pleasure besides rather for procreation and flirtations do not cross the boundari es of infidelity such were the social codes in the Creole partnership which Edna feels growingly restrictive and eventually breaches. Where Dracula attempts to assimilate the cultural identity element of the English, Edna resists the social conventions of the Creoles, yet in his assimilation and her resistance, both(prenominal) characters violates and threaten the social and cultural order of the society they are in.Stoker combines the theme of sexual practice with military force in Dracula. The Count is portrayed as a revenant with a bloodlust in the human body and is primarily a sexual threat not only to women but even to men. Dracula expresses his contempt for potentiality and prissy order in the most independent means with his sexual practice. He possesses the hypnotic and seductive prowess that attract involuntary women into his compass and holds the feministic role of reproduction, as his victims do not die but transform into vampires themselves, embracing a new rac ial identity and marking them as the Other. The magnitude of threat to the civilized society Dracula carries through his sexuality is illustrated first through Lucy Westenras transformation from an amiable Victorian lady to a voracious predator and then through Draculas grave personal onslaught of Mina Harker in the very presence her husband, Jonathan, who lay asleep beside her.In the theme of sexuality in The Awakening, Chopin paints a picture of Edna as a woman trapped in a stifled marriage and who is plagued by a mixture of feminist and psychological issues. Unlike the mother-women of the Creole conjunction who are protective of and idolized their children, Ednas motherly instincts are seemingly rachitic and is uncharacteristically distant from her two sons (Chopin 10). If one of the little Pontellier boys took a tumblehe was not apt to rush crying to his mothers arms (ibid.). Ednas discovery of her dormant sexuality stirs her longing desire for liberty and independence from the confines of male subordination and a marriage she feels disillusioned with. Her outward sexuality ensues with her forbidden resolving power of love for Robert Lebrun to Mademoiselle Reisz (Chopin 90), and too her act of adultery with Alcee Arobin for her growing use up for passion, which breeds immorality and transgresses the conservative social values of the New Orleans Creole community.In Stokers novel, blood symbolises the basis of life to Dracula, which he feeds off his victims that not only sustain his physical but soulless existence but also provides its mythical ability to preserve beauty, as Jonathan noted in Draculas youthful transformation in a coincidental encounter in Exeter, England (Stoker 172). Stoker then symbolises blood with racial contamination because of the close fellowship between the vampire and blood, with all its implications of purity and genetic intimacy. Stoker also creates a symbolic contrast between English contemporaneity in science and techn ology and Draculas embodiment of the primitives and superstitions, where Draculas threat hinges on the advance of modernity which brushes off the very reality of such a revenant as Dracula himself who seeks to destroy the society.Chopin similarly uses symbolism in the very presentation of her novel, where caged birds bear symbolic reference to Ednas restricted and subservient role as a wife and mother that society presses upon her and in the same way the birds cannot escape from their cages, Edna too cannot fully release herself from her obligations. Before Edna drowns in the finishing to the novel, she notices a bird with a broken wing was beating the air abovedisabled down to the water, perhaps symbolizing Ednas unsuccessful attempt at escaping the limitations and boundaries in her role as a woman and foreshadowing her impending death (Chopin 127). The ocean also represents a source of new life and a symbol of liberation for Edna, in where she feels rejuvenated and assertive upo n her self-actualization of her dissatisfaction in her life and of her roles. Her achievement in the ability to swim symbolically empowers her of her sexuality and her chosen identity and not one decided by the society.There is no angiotensin converting enzyme authorial voice in Dracula rather than adopting a persisting narrative voice, Stokers writing style is straightforward and immediate, interlinking extracts from the journals of various characters that creates equivocalness but adds much realism to the story. Dracula is not given a narrative voice and his actions and mysterious whereabouts are only revealed by the get along with other characters, in such a way that unambiguously positions readers as jury in the realm of the good in the battle against the evil Other in Dracula.A single authorial voice is take by Chopin in her novel in the form of a distant third-person omniscient. Chopins formal prose relays a sense of solemn gravity to the story and she adopts a writing st yle that is perceptive and concise. In her narration, she alternates between being specialized on some occasions and vague on others, for example It was the caress of lifethat kindled desire and Edna cried a little that night after Arobin go forth herThere was with her an overwhelming feeling of irresponsibility, which strongly suggests their transgression of societal conduct through their phase of adultery (Chopin 92). However, Chopin uses implicit details to guide readers, perhaps to apologize the foregone conclusion to which her text implies, in a her time when Victorian values still prevailed.Both Stoker and Chopin uses several literary techniques in Dracula and The Awakening, including foreshadowing, symbolism and imagery that reveals the Otherness in Dracula and Edna in their difference in fundamental ways from the society accompanying them. by means of artful imagery and language that convey perceptive descriptions and ideas, characters and scenes in both novels come to life, making a vivid reading experience.