It’s refreshing in its subdued tones and quietly haunting atmosphere. No, it isn’t flashy and campy like the vampires we are used to these days. There are a lot of Christian symbols dispersed through the book, but I don’t think that there is enough to label it Christian literature or to deter agnostics/atheists from reading it. When you look beyond the horror aspect of the book, it is also a richly layered analysis of the departure from traditional social mores, the effects of the advancement of science, and feminism. I also do have a soft spot in my heart for gothic Victorian literature Dracula completely adheres to the genre: rich descriptions, a gloomy castle, damsels in distress. It makes me wish that this was the first exposure to vampire mythology ever. However, while it is slow moving, the suspense is incredible. It could definitely be construed as slow. While the plot is pretty to the point, the writing is not so much.
It was written in a time when author’s were paid to the letter. I do have a soft spot for epistolary novels, though.Ī large drawback to Dracula is how excessively wordy the book is.
The horror that the characters experience is palpable. However, because they are such intimate ways of relaying information, the idea that this story is fabricated by the people who are telling it is a slim possibility. The story is played out in collection of fictional letters, newspaper clippings, telegrams, journal entries, etc, so what you see is what you get. Ok, so I wasn’t really expecting sparkly Twilight-esque vampires, but neither was I expecting how creepy this book was. So, for the Bram Stoker classic, my perceptions were a little stunted. With my modern day sensibilities, things aren’t as scary as they used to be. I picked it up again because today () is the premiere of NBC’s Dracula, featuring Jonathan Rhys Meyers (who is hands down #1 on my list) as the titular character. I recall liking it, but I never got around to finishing it until recently. I remember reading half of it while in high school but I set it down for whatever reason a sixteen-year-old in the 90s had. If not for Dracula, vampire novels today probably wouldn’t be what they are. While it isn’t the first book about vampires written, it is considered the masterpiece of the genre. As with the British "dreaded lurgi", the cooties game developed during the early 1950s polio epidemic, and became associated with dirt and contagion.Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the granddaddy of all vampire novels. The term may have originated with references to lice, fleas, and other parasites. Cooties is, in American childlore, a kind of infectious disease. The earliest recorded uses of the term in English are by British soldiers during the First World War to refer to lice the term was brought to America in the 1950s by military personnel coming back from service alongside the British in the South Pacific. For other uses, see Cootie (disambiguation). The word is thought to originate from the Austronesian term "kutu", meaning a parasitic biting insect. The phrase is most commonly used by children aged 4–10 however, it may be used by children older than 10 in a sarcastic or playful way. Usually the phrase is used on girls by boys, as in "now you've got girl cooties". Often the "infected" person is someone who is perceived as "different", such as being of the opposite sex, disabled or shy, or who has peculiar mannerisms. A child is said to "catch" cooties through close contact of an "infected" person or from a person of the opposite sex of the same age. It is similar to the British dreaded lurgi, and to terms used in the Nordic countries, in Italy, and in New Zealand. Freebase (2.00 / 2 votes) Rate this definition:Ĭooties is a childhood fictional disease used in the United States of America, Canada and Australia as a rejection term and an infection tag game.