Dracula and Frankenstein

Dracula by Bram Stoker
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley


Ideally both these books deserve an individual blog post but reading them back to back was so much fan. All thanks to the Fantasy and Science Fiction course at coursera.

Firstly, i hate horror movies. I had heard about Dracula and Frankenstein but have never seen their movie adaptations before. I was aware of their big fan following in USA but i was never drawn into it.  However, given my penchance for getting things directly from source, i was very much looking forward to both these books.



Dracula review:
I loved reading Dracula. I took this course because (a) I was tired of reading non-fiction, so wanted to read good fiction and was looking for avenues and (b) After LOTR and AGOIAF, i wanted to read more about Fantasy genre and learn it. In Dracula, both of my desires were fulfilled. What an amazing piece of writing!


Dracula hooked me on after the first couple of Johnathan Harker's journal entries. The way the psychological change is described through his journal it was just edge of the seat kind of thriller. I was just amazed how we are able to feel the terror of Dracula through the eyes of only one character (victim). To see Dracula such a rich and cultured broke all pre-concieved notions that i had. Bram Stoker's Dracula has a class. He is very knowledgeable and his conversation manners have a lot of style.

Next thing that stood about the novel was the Point of View (POV) style of narration. After A song of ice and fire, i was already fan of POV style. I was very happy to see it again here. Bram uses this style very cleverly. Again we see characters knowing partial information (while we know more than them individually) and we see how they act based on their partial data. POV from crucial characters such as Van Helsing is absent atleast in the beginning. POV style adds elements of mystery and thriller to this horror genre.

The writing is full of prose and a lot of time is spent in painting the vision. Be it Castle Dracula or Lucy's ghost in the grave, we are there with the characters and are eager to know the future.

A very very entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Frankenstein:
For an outsider like me, first thing that strikes is that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, instead Frankenstein was the creator. The book began as quite a drag for me. A lot of writing is spent on describing the scenery, romanticism dominates a lot in the first few pages. But the moment we start to learn about the monster and we know the story from his perspective, it was a very thrilling read. How does an artificially created man learns the basic things - the language, the history, human behavior and relationships, all is explained and to me it was very entertaining to read it.

Frankenstein creatively explores the connection between God and Frankenstein. Frankenstein is the creator here; and what happens if you do not like what you have created. Is it ok to abandon your creation? Is it ok for God to abandon us? And is the creator responsible for the actions of his/her creation? Mary plays with this subject in a very interesting manner.


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In both the novels, the sophistication of the villain was fascinating. Reading back to back gave me a sense of knowing everything there is to know about in the horror genre. I also went back and saw Van Helsing again which pays tribute to many horror themes. I hated the movie again but watching it with more context made it enjoyable as well :)
It is so amazing that if i think of the horror genre now, it is associated with cheap sound bytes, erotica and some useless story background. But both these novels, the creators of this genre are so intellectually drafted that it makes you fall in love with the classics!