The Language of Mistrust and Fear

From the beginning, Bram fireman makes it white that Count genus Dracula should be witnessed as The a nonher(prenominal), a psychological distinction that has been used to describe the way people view the world in them and us. fire-eater uses the c erst sequencept of The Other to manoeuvre how different Dracula is from the face and to create an underlying tension surrounded by the re principal(prenominal)ing characters and the vampire. He as well as uses the psychological distinction as a means of preventing the characters from determining the disposition of the vampire earlier as they atomic number 18 aw atomic number 18 that they ca-ca societal differences from the counting.The characters choose to everyplace ol particularory perception many of the primary contendnings of the oddness of the Count because they were afraid they were acting out of a misunderstanding around the cultural differences. stoker manages to establish Count Dracula as the other easily within t he first chapter of the novel. In the first chapter, the impressions we ware of Count Dracula all come from Jonathan Harkers journal and stoker establishes early on that Harker is uncomfortable with his surroundings.The impression I had was that we were leaving the atomic number 74 and entering the eastbound the almost western of splendid bridges all over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule (Stoker, Chapter 1). nevertheless in his writing, Stoker decides to play up the eeryness of the land with the strange spelling of Budapest as Buda-Pesth. He establishes immediately that Harker is leaving the polish world and going to a completely different land.He uses the lure and the mystique of the East to establish the difference all within the first paragraph of the hold back that Count Dracula is different from everyone else. As Harker travels inland, we learn that the count is from the march of Hungary near the Carpath ian Mountains, one of the wildest and least be intimaten portions of Europe. (Chapter 1) This is another attempt by the author to establish that Dracula is weird, and unlike the other characters. By claiming that he is from a wild and unknown region, Stoker is relying on the themes of Romanticism to intimate that he is potentially ugliness and dangerous.And just a few paragraphs later(prenominal) he tells us that I read that every known superstitious notion in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of several(prenominal) mannikin of imaginative whirlpool if so my stay may be very interesting. (Chapter 1). These lines establish clearly that Harker believes the people of Hungary to be less educated and different from the people of England. Furthermore, by establishing that he has heard they atomic number 18 a superstitious folk, he can justify their odd behavior to himself and not question the decisions that he is making (going alone to the Counts fort despite their warnings).Throughout the novel, Stoker relies on the concept of the other to isolate his main characters from the world around them and never is this as evident as in Harkers initial journey to meet the count. All on the way, Harker is the tourist, intrigued and besides critical of local population. The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clownish about the waist. (Chapter 1) He describes the traditional dress and the more rotund nature of the populace as clumsy about the waist emphasizing the sort of the time in Britain to be very thin with corsets cinching the waist in even farther.And, to the men, he is even less generous. The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more fantastic than the rest, with their big cow- male child hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous tough leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and sour black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands.They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion. To the fair(a) referee at the time of this writing, Stokers words about the people of Europe would look at been strange and more than a twist venerationsome, driven by the fear of the unknown. The author, realizing this, includes that very ceremonial occasion in Harkers journal, when he hastens to explain that despite the many odd things in his journal, he had not overindulged in either food or drink, going so far as to list what he has eaten.There too, Stoker attempts to make the reader revile the locals with a comparison of their dinner to the dewy-eyed style of the capital of the United Kingdom cats meat (Chapter 1). Having established the physical d ifferences between the inhabitants of Eastern Europe and those in London and draw attention to their different manner of dress and food, Stoker is ready to cut the last tie which might bind the twain groups together religion. On the eve of Harkers approach to Draculas castle, the innkeepers wife attempts to prevent him from going.She relays the fear that something untoward leave behind happen to him at the Castle and begs him to take her crucifix. I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I guide been taught to regard much(prenominal) things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to fend an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind. She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck and said, For your mothers sake, and went out of the room. I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late and the crucifix is still round my neck.(Chapter 1) In this sh ort passage, Stoker firmly establishes that the Hungarians are not like the English, establishing them firmly as The Other, but he also manages to establish their humanity. When the woman asks him to take the crucifix, For your mothers sake, Stoker overcomes the barrier between them, pointing to a common bond among all humans, the have intercourse of a mother for her child. This is done for two reasons first, to illustrate to the reader that the oddities of the count are in fact unnatural and second, to begin to create a mood, to explain the beginnings of the fear that Harker feels as he approaches the castle.The reader is meant to feel that Harkers observations about his trepidation as he approaches the castle at midnight are justified, that he is not merely some frightened little boy who starts at the darkness. This concept that the fear might be justified is edifice all along Harkers journey to the castle and might have built more if he had understood the languages his fellow p assengers spoke, Stoker writes, once again playing to the classical definition of the other as mortal outdoors our normal understanding, separated by culture, religion and sometimes, by language.Then, in a subtle criticism of the Carpathians, another form of creating distance between groups, Harker observes that the coursestead and rough and that the driver seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. (Chapter 1) This observation is meant to again set the people apart from the English who, it is implied, would never say of driving at such a pace and would have most for sure kept the road in better exalt. I was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter snows.In this respect it is different from the general ladder of roads in the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. Of old the Hospadars would not repair them, lest the Turk should think that they were preparing t o bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point. (Chapter 1). Even in his interchange of the fear of the Turks, Stoker is driving a wedge between the English and the Hungarians, as the British never feared invasion from aggressive neighbors thanks to the fact that they were on an island.This is just another means of driving a adventure between the two cultures. For the normally reserved British, the thought of weirds giving Harker gifts along the way also helps to establish the difference between the cultures. One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial. These were for sure of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that same strange diversity of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye. (Chapter 1). Thi s passage actually plays on English attitudes in two matters First, it would have been unconscionable to give a random gift to a stranger and make him feel that he must accept it. Second, the fact that they were actively demonstrating their religion and superstition was an act the British of the time would have name completely unacceptable. The British largely believed that church, the Church of England, was something you did when you went to services and not something to be practiced at any other time.Furthermore, the concept that you would let someone catch you making a hex sign of any sort was simply unbelievable. The British would simply be too polite to have anything in common with these heathens, further establishing them as The Other. In the end, Stokers work is masterful at clearly establishing the differences between class lines and cultures and creating The Other on numerous different levels. He establishes that Mina and Jonathan are the others when compared to Lucy and h er well-to-go friends, two of them having been raised with next to nothing.He establishes Renfield as the other via his madness and his actions during his fall to Draculas control and even Lucy is somewhat established in this manner, existence the least learned and scientific of the group. Stoker made each of the characters grotesque and bound them to one another, but also invested in making clear divides between them to create an additional tension and confusion in the concur that is just complicated by the arrival of Count Dracula. Upon the counts arrival in London, he is regarded as exotic and interesting, a prospect as completely a portion of The Other as the fear and trepidation.Often we are fascinated by those things that are different from us and we bank to see them, to learn more about them and even to imitate them while still holding them at a distance, knowing that they are not like we are. The fact that Stoker felt it necessary to establish this constitutional diff erence when Dracula could easily have become the other trustworthyly by virtue of being a creature of the night implies that Stoker was perhaps attempting to force the scholars that would read his novel to recognize a certain xenophobia within their culture.His depiction of the Eastern Europeans as highly different, almost medieval compare to the bustling and modern London can hardly be considered accidental. Stoker clearly had some thoughts about the way that the British ascertained the world around them and made Harker the extreme viewpoint of that British charm. Harker had to be an extreme, the most British of British subjects in his observations for stoker to force his earreach to see how absurd such characterizations could be. Works Cited Stoker, Bram. Dracula Accessed at http//www. literature. org/authors/stoker-bram/genus Dracula/chapter-01. html, December 9, 2007.