Character Archetypes

In Bram Stoker's Dracula, the character Lucy Westenra shows characteristics of the threshold guardian archetype. Lucy becomes ill and Abraham Van Helsing has to figure out what's wrong with her. It's only after he realizes what's making her ill that he’ll have the chance to face Count Dracula.

‘Van Helsing and I were shown up to Lucy's room. She was ghastly, chalkily pale. The red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently. Her breathing was painful to see or hear. Van Helsing's face grew set as marble, and his eyebrows converged till they almost touched over his nose. Lucy lay motionless, and did not seem to have strength to speak, so for a while we were all silent. Then Van Helsing beckoned to me, and we went gently out of the room."My god!" he said. "This is dreadful. There is not time to be lost. She will die for sheer want of blood to keep the heart's action as it should be. There must be a transfusion of blood at once.”’ (Bram Stoker, Dracula pages 158-159)

‘Just over the external jugular vein there were two punctures, not large, but not wholesome looking. There was no sign of disease, but the edges were white and worn looking, as if by some trituration. It at once occurred to me that this wound, or whatever it was, might be the means of that manifest loss of blood.’ (Bram Stoker, Dracula page 163)

Popular?

To me, a classic is something that is never truly forgotten. In order for a book to be a classic, it doesn't always have to be about something that everyone knows about. Sometimes, the books that are considered classics are on topics that very few people knew anything about before the book was read, but other times, the things that are remembered for the longest amount of time are things that people are familiar with.

Right now I'm reading Dracula by Bram Stoker, which is actually one of the books in the Scholastic Classics collection. This book is a classic because when it was published in 1897, vampires weren't a hugely popular topic. People were curious as to who exactly Count Dracula was, so they read the book. The book was written with journal and diary entries, and letters from multiple different characters, giving the reader the story from more than one perspective. This way of writing isn't the most common style, so it's interesting to read. Future generations of students should read this book because over time, the image of the vampire has changed drastically, into something completely different then what it was originally. Modern vampires are showed as being just like regular people. They can blend in with everybody else. Future generations should read this book to get a sense of what a vampire is meant to be like.