Dracula: Barrier of Sanity vs. Insanity

1736 words 7 pages
Dracula Essay Rough Copy
The setting of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is in the late nineteenth-century London, where the flourishing of technology is replacing people’s belief of the old superstitious ways. The characters in this novel experience contacts with the supernatural beings that is unable to be proven even by the most advanced technology at the time, which leads them to doubt their own sanity. However, the progression of the novel proves that peace is restored into the characters’ lives after their doubts and confusions about what is reality and who is really mad. Ultimately, the categorization of the sane against the mad is unnecessary since the distinguishing factors shown in the novel are ambiguous. Subsequently, no characters can
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Being the madman that he is labelled as, he proves to have a vast amount of knowledge by referring to information from outside of his home country. Following the statement, seeing that it is not enough to win over his audience, Renfield attempts to appeal to their logos by expressing a philosophical statement that “when an individual has revolutionised therapeutically...conventional forms are unfitting, since they would seem to limit him to one of a class” (Stoker 263). This type of behaviour with strategic and logical response is certainly uncommon for individuals deemed as insane, so it ironically questions the sanity of the people who brought him to the asylum in the first place.
In addition, when describing the character Renfield, Stoker often uses contrasting devices to heighten the true quality of this character. After Renfield’s attempt to persuade them, Morris comments with the use of paradox that “[Renfield] is about the sanest lunatic [he] ever [sees]” (Stoker 267). Also, even Seward is astonished by Renfield’s impressive behaviour that “[he] at once [makes] the introduction” (Stoker 262) for Renfield and his friends, addressing Renfield as “Mr. Renfield” (Stoker 262). This can be contrasted to an earlier diary entry made by Seward when he refers to Renfield as “R.M. Renfield,

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