Vampirism as a Shadow in Bram Stoker’s Dracula
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v3i12.622Keywords:
Communion, Dracula, Eating misrepresentation, Stoker.Abstract
Through the studies of literal and metaphorical meanings of eating in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), this article investigates how the depictions of food and eating culture in Transylvania are the results of misrepresentations. Contrast to the illustrations about the consumptions of food in the Western table which accompanies the spirit of unity, the predatory images of vampires in Transylvania can be easily associated with an idea that communion is absent in the foreign land. The purpose of this article is, thus, to subvert the binary oppositions between East and West, with the focus on the descriptions of food and eating. For this goal, the examinations in this article include: three female vampires’ language which involves the sense of communion, the Western characters’ eating at a table which turns out to be a defective place in achieving the spirit of unity, and a lunatic character R.M. Renfield’s abnormal eating habits that can be interpreted within the contemporary socioeconomic contexts. Ultimately, this article is to show how the vampiric images in Stoker’s Dracula function as shadows that cover the violence of the Western middle-class capitalists in the contemporary capital-oriented society.
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