Example research essay topic: 19 Th Century Van Helsing - 785 words

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Bram Stoker had absolutely no idea just what sort of monster he was creating. I refer not to his title character, but to the book itself. It is highbrow enough that scholars and literary types feel the need to include it (if, perhaps, toward the bottom) on their lists of exemplary 19 th-century popular literature, yet lowbrow enough to interest the common reader. This is not a slight to the "common reader"; I'm one, too, and I tire of dense, obnoxiously self-important prose.

Stoker's goal was not to write "important" books. He knew exactly who his readers were - real people, not literary critics. That he managed to rise somewhat above even his own expectations with Dracula is a testament to his often latent skill. Stephen King has benefited from the seriousness with which some critics have taken Dracula, by often being taken more seriously than he perhaps deserves. King knows this, too; he has often described himself, tongue in cheek, as the McDonald's or General Motors of horror fiction. Stoker, while never as consistently successful as King, might have applied a similar description to himself.

Dracula, though written at the end of the 19 th century, seems a fairly modern book, at it moves swiftly and employs suspense techniques often associated with more recent books and films (i. e. , the shifting point-of-view, "cross-cutting", if you will, between different first-person narratives to build tension). It works exceedingly well, providing a model and formula followed by many successors - though often with less impressive results. The central villain - Count Dracula himself - is quite rightly absent from the stage a good deal of the time, so that he may grow in the imagination of the reader as his invisible presence permeates nearly every page. He is always just on the other of the window, door, or wall, or just across the street - his nefarious intentions influencing events as the book draws inexorably toward confrontation with the monster. Dracula's flaw is also, in a way, its virtue: there are no evil human characters.

Almost everyone is quite heroic and selfless in a sort of two-dimensional way. It is not that the characters are underdeveloped (as many complain), but that they tend to be representative of human beings' more enviable qualities, and therefor seem less realistic to the modern reader. But, then, one has to realize that the entire book is composed of diaries, letters, and faux-news clippings. I get a sense of subtle humor, of the "unreliable narrator" sort, from some passages of Dracula, as characters make themselves out to be more chivalrous, loving, and trusting than, perhaps, they actually were during the "real" events they describe. For example, one can only infer Dr. Seward's actual response to Van Helsing's request for autopsy knives so he can decapitate his beloved Lucy's corpse and take out her heart before burial!

Reading between the lines, Seward's description of the event in his diary becomes darkly funny as he struggles to maintain a sense of 19 th-century British decorum while relating the scene. His description of Van Helsing's anguish gives us a clue: Seward seems to suspect his mentor may be going off the deep end, and his expressions of blind trust in the old man may be a way of placating him. Dracula's greatest virtue, though, is its well-oiled plot. It's an impressive machine that still functions marvelously more than a century after its making. It is a mean, sharp skeleton fleshed out with numerous horrific digressions (the episodes with Dracula's "brides", the log of the Demeter, the "blogger lady", etc. ) that serve as tiles in a mosaic gradually completing the rather lean narrative that develops from them. Compare it with, say, Peter Straub's rather bloated attempt at the same technique in Floating Dragon, a rather messy and unsatisfying novel with isolated moments of brilliance, and you start to realize what a taut, precise engine Stoker really fashioned.

What keeps me from giving Dracula five stars is that it's necessarily limited by its own goals. Truly great popular novels somehow manage to tell exciting stories while also reaching more deeply than they pretend. They reverberate on levels well above (and below) their apparent target. While many have read exotic psychosexual interpretations into Dracula, I find it shallows out rather quickly once it has served up its scares and menace. Yes, there is a genuine (and intended) erotic subtext, but it fails to be profoundly illuminating, since it was never intended to be. It serves its disquieting purpose, and then departs, rather than lingering.

That's how Stoker designed his effects, and they work perfectly. He set out to write a good four-star novel, and he did.

Research essay sample on 19 Th Century Van Helsing