Run Aground?

Ahoy, fellow readers! It’s time for our next literary adventure! This time, however, we will not be traveling to a new and distant land. We will be remaining in port. Not to worry - we haven't run aground! Our adventure here in Transylvania, dominion of the infamous Count Dracula and his creatures of the night, simply has not come to an end quite yet. While we will be remaining here a while longer, we will not be traveling the same paths we have before. Rather, we will be exploring new passages through the dark terrain of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

 

How will we do this? With a map, of course. To ensure that we don’t get lost in the literary foothills of Stoker’s novel, we will be following a map in the form of an article of literary criticism by Stetson University English Professon Jamil Khader, “Un/Speakability and Radical Otherness: The Ethics of Trauma in Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

So, be prepared! It’s a dark road we venture down!

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Khader’s article brings up a number of intriguing points regarding Stoker’s novel, including what it seems to say about trauma and memory. One major point which Khader makes relates to the fact that, in Dracula, it seems as though many of the characters struggle to deal with their traumatic experiences on an individual level. Khader states, “while traumatic vampiric attacks cannot be fully known or represented accurately and coherently at the individual level, it is possible, even advisable, to represent such events at the collective level.” Khader goes on to point out that this can be seen, among other instances, when Johnathan Harker gives Mina his journal, telling her that he does not want to remember the terrible things he knows he must have recorded, that – should she decide to read his journal – she should keep his forgotten experiences to herself. Khader also goes on to say, “unable to admit the trauma to themselves, the vampires’ victims can only register the traumatic vampiric attack on their unconscious, only to emerge later in disruptive and shattering form in their lives.” In explaining all of this, Khader indicates that the only way in which those who experienced, in some way, the horror of vampiric attack could only really begin to face the traumatic things which had happened to them when they pulled together as a group, when they began to compile their documents and share what they had gone through without fear of judgement by the others.

 

This leads into another of Khader’s major points, “the inhumanity of witnessing.” To better explain this idea, Khader references Giorgio Agamben and his work, Remnants of Auschwitz. Khader explains that Agamben indicated that many survivors of the Holocaust, rather than sharing their own story, tell the stories of those who died, thus removing themselves, in a way, from the experience. Quoting Agamben, Khader explains the problematic nature of this idea as, “it is impossible to bear witness…‘from the inside, since no one can bear witness from the inside of death’; and it is impossible from the outside, ‘since the outsider is by definition excluded from the event.’” This idea is then applied to Lucy and her role in the narrative. Though she plays a part in telling of her own experiences while she is still alive, Lucy’s narrative, as Khader points out, is immediately excluded upon her death, her perspective never shared after she becomes a vampire. However, while the others have trouble speaking of their own traumatic experiences, they try very hard to convey Lucy’s, acting as witnesses rather than victims and falling into the paradox explained by Agamben.

 

While there are many more paths explored on Khader’s critical map of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, these were among those I found most intriguing. The final path on this map which I would like to follow is this; Kader states, “it is impossible to overlook the ways in which Count Dracula’s voice is excluded.” Although the title character of Stoker’s text, the only time the reader really hears his voice firsthand is early in the text through his letter to Jonathan. Given this, I would like to leave you with a question; for what reason would Stoker exclude the perspective of the character who is (arguably) the most important in the text? While Khader poses the idea of anthropocentrism as a likely answer, I believe that there are many possibilities for what I believe to be Stoker’s very deliberate structural choice.

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Our journey on land has come to a close, and it seems to be time to head back to the ship. I hope you haven’t lost your sea legs yet – our next voyage should be underway soon!

Until next time!

 

 

Khader, Jamil. "Un/Speakability And Radical Otherness: The Ethics Of Trauma In Bram Stoker's "Dracula.." College Literature 39.2 (2012): 73. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.