Stories That Change Us
Where great storytelling meets craft. Four writer-friends dive into the most iconic fiction of the last century—not just to admire it, but to dissect it. We uncover what makes these stories unforgettable: sharp characters, masterful plots, and the social undercurrents that give them staying power. The result? A lively, intergenerational conversation that sparks insights for writers at every stage. Whether you're dreaming of your debut or leveling up your next bestseller, this is your place to learn how great stories are made.
Stories That Change Us
Episode 14: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Dark, seductive, and terrifyingly atmospheric—Bram Stoker’s Dracula is more than a gothic horror novel; it’s a masterpiece of mood and structure. His lush imagery, slow-burning suspense, and exploration of sexuality, superstition, and modern science collide to create a story both timeless and unsettling. Join us as we delve into how Stoker’s literary craft immortalized the Count—not just as a monster of folklore, but as a symbol of fear that still haunts the imagination.
Question: what is a story that has changed your life?
https://instagram.com/storiesthat_changeus?igshid=eTlibmFxdXZmbXV5&utm_source=qr
Jonathan Harker is a young English solicitor who travels to a remote castle in Transylvania to help the enigmatic count Dracula purchase property in London. At first, the count is polite, but strange. Soon Jonathan realizes he's a prisoner in a fortress crawling with dark secrets, and that his host is no man, but an immortal Vampire. Dracula sail to England, bringing death in his wake. He sets his sights on lucy, the vivacious friend of Jonathan's fiance, Mina. Lucy falls gravely ill and her friends uncover a dark truth: a vampire is feeding on her. They attempt to save her, but Lucy dies only to rise again, hunting children by night. Heartbroken, her friends destroy her to free her soul. Now the hunters, Jonathan, his fiance Mina, Dr. Van Helsing and Lucy's devoted friends, vow to destroy Dracula himself. The count strikes back by attacking Mina, trying to turn her into his bride. Racing against time, they track him across Europe to Transylvania and in a final desperate assault, they kill Dracula, freeing Mina, and ending his centuries of terror. But his shadow lingers in the blood, in the memories and in the fear that evil never truly dies.
Melissa Grace:Hello, I'm Melissa Grace with Stories That Change Us here with my author friends.
Kat Lewis:My name is Kat Lewis and I write romantic thrillers.
Micah Leydorf:My name is Micah Leydorf and I write inspirational fiction and bible studies.
Laurel Thomas:My name is Laurel Thomas and I write Fantasy.
Melissa Grace:And we are here today discussing Bram Stoker's Dracula. We love to read good fiction so that we can write good fiction. And this is a classic. It's a gothic horror novel. It launched an entire subgenre. Guinness Book of World Records calls Dracula the most widely portrayed literary character of all time. It's been made into innumerable movies, different languages. One that they made in Germany caused such a stir in the 1920s that medical professionals had to say, quit showing this because everybody's freaking out and we have real patients to take care of. People are fainting. And it made quite a splash. Stoker was an Irishman. He never visited Transylvania. He researched details in the reading room in the British Museum. It's a beautiful domed building in the middle of the court of this lovely museum, along with his contemporaries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Carl Marks Lennon. I guess they all hung out there. It was like the,
Micah Leydorf:So you have something up on Bram Stoker then, that you actually just got back from Sylvania, right? Oh yeah. Melissa. Yes. Yes. So he never went there. But you have
Melissa Grace:Yes. And it was lovely. They still even at this point really lean into the historical outfits, you know, that are very colorful. That he talks about that in his attempt to set the scene and show these townspeople who are all just freaking out that he's going anywhere near this castle. Dracula is, uh, magical realism, which is also what Laurel writes.
Laurel Thomas:Yes, I do.
Melissa Grace:Which is, it's not fantasy because fantasy invents a whole new world. But in Dracula, it's this world with just some magical elements. Rumors say that Dracula was based on Vlad the Impaler a 15th century ruler in present day Romania, who was a bad dude. The stoker's notes don't support that theory. And the castle that claims to be Draculas Castle in Transylvania, he spent three hours there changing horses so he could go somewhere else.
Micah Leydorf:Is that what you learned when you were in Transylvania?
Melissa Grace:Yes, that's what I learned when I was in, but the castle is just incredibly creepy and what was portrayed in the book really does look like this castle. And I don't know if there were sketches of it that Stoker saw in this library, but he did describe this castle very well.
Micah Leydorf:So that's hope for all of us who write about things that maybe we haven't seen that that's, you can do research and Yes. Get it accurate.
Melissa Grace:Yes. And yeah, I especially love that'cause I'm writing about China and I've never been to China. But we have so much to talk about with this book. It was very outta character for me to wanna read this book.
Kat Lewis:So out of character.
Micah Leydorf:I think it was your suggestion though,
Melissa Grace:it was Melissa. It was, but a lot of my suggestion was based on, Micah, something that you said that you read this with your Well Read Mom's Group.
Micah Leydorf:Well, I I don't know if we're gonna dive into, you know, we usually talk about the literary elements first, but if we skip ahead to some of the transcendent social commentary, it's kind of a good versus evil. The quote that I picked for my favorite quote, which we normally like to share, mine was, the one where theme is stated, right. So it wasn't a description, it wasn't the creepiness. But the quote I chose was,"The world seems full of good men. Even if there are monsters in it". So you wouldn't think like, oh, this is a monster book. Or like, this is horror. But I love that, that actually that's not the theme. The theme is of these six friends who like loved each other and sacrificed for each other and who risked incredible danger and they didn't have to, right?
Laurel Thomas:And it was all for Mena,
Micah Leydorf:Exactly. They were sacrificing for her that she wouldn't go to hell. Hell, you know, so that she could go to, she wouldn't be undead when she died. She could go to heaven, that they had to destroy him, otherwise her eternity was at stake. So these five men, you know, banded together for these two women There's so much good overcoming evil, and it actually reminded me of one of my other favorite quotes of GK Chesterton where he says, that fairytales do not tell children that, dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. The fairytale tells the children that dragons can be killed. I love that. Like there's lots of horror out there and I'm not really into horror, but I love that evil is real, but that there can be victory over evil and that You know, again, the, the good can triumph and love can triumph. So I wasn't expecting, when I read Dracula, I wasn't my choice either. Again, the book club chose it. I was like, really? This is what we're gonna read. Usually we read like Jane Austen and like all these Anne of Green Gables
Melissa Grace:Like you said in your article, which really is an excellent little article about this book. The Sweet Worlds Like kind worlds. And this is not a kind world.
Kat Lewis:This world is not any of those things. And I think it is such a great backdrop for good versus evil. And he really built up Dracula as like this almost insurmountable evil. Mm-hmm. Right.
Laurel Thomas:Well, he's had centuries to perfect evil. And so he's not only incredibly evil at the core, but he's very smart, powerful. Mm-hmm. Very powerful because of what he knows and what he's experienced.
Melissa Grace:Well, before we do skip too far ahead. Laurel what is your favorite quote? What did you choose as your favorite quote?
Laurel Thomas:Okay, okay? This is all about Mina. So they've lost Lucy. And Lucy was this endearing, beautiful young woman, and because they are not aware of Dracula, Lucy eventually becomes the undead. Dracula immediately targets Mina, because of course she's Jonathan's wife. So anyway, there, this is toward the end and they're pursuing Dracula. But Dracula is really sly but this quote is so interesting. It says,"Our dear Madam Mina is once more our teacher. Her eyes have been where we were blinded". So Mina knows that evil. Because she's been touched by that evil. She's been marked by that evil, and yet that becomes a weapon against Dracula with the right heart. And to me, that was so powerful. It's not like we're never not touched by evil because we are. But it can become a weapon of righteousness. And it does in Mina because she senses where he is. She senses that he's still on the ship. She gives them basically this intel that they need that they would have no access to without her.
Melissa Grace:are not necessarily here to talk about spiritual things, but this book kind of begs for it. Because it is full of just little truths like that that are just universal spiritual truths.
Micah Leydorf:Well, it also has tons of actual overt Christian imagery. Yes. How do you defeat Dracula? Is life like
Kat Lewis:The power is the blood? I'm like, oh, I, what is,
Micah Leydorf:Do you defeat Dracula with the consecrated host and you know, the crucifix, like this is
Kat Lewis:The holy water.
Melissa Grace:You have to draw the,
Laurel Thomas:And a good knife. Yes.
Melissa Grace:Yes.
Micah Leydorf:And we And be heading. And beheading.
Melissa Grace:Yes, yes. Better than that. We, there are places we kind of take a very sharp left turn from actual truth. Like, she can't go to heaven because she's got a little mark on her forehead and things like that. But in the world,
Micah Leydorf:vampires aren't real, Melissa.
Laurel Thomas:Thank you.
Kat Lewis:Yeah, because there's a whole generation of Twilight enthusiasts who are not sure.
Laurel Thomas:Alright. Bottom line. It's a great story.
Melissa Grace:It is. It's a great,
Laurel Thomas:and it doesn't lose the power of the story, And it contains spiritual truth to me. That is, that is actually the kind of fiction I wanna write. I wanna write fiction that is a really great story and. As readers are enjoying the really great story, they are exposed to spiritual truth. How about you cat?
Kat Lewis:My quote feels more like a thematic quote as well, and it's actually what Dracula is most known for saying, which is,"Welcome to my house. Enter freely and of your own will".
Micah Leydorf:Yes. So this is powerful Dialogue
Laurel Thomas:Was so good. This is powerful dialogue.
Kat Lewis:But I also think that's exactly how evil works. Evil's very hospitable. Evil's very much like, here's the front door. You're welcome. Come sit down. I mean, what does Dracula do for Jonathan?
Laurel Thomas:You have to cross the boundary.
Kat Lewis:You have to cross the threshold. That's absolutely. And and that's actually a recurring theme that we see over and over. How can a vampire enter your house? Only if you welcome it in. How can evil into your life? Only if you welcome it in, right? And I love the juxtaposition of, you know, how is evil overcome? Yes, through righteousness and through honestly like the blood of the savior, but also through community. Right? What's the opposite of isolation? It's community. And Jonathan shows us that in and of himself, he could not have defeated Dracula. It took a village of people all pursuing the same goal.
Micah Leydorf:Yeah, I love that. Again, all of us are seemingly in our quotes or talk we're just jumping right to those thematic elements. But then back to jump to like how we, as storytellers, we wanna communicate these themes in our writing and how do we do that? I love just like looking at the practical things, like, okay, like you said so you can convey that sometimes through, you know, piece of dialogue. Or the plot structure again. Like, okay, we're gonna convey the community is so important, that's how they're gonna defeat him is like these six people working together. So, again, there's the plot structure conveying the theme. Another thing that I found interesting just because in my book, my novel, is an epistle,
Kat Lewis:Epistolary,
Micah Leydorf:So basically letters. Letters told through letters. Letters, yeah. So that's not a very common anymore structure. And as a matter of fact, when I went to, you know, agents publisher, they're like, yeah, we don't really do that. And I'm like, well, that's really what I wanna do, but but I love that for Dracula they used it that really heightens the tension. That you have these first person, like you have this journal of this man who's trapped in the castle, or it's the unknown of only getting his perspective. You don't know what truth is. Like you only catch a glimpse of Dracula because you only have his perspective
Laurel Thomas:and it expands by Jonathan's perspective.
Micah Leydorf:Well, and then as we get other people's perspective,'cause he has multiple like, oh, okay, now we're gonna skip to Lucy's perspective. But I thought that was an interesting way of using that structure to create this tension with this monster rather than having what's more common in 19th century novels was the third person narrative that we don't use a lot now we just have kind of the first person. But anyway, so I really liked that, that structure in creating this tension
Melissa Grace:and within that structure, he did such a good job building suspense and raising questions. Like in Harker's Journal, he starts out with I saw something like the upholstery and Dracula's castle. I saw something like that in Hampton Court, which is 15th century English castle. But they were worn and frayed and mouth eaten. And so, oh, well, that's unusual. And just little hints that he records in his journal for We Transylvanian novel, Nobles love not to think that our bones lie, worn and frayed and moth Eaton among common Men, the Common Dead. He just built just little statements here and there from Dracula that just didn't seem quite, and he didn't ever eat and he, oh, it's morning already. I need to go, you know, just little things until. The mirror incident where he sha where Harker is shaving and he doesn't see the counts reflection. Like that's kind of a crossover where, okay, we, we've gone. Beyond just, you know, conjecture and, and then he sees him crawling down the side of the castle like a lizard. And, you know, I mean, I'm a prisoner and that lady tried to bite me and, you know, just all the things.
Kat Lewis:Some somebody said it here that the whole, one of the reasons Dracula is such a figure for so much lore for Yeah. He's so iconic is'cause there's like this imbued sensuality in mm-hmm. What he does. But it is interesting how, from my 21st century perspective with another bestselling work like Twilight, how I feel like we lost a lot of that creepy and we leaned in a lot to like the intimacy of,
Laurel Thomas:The sensual,
Kat Lewis:The sensual. Whereas in this novel, they're afraid for their souls. And like a twilight counterpart, she was like, I'm happy to lose my soul if I have this man that I love. And so it's interesting to see how like the vampire narrative has transitioned.
Laurel Thomas:Well, I will say though that Jonathan was not seduced by Dracula, but when the three women came in. And they were incredibly seductive and he was almost in their grasp. And if Dracula hadn't intervened, I mean, and that was the pull of that seduction that was so incredibly strong women.
Micah Leydorf:Maybe that accounts a little bit for its popularity of, you know, this is in 19th century Victorian England. And there were all these sexual morays and whatnot. And so it was like, oh, this is quite tantalizing.
Melissa Grace:It was actually. I feel like that it was the, because he did use some language to the effect of, i, I wish I had written it down to know the word, the exact word, but it was something to the effect of, I was like, Ooh, yes, and then no and oh itself, but anyway that was in Victorian England. That was kind of the equivalent of pretty racy.
Micah Leydorf:Yes, definitely. And again it's interesting how some people have gone more to the horror side. And then you say, say, especially not just Twilight, but you know, you can't even think of like with Anne Rice and vampire Diaries, and it just seemed like Buffy and like, it just feels like it's all over the place for a while there where it's like vampires everywhere. Which is I think is just a sign of great literature that here it is, oh goodness, like 125 years later, it still has such an impact and it's so culturally relevant. Like to create a character that basically defines this whole,
Melissa Grace:A whole sub genre,
Micah Leydorf:Whole sub genre,
Melissa Grace:Whole sub genre. It is the dream. It's what we all wanna do. Um, any other literary elements that he did really well? Because whenever there's a good story, you can have a great story, but it has to have building blocks.
Laurel Thomas:I, maybe Micah said earlier that building horror well is not easy. And so he takes Jonathan's perspective and then just builds and builds and builds. Because actually at the beginning it's kind of funny, it's like that Geico commercial where the teenagers in the rainy night and the guy's standing outside an old barn with his chainsaw and one of the girls says he looks nice.
Micah Leydorf:You're like, don't go to the castle. Don't like all these Translyvanian people are trying so hard to warn you.
Laurel Thomas:Here. Have a crucifix.
Melissa Grace:You're gonna need this.
Laurel Thomas:But I mean, outside of that jonathan's point of view because he is a rational man and so that building to the place where like the crux of horror is you cannot get out.
Kat Lewis:And I think people have a lot of opinions about what they think the horror genre is, but horror is actually the exploration of the unknown. And people do that in a lot of different ways. I think Bram Stoker did a really great job of using our own logic against us. Even as like an audience coming to the story knowing that it's a story about a vampire, right? Even as Draculas feeding Jonathan his little meals and he's this really kind of Debounair charming guy. He does a really great job of I think of presenting Dracula initially in a way where you're like, is this Dracula? Or was it the horse driver that's Dracula, or is it a townsperson who is like this big evil person? Like, we don't know. And the horror of it is when it comes to this like shockingly irrefutable, oh no, that is the man that I'm sitting down and having coffee with every morning. And oh by the way, I can't get out and I can't go home.
Laurel Thomas:Because he's powerful and he's gradually revealed as more and more powerful.
Kat Lewis:And he's very intellectual. I don't think that any, iteration of Dracula that I have seen, or any iteration vampires that I've seen.
Micah Leydorf:I think like Anne Rice with those vampires kind like been around for centuries. And they've seem old and they seem like worldly wise and I mean, you don't get that with Twilight. Right. Edward doesn't seem super. Yeah. And not even wise from all his years.
Melissa Grace:And he doesn't have to be,
Kat Lewis:even with like Vampire diaries, like you don't get like that old intellect where he's playing a game of chess that you don't even know is being played. Like that was the interesting thing about the character of Dracula was how intelligent he was and the fact that if it wasn't for Mina being bitten and her hypnotic states. Honestly, he would've outwitted them 10 times over, but before the end of the novel.
Micah Leydorf:So that brings up, that was one of my Mina's, one of my favorite characters because, she's very feminist, right? This is back a hundred years ago to have like this very much masculine driven, like these men are actually saving these women. But at the same time, it shows this kind of unexpected strength, like that she's the key. She's the linchpin. Without her, they would've never done it. So I just think that's quite, but also revolutionary for him to frame it in that way where yes, the woman's the victim, like Lucy. You know, she was the helpless, beautiful, innocent that was killed. But then you have Mina, who's also so virginal, so pure, so holy. But she's also the one who brings him down.
Kat Lewis:Well, and I think that he does a great job of foreshadowing that. Talk about Mina as the key, because we talk about Jonathan is writing letters to Mina up until the time that he can't. But remember, he and Mina have this secret language mm-hmm. That they've created. They're shorthand, you know, and it, it's the shorthand that Jonathan puts a lot of faith in. Like, okay, she's gonna be able to like understand. So even in just like that idea of like, Jonathan having this hope of, I'm gonna send out this letter in this shorthand that only she's gonna read, and this is my SOS letter, right? Mina is the key, even in such an early state in the novel. Right. I think it's, I think it's cool to see him like foreshadow that in a way that's very practical and tangible.
Melissa Grace:And that's another thing that Stoker does really skillfully is cut off all his exits. Besides crawling down the side of the castle because he does the thing with the townswoman coming and saying, you know, you have my child. I want my child, and all the wolves come. And so he sees that and he knows that all the wolves are in the power. All the wolves are gonna come if he leaves. So that is just another skillful thing that Stoker did to say you really can't leave
Micah Leydorf:Again talking about just literary elements that he uses that I thought were skillful was the patient in the asylum that he uses. But there in England is this patient of one of the characters, the doctor in this insane asylum who is eating these disgusting flies, spiders, rats. And he's like, saying these insane things about his masters coming. And again, that's another way of he just builds up the tension, right. Of like, does this have any connection to, to the story where we're to the story. But again, when you say don't waste characters. Don't throw away characters that I just thought that just added a really creepy element.
Melissa Grace:Oh yes.
Laurel Thomas:And compassion as well, because you end up feeling so sorry for him'cause he's truly a victim.
Kat Lewis:He really is. And we touched on how there's a lot of kind of spiritual references and even biblical references. Renfield is the name of the patient in the asylum who was talking about my master is coming. Once essentially Dracula comes in and attacks him and mortally wounds Renfield. He begins to talk about the draw of Dracula, and he was talking about. Dracula essentially was saying the same things to Renfield that Satan was saying to Jesus in the desert, right? You know if you just worship me, right? I'll give you the bread, I'll give you the acclaim, I'll give you the fame. And I just thought, man, as an author, finding, maybe not necessarily spiritual tones, but social tones that you can pull over into your work, right? That an audience is gonna immediately understand and reference, but doing it in a way that is creepy. Doing it in a way that makes you ask questions of yourself. Like, what is sustaining me? What's feeding my life? Like, all these things. But you know, we talked about like an Uber sexually repressed Victorian culture. They were also a heavily churched Victorian culture. Right? So I think that they would've created those parallels to definitely, you know, to Christ and the importance of blood and the Bible, all these things. And I think it just adds to the creepiness of it all.
Micah Leydorf:So, it's interesting you brought up sympathy for Renfield and actually what I thought was just really interesting, again, I know we kind of going back to the spiritual elements, but, what I thought was so interesting, and again, these days with like anti-heroes and such that are so popular, I thought it was so interesting how there actually was the element of compassion for Dracula, for those three vampire women. I don't remember it quite so much with Renfield. But Dracula. I mean like the terrible, terrible. But once he's killed, it's actually viewed as an act of mercy to let him finally rest in peace, finally die. That he was once a victim. Right. And so that's the truth that we know that every single person is created in the image of God. And no matter what kind of monster that they turn actually, they're a victim. Right?
Melissa Grace:Well, the renfield the, the situation with Renfield was he had the biggest character arc of anybody, because he did, in the end, he drew the line at helping him hurt Mina. That was why he killed him. So I feel like the compassion for him that is different from Dracula. With Dracula it's that messy business of choice versus where the enemy takes us after we make a choice.
Micah Leydorf:That goes back to Lucy, I feel like that was such a beautiful picture too. Well, not beautiful but powerful maybe picture where you know her friends are trying to protect her. They're trying to give her all these tools, give her the necklace of garlic and the crucifix and saying, do not open the window no matter what. And it's that little choice like you harken back to Kat. Because you made that choice to open the window then it leads to such a horrible place to where your undead person preying on young children. But all you did was open the window.
Laurel Thomas:I got the sense though, that really Dracula was in the area to get a bigger grip on the area to have more potential victims. That really his plan was way beyond just Mina and I think at sometimes that in a literary sense, you see that Lucy basically is like a martyr. I mean, she's the very first victim but nobody knew about Dracula, and really, Mina just runs out and sees a dark figure over her. So there's no way to define that for Lucy. But you know, in a literary sense and also in just in the physical world, sometimes evil will hit like that, but we've never seen it before. We didn't know it was there. We don't even know how to handle it. And sadly, there's a very real person who's suffering because of that. So anyway, I don't know if that makes sense, but that's kind of the way I saw Lucy because they tried to save her, but they didn't know what was going on.
Micah Leydorf:I feel that's how we are in today's society. I know Laurel, you and I were having a conversation earlier about social media. People were like saying, oh, you know, all these bad things about social media, like first, and maybe it didn't turn out the way they envisioned it. But then in a whole nother way, like we can see the dangers, right? Like say, so maybe it wasn't foreseeable at the time, but it's like, okay, well now you can kind of see like it's led us to a place that we don't wanna go. And maybe we couldn't have seen that. But now, now that we have this information, what do we do with it now? So there's some danger to this that might be actually. Melting our brains or causing us to un lovingly divisive and anxious, un loving, unloving to our neighbors, and yes, and yeah, and anxious and depressed and all these things. There's like evidence to those.
Laurel Thomas:But you know, it's interesting too, I think, and what I love about a novel is that you're dealing with characters. So how do they recognize, okay, this is a vampire and. You know, Lucy, they have to deal with Lucy because she's doing vampire things basically. So I see that like not only in books, but in real life that you see it in someone you know and someone that you love, and will you confront it?
Melissa Grace:The social commentary that, one of the other questions we like to ask is what social commentary has transcended the life of the book? And I think that all the books that we've read, all great literature,
Micah Leydorf:All great literature,
Melissa Grace:That is a powerful piece of it. So, who has something that they haven't had a chance to say yet about that?
Kat Lewis:Well, I will say, I was reading the Cliff notes of Dracula because, I got lost in the weeds right around chapter 15, and I just needed a light, okay. I needed to see where are we going with the story. And let me tell you talk about great literature. I intended to only read the cliff notes but the cliff notes were so compelling I ended up picking the book back up and saying,
Micah Leydorf:wait, Kat what was this? You were gonna only read the Cliff notes,
Kat Lewis:right? I know, I, I read half the book and I lost, they're called
Laurel Thomas:Spark Notes now.
Kat Lewis:But listen, I know, I know. I read half the book and I thought, I have no idea what's where this book is taking me. And I checked out and I was like. Group is tonight, and anyway, so I ended up reading the SparkNotes, but the SparkNotes were so engaging. I was like, lemme go back and read this book, because I didn't wanna miss out. But one of the, one of the comments that SparkNotes gave me about Bram Stokes position on the symbolism of Dracula was, Dracula actually represented the aristocracy. And for Bram it was essentially like the evil rich people, right? And when, um, the group of the friends finally defeat Dracula and behead him it was almost like a class issue book for Bram Stoker. Oh, that's interesting. I'm not doing that. That's interesting. With Dracula representing kind of the wealthy evil. I didn't see it, but I thought it was interesting.
Laurel Thomas:Yeah, I think that's why in our podcast we focus on the literary elements as much as possible because if it wasn't written well, if it didn't have great characters, if there wasn't a real villain that was impossible to escape or to conquer, it wouldn't be a story. It would be like a historical treatise, which would be interesting but unmoving for the most part. And yet, a good novel is moving when that mother is crying and she's pounding on the door. And she said, I know you have my child, and we realize what has happened to the child, and then the wolves come. Okay. You can say what you will. That is a literary device. That is horror at its best. Because we saw a manifestation of how depraved, it doesn't matter that the little women were seductive and were gonna bite his neck. No, they were after children. I mean, it's a universal
Melissa Grace:because there's nothing worse there. There's nothing worse than being,
Laurel Thomas:There's nothing worse than to attack an innocent, defenseless child with an evil that it cannot overcome. And yet the crux of great literature is that it does that to us. It brings us to that place.
Melissa Grace:Well, those themes are so strong in what you write. There's always, there's. Always an innocent,
Laurel Thomas:but why would it be horror, right? I mean, what is it about horror? It's like an utter depravity that is just on the inside of us.
Melissa Grace:I think that this novel explores just the good triumphs over evil, fascination with the unknown and supernatural and holy triumphing over the profane. Um, um, there's just, well, that was a great discussion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, last question. Who's your, who's your character?
Laurel Thomas:Mina.
Melissa Grace:Alright. Laurel loves Mina. Mm-hmm. Why do you love Mina?
Laurel Thomas:Well, I like Mina because she's a very strong female character without acting like a man. She's very feminine but she's strong and she has an integrity that's really unshakeable and it carries her through even the times where she feels like she's really been marked beyond repair by Dracula. She feels dirty, she feels defiled, she feels unclean, all of the things. And yet she still makes decisions of integrity and of courage. And she makes them not on the basis of just for her, but for the people that she loves. And so, to me she's in kind of an ageless heroine. And I don't know, as soon as I, when I read some contemporary fiction, I think, okay, so does a woman have to be a man to be strong? I mean, can women not be strong without acting like men? Just a question.
Micah Leydorf:I think they were very much unified by her femininity. Like, I think if it wasn't that they were unified by trying to save her and that they were drawn to her because of her femininity.'cause you know, again, to get six people to, of all different stripes, to unify and to risk their lives, that's not an easy thing. To do,
Melissa Grace:well, I loved how he got us to fall in love with Lucy. Because she's writing letters to Mina about how these three boys all came to propose to her. And you know how she cried with the two of them that she had to turn down. I mean, we are supposed to fall head over heels in love with Lucy so that it's huge when he attacks Lucy and he turns Lucy into a monster. I thought he did that very skillfully.
Kat Lewis:I feel like all the books this season are not books that I would ever have picked up. But honestly I think it's a good study in how to write flat character arcs because really nobody's character arc changes. They all start out believing that Dracula is evil and they all risk the greatest things to kill that evil thing. And it was shockingly compelling. Again, I set the book down and then had to pick it back up and say, let me slug through all of this dialogue and get to the good stuff.
Laurel Thomas:For many reasons in a literary sense, it works because it pulls in an audience. You know, we wanna believe the supernatural. We know that there's more than what we see. And so a story about the supernatural is compelling.
Melissa Grace:Well, what motivated me to, to want to read it was also hearing that from other storytellers and people instructing about story structure, used it as a model of the story structure where the hinge is in the middle, everything changes. When Lucy is killed they go from trying to save her to trying kill Dracula. And it just piqued my interest.
Micah Leydorf:I'm gonna just repeat my chest or routine quote from earlier because it feels good with what you just said. You know that fairytales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairytales tell the children that dragons can be killed. So there you go. That it communicates that truth of the goodness. Evil. Can we be defeated? We already know there is evil. Nobody has to tell us.
Melissa Grace:That's right. And on fun note. That's right. Fun discussion. All right. Thank you everyone. All good night.
Kat Lewis:All right, thanks everyone. We'll see you on the next episode of Stories That Change Us.
