At the beginning, we did not know much about Dracula. We knew that he was a vampire and that the novel was written by Bram Stoker. But we did not know about the context where and when it was written. What is more, our conception of Dracula was influenced by Hollywood movies and TV series. So if anyone would have asked us to write a paragraph about him without information and background, it would have been something like this:
Dracula is a Gothic novel and there are several movies about it. The main character is Dracula, a Count and a vampire who lived in Transylvania. He is a blood-sucker, as all vampires are, and he sometimes hypnotizes his victims into doing his will. He was married, but as he was immortal and his wife was not, she died soon.
As you can see, our paragraph would have been quite short since we did not know much about him or the time when the story was written. After that, we searched for information about Dracula and when it was written.
We used this video:
Here are the links with the information we had used and more information for you to read:
Gothic Literature:
http://cai.ucdavis.edu/waters-sites/gothicnovel/155breport.html
Victorian Age:
This is the new paragraph we wrote with the
information we had found:
Dracula, the protagonist of the video, is a vampire
and the main antagonist of Bram Stoker's novel; and Mina, Dracula's lover, is
an engaged woman from the Victorian era.
Stoker’s novel belongs to Gothic Literature, which took place in England
during the Victorian Society from 1790 to 1830. Gothic Literature is the result
of the suppression of sexuality and the high moralistic values of that time.
Gothic novels set up sexual encounters and superstitious fantasies, as we can
observe that Dracula wants to be alone with Mina. The protagonist falls from
grace as Mina succumbs to temptation from him. In the clip we can see how she
lays down and falls victim to Dracula’s seduction. Dracula wants to bite her
but he finally does not. Here, the viewers can notice that Dracula has feelings
for Mina and that he is not a monster after all. Coppola also includes some
visual elements that are symbols, for example, the fact that at the beginning
of the scene Dracula and Mina are in a room full of light, which represents the
purity of the Victorian society. However, the scene continues in a dark room.
The lack of light represents the evil of society, its dark side.
As you can notice, the use of information really
improved our paragraph and we could expand on it and we could write a whole and
complete paragraph. We didn’t write about what we had just seen in movies, but what
we had found about Dracula from Bram Stoker’s book.
The first
thing that we had learnt in our research was that the novel has more characters
aside from Dracula himself, as Mina, the reincarnation of his dead wife. We
also had researched information about Gothic Literature and Victorian society,
which helped us to understand different symbols in Dracula in order to analyze
the clip, for example what Dracula and Mina represent. In the first paragraph,
we had learnt a few details about Dracula’s nature, but in the second one we
also understood what his nature symbolizes. Dracula himself represents the dark
side of the Victorian society, the antagonist in the Gothic Literature and Mina
represents the purity and morality of Victorian society. We had also reflected
upon the fact that he is not a monster as we had thought at the beginning (in
the first paragraph we had called him a “blood sucker”), but that he is able to
show love for Mina, as it is shown in the clip. Without information, we would
have not been able to make the analysis.
After reading both texts, reflect and compare the information we had at the beginning and the final text we wrote. Has it improved? Answer the following questions in your comment:
Can you see the importance of searching for information before writing or reading?
Was it useful to search for information?
Do you consider that context is important when we are writing? Can we write a good piece of writing if we do not check background first? Why?
