Blog Post #4: Exploring Research Interests

Passage:

“Dr Seward’s Diary

18 June. — He has turned his mind now to spiders, and has got several very big fellows in a box. He keeps feeding them his flies, and the number of the latter is becoming sensibly diminished, although he has used half his food in attracting more flies from outside to his room.

1 July. — His spiders are now becoming as great a nui- sance as his flies, and today I told him that he must get rid of them.

He looked very sad at this, so I said that he must some of them, at all events. He cheerfully acquiesced in this, and I gave him the same time as before for reduction.

He disgusted me much while with him, for when a hor- rid blowfly, bloated with some carrion food, buzzed into the room, he caught it, held it exultantly for a few moments be- tween his finger and thumb, and before I knew what he was going to do, put it in his mouth and ate it.

I scolded him for it, but he argued quietly that it was very good and very wholesome, that it was life, strong life, and gave life to him” (Stoker 100).

Science is an overarching field where the most brilliant minds come together to theorize and push humanity towards new paradigms. Intelligence plays a huge role in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Stoker consistently introduces topics regarding science and hire thinking. Examples of these topics are language, history, new technologies, ecosystems, and evolution. As an Ecology major, I am choosing to focus on how Stoker engages with the scientific method and ideas regarding ecology in his novel for the basis of my topic.

The study of Ecology and ideas involved with the matter are portrayed as an underlying theme through the characters in Dracula. At one point in the novel, a major component in Ecology called the “food chain” is bluntly depicted in the notes of a Doctor. The passage I chose from the Dracula novel is this blunt depiction of the food chain. Dr. Sewards notes on a mentally ill patient is a perfect representation of how Stoker engages with ecosystems biology in the novel.

In this passage, Dr. Seward is documenting a mentally ill patient who exhibits interesting behaviors. The patient collects flies, and once he had too many, he collected spiders to eat the flies. Once he had too many spiders, he collected birds and feed the spiders to the birds. Finally, the patient eats the birds because he believes that they “gave him life” (Stoker, 100). This idea of increasingly larger predators that eat each other is a perfect representation of the food chain in ecosystems biology. Food chains are pyramid-like diagrams that depict a hierarchy of predators, each of which holds a rank from smallest predator to most dominant. Each predator in a food chain needs each other to survive because they feed on each other. This is depicted by the patient stating how the birds he ate “gave life to him” (Stoker, 100). In a way, each predator on a food chain gives life.

I believe that Stoker is attempting to make the readers link the food chain depiction to Dracula and Jonathan Harker. Stoker is attempting to show in this passage that Dracula and Harker are both a part of a food chain, however, Dracula is the dominant predator at the top of the food chain because he is an undead Vampire while Harker is at the bottom of the food chain because he is only a human. I hypothesize that because Stoker portrays Dracula as a predator in a food chain, his primary goal is to make his readers sympathize with this antagonist. Stoker is attempting to show his readers that Dracula only kills people because he needs to in order to survive. Therefore Stoker is introducing the idea that Dracula is not intentionally evil.