Describe how science is significant in the novel, Dracula.

Dracula can be interpreted as a mad scientist, and he represents how science can be used for corruption. He experiments on people, he toys with his potential victims and manipulates their minds, and he particularly performs experiments on Renfield who is in Sewards care. On the other hand, Van Helsing and Seward are the explicit scientist characters. They are examples of how one might use science for the better good. In this case, their aim is to use their knowledge in order to defeat Dracula. However, the scientists' ultimate faith in the scientific method limits them in their pursuit of Dracula. Van Helsing recognizes that scientists lack an open mind in mystical events such as Dracula's ability to materialise and dematerialise at will as good scientists are limited by their belief that what their limited senses notice are what constitute reality. The characters initially resist the possibility that vampires exist as they are limited by their interpretation of their observations. In the passage from page 160 to 161, Helsing seeks to open Sewards mind to the possibilities that science has yet to unfold, possible impossibilities. Although science is about empiricism, it also involves exploring the unknown and beyond, introducing the scientific gothic that would have intrigued Victorian readers. Science is a subject that challenges the mind. We see this when Seward desires to find an answer or explanation, he is willing to understand. His logic although favourable in experimental observations and tests, it would have concluded the wrong assumption in this case, you are wrong. Helsing and Seward are chief participants in the debate on scientific method. They are brought into conflict with the supernatural, and their rational view of the world is broadened to accommodate the irrational and inexplicable. It is not the monstrous Count but the progress of modern science that creates so much anxiety at the time that it was penned. Even today, science and religion conflict with each other and varies across person to person according to their perception. The issue of eternal life is brought up when we read, some few who live on always and science tries to discover the truth behind its existence, whereas the answer of religion relies on the faith of Christian redemption. One interpretation includes the view of Dracula being an embodiment of the idea that people are simply tools or machines, we might just be an android where Dracula consumes their souls, he infects other people with this idea so that they become like soulless bodies as well. Readers are projected with the idea of contemporary science draining the life out of religious belief. Neurology is a branch of science, and is linked to the function of our brain stem. One idea of how neurology is implicitly bought into the novel is the idea that Dracula embodies what the brain stem is supposed to do. The brain stem is the most primitive part of our brains, it ensures our basic needs and the fact that it is primitive brings the idea of predatory, lifeblood, and even sexuality, since that is can be considered as another primitive need. Even back in the late Victorian period, scientists knew that the brain stem controlled automatic functions such as breathing, circulation and heart rate, the processes one does not consciously think about. Since Dracula does not have a soul and neither do his victims (because he takes their souls), all that is left in his victims bodies are their automatic functions. Therefore, we can view Dracula and his victims are essentially brain stems. Sewards methodology in his diaries include the way he meticulously records his observations, simply that there is some cause in common, but he finds he cannot explain them as he deals with the abnormal, I did not quite understand his answer. The fact that Dracula is a novel that involves much of the supernatural; it is interesting how science plays a significant role in defeating Dracula. Stokers narrative strategy includes the variation on the Gothic tradition of telling a story without one central,

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omniscient narrative voice, it is compromised of a series of mostly first person accounts of events. Among these narratives include letters, newspaper articles, some are written in shorthand; others dictated on to a phonograph, therefore the novel gives a wonderful insight into the emerging technology of the nineteenth century and of its implications. Another role that science plays in the novel, includes how it represents power. It is known that Dracula went after Mina, because of her knowledge and the fact that her skills as a typist has recorded the events concerning of his activities. He had wanted that destroyed and that did not just include the documents, but Mina herself. In chapter 23, page 251, we find how Dracula uses science for his own purposes. Van Helsing informs the others the other men of Draculas quest for advancement and power and he does this through learning beyond compare. He is experimenting, and doing it well relates to the conducts of science and we see it play in the Draculas plans to take over and gain power. Overall, we find that science and religion work together and are both taken into account in order to defeat Dracula. In fact, the compatibility of religion with a scientific view of the world is not a concern for the characters; because they are far too busy finding a way to incorporate superstition scientifically into their religion.

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