Each of the prompts should be answered by at least 1 member of the blog group. Please confer amongst yourselves as to who will write which prompt. Responses should be at least 250 words and posted by 11 am the day of class. Please remember to select the appropriate Blog category before posting.
CLUE.
Table of Contents
Throughout chapters 10-15, we learn a lot more about vampirism: how it’s contracted, what it does to the patient, how it can be contained. Try to forget everything you know about vampires, and analyze 3-4 clues from this section that reveal the powers and weaknesses associated with vampirism. Which of these powers/weaknesses are explainable through science, and which through religion/”superstition”?
CONNECT.
Dino Felluga describes corpses as pure examples of abjection, since a corpse “literalizes the breakdown of the distinction between subject and object that is crucial for the establishment of identity.” Abjection is embodied in vomit, open wounds, and other “gross’ violations of the border between life and death.
Find a passage that connects to Felluga’s definition of abjection. It could be a description of Dracula’s home invasion, or Lucy’s deathbed condition, or of Jonathan Harker’s response to seeing Dracula in London. How do physical descriptions, or first person narration, or style choices in any of these passages blur the border between life and death?
CREATE.
Chapters 13-15 introduce the subplot of the “bloofer lady” (beautiful lady, in the accent of English children) who takes local children on walks, and leaves them with bite marks. It’s implied that this is the Un-Dead Lucy, now preying on children.
Create a dialogue in which one of these children tells their parent about what they saw. How do you imagine the child describing the lady? What is the parent’s reaction? Do either of them believe something supernatural is going on? Include 1-2 sentences after the dialogue explaining the basis for your paragraph.
