The Unconscious Heroe Essay -- Literary Analysis, Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a tale that sets its characters on a path of psychological turmoil and heroic satisfaction. The supernatural nature of the vampire as well as its seemingly human form allows one to analyze these characters as being archetypes of the personal unconscious for the human characters confronting them, particularly the shadow and the anima/animus as postulated by Carl Jung in his text Aion. Furthermore the purely human characters that encounter these vampires, and thus their own unconscious’, by doing so become themselves a hero archetype within their personal narrative as postulated by Joseph Campbell in his text The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This is made evident when comparing Jonathan Harker’s first self-motivated confrontation with Dracula in his sleeping chambers, in which Jonathan cannot vanquish the creature, with the episode in which Arthur Holmwood is successful in destroying the vampire Lucy Westerna. This essay will demonstrate how the interactions between human and vampire in the novel represent a heroic struggle between a person and their personal unconscious. Carl Jung states â€Å"He must be convinced that he throws a very long shadow before he is willing to withdraw his emotionally-toned projections from their object.† (Jung 7) This sentence best describes the state of Jonathan Harker when he first goes to confront Dracula. Dracula is a projection of Jonathan’s shadow and gains power over him because of Jonathan’s ignorance to his own unconscious mind. The text demonstrates that Dracula is a psychological projection and therefore not real through the use of dehumanizing imagery such as referring to him as â€Å"filthy leech† (Stoker 83) and as â€Å"such a monster.† (84). Jung also notes that examining the ... ...on when describing the plunging of the stake into Lucy’s heart, it proceeds to explain how her â€Å"body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions† (254) and describing Arthur â€Å"driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake.† (254) This scene serves as a metaphor for male dominance as can be seen when considering Freud’s notion that subconscious images of wood and sticks represent the phallus in the subconscious. If one continues to follow this reasoning this scene can be perceived as Arthur vanquishing the taboo Lucy with his mighty penis, there by restoring the balance in the universe with man on top. Furthermore, if one considers the phallic imagery used, this scene can be interpreted as the consummation of the engagement between Arthur and Lucy, further establishing Arthur’s dominance, as in the Victorian age the husband was the master of the wife.