So, since it’s now April (and I recently finished the book and have it on the brain), I will try and kick off a little discussion on the original vampire novel. (I guess we don’t have a category for it yet? [LEN 10/14/08: I just added it and changed the category for this post...]) If you aren’t ready to start yet, consider it an April Fool’s joke, comment accordingly, and don’t read the rest of this post. Here it goes:

The back cover of my copy of Dracula characterizes it as a novel of “sin and redemption,” among other things. I took this to be one of the Christian themes that Pamela (according to Tato) and Bonnie Kate described, so I went searching for it. Of the numerous snippets of the story and dialogue which relate to redemption, two stand out: Mina’s redemption (or purification) and Dracula’s. My question is: Do either of these correspond to the Christian idea of the redemption of sinners?

Stoker seems to be setting up Mina as this example of redemption, with all her talk of eternal separation from God. But, speaking as a sinner myself, Mina is just too darn good! Maybe it’s just the voices of the men who respect her speaking in their journals, but she is put on a pedestal as a very good woman who does not deserve the eternal damnation Dracula is trying to force upon her. That doesn’t match the Biblical description of the state of humankind as sheep gone astray.

Dracula, on the other hand, more than embodies the Calvinistic “Total Depravity.” And, he is a recipient of unmerited grace when his undead existence is ended. But, he had so little participation in that final redemption that it hardly seems analogous to the Christian salvific faith. (Unless perhaps you are what my husband would label an extreme monergist—roughly, one who believes that God does absolutely everything in saving us and we do absolutely nothing.)