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Dracula Q4: Structure and style
Dracula is undenyable scary. How much of that is down to the structure of the book, being told as a series of partial letters and memoirs. The ordering of them into a single timeline has a diagetic explanation (Mina's organisation), but would the book have worked as well without the interleaving of the different accounts in the book?
Do you think the story would have been as scary if it had been told through the voice of an omniscient narrator? Did the partial recounts of the different characters add to the fear?
Comments
Hmmm. Whilst I agree that the concept of Dracula is scary, I didn't find the manner of relating it scary at all: as mentioned in another thread, I felt it lost much of it's potential scariness precisely because of the structure chosen. Now, I can easily believe that at the time Bram Stoker wrote it (late 19th century) it was the only way that such a story could have been taken up by a publisher. Also there was back in the day an enthusiasm for writing novels in this style - indeed, epistolary and diaristic-style fiction emerged first, with the modern novel deriving from them.
So the structure worked well for maintaining lack of knowledge of the wider situation, and allowed disconnects between people each of whom had a bit of the puzzle, but for me as a modern reader it lost a lot of immediacy. I can see that if an omniscient narrator had been chosen then that would have perhaps solved one problem at the expense of creating another. But simply having multiple viewpoints and swapping between then from time to time would have brought back immediacy and kept the disconnection between people.
Wait, do you think Dracula is undeniably scary, or that it could be made scary again (as per the first question)? Not quite sure which way your are leaning.
I felt like the delivery was working against the novel at times. At times, it felt like the epistolic nature of the novel might have been the reason, but in the end I really don't think that was it. I do believe that one could use the epistolic format to make a very good, tense, dramatic story. And as Neil pointed out in a reply to the first question, I think that separation from the monster is really effective. In part one, we meet him directly, but we only see him from Jonthan's viewpoint. Dracula seems friendly, but we gradually learn he is not. (Is he? He's a pretty good gaslighter.) Then things come to a head and Jonathan disappears from the narrative. Is he dead? Possibly worse?
We move to genteel England, and now we see the effect of the monster, but not really the monster himself. I thought this was quite effective. It wasn't always riveting, mind you. But it was creepy.
I had three major issues which held me back from feeling fully engaged. One was the pacing, which was very even, just kind of plodding along. Even in the climax when the 3 parties are racing across the countryside to intercept the coffin, the pacing was little different than at other times of the novel. It was all just 'of a pace'.
Second, the voices were not all that distinct. Only Van Helsing really had a distinctive voice, I thought. And he didn't contribute narration too often. But Seward, Lucy, and the two Harknesses all had rather the same voices, I thought. I feel that the issue of pacing might have been solved by varying the voices more, and using the more active voices during the more tense scenes. And the variety of voices (like a wax recording vs a newspaper clipping) ought to give lots of potential for zooming in and out of the action. I really think it was the execution, rather than the design, that was the issue here. Which I think puts me largely in agreement with Richard.
My third issue was the rather self-congratulary nature of it all. The characters were always proclaiming each other's virtues! That got old fast.
As I said earlier, I'm not sure Dracula is meant to be scary. I think it is more about producing a reader who lacks the squeamishness which would prevent them from performing the vivesection etc. that is a necessary aspect of modern war.
I thought Dracula was scary. A lot of that was down to the lack of reliable information about what Dracula could do. We saw he could dominate people, sneak into all sorts of places, change into beasts, and so on. But we didn't know that much at first, and all I (the reader) knew was filtered through the incomplete recollections of the various characters.
I agree with the observation about the very even pacing. There wasn't much variation in most of the book, but a couple of sequences were tense. Breaking into the house in Piccadilly was one that stood out.