Thesis

Thesis

1. On its own, religion will cause doubts about superstition and belief in only superstition means a weak mind, but belief in both is how Dracula was accepted and defeated.

   • Accepting superstitious beliefs is a tough pill to swallow for most characters in Dracula, with Dr. Van Helsing as the exception, they tend to find a logical answer being that their religion does not call for belief in monsters.
     • "She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking the crucifix from her neck offered it to me" (7).
     • "Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then we begin our prayer for the dead - I shall read him, I have here the book, and others shall follow - strike in God's name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love, and that the Un-Dead pass away" (231).
     • "There are mysteries which men can only guess at, which age by age they may solve only in part. Believe me, we are now on the verge of one. But I have not done. May i cut off the head of dead Miss Lucy?" (221).
   • Now that the characters have accepted superstition, it is their faith in God that lends them the strength to defeat Dracula.
     • “You must be pitiful to him too, though it may not hold your hands from his destruction.” (327)
     • "Thus are we ministers of God's own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He have allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more. Like them we shall travel towards the sunrise; and like them, if we fall, we fall in good cause" (340).
     • "That we must keep on trusting, and that God will aid us up to the end" (307)..