“The date-line is 2014. An outbreak of a deadly disease in a remote region, beyond the borders of a complacent Europe. Local deaths multiply.”
Roger Luckhurst, the author of this short piece of genius literary review, explains the lure of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a way many of us have probably never considered the story, dubbed “the outbreak narrative”. He goes on to describe the book as you would describe a disease; leaving out the word “Vampire” entirely, much the same as Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead leaves out the word “zombie”. The first two paragraphs begin speaking about a disease in which people waste away, corpses are a particular concern for contaminants, and at the end, it comes as a jolt that he’s talking about Dracula.
We’ve been caught for so long, in this romantic notion of vampires, yearning for the horror and barely getting a real taste of it, that we often fail to connect the dots between the framework of fiction, and our modern world. The concern for disease is also there within Dracula and despite the language which is less comprehensive than contemporary literature, much can be gleaned about Stoker’s perspectives; such as Dracula’s association with filth, rats, miasmal fog –which probably represents the damp conditions that lead to illness spreading more quickly. Do read the full article, it’s excellent.