For this commonplace book, I wanted to examine the fears that drove the creation of Dracula. Cohen’s fourth and fifth theses (The monster dwells at the gates of difference and the monster polices the borders of the possible) are the one’s I think fit best in this sense.
4th Thesis:
Dracula is a monster of evil, even having connections to the devil in the book. He drinks the blood of humans, particularly women, and uses them to do his bidding. And he’s coming to England to enslave us all and turn us into a monster like him! And, conveniently, the only things that will stop him are Catholic Church staples like crosses, communion wafers, or reciting scripture. This brings back some of that xenophobia themes from The Beetle; the people in the Western World at this time were colonizing the rest of Europe and Africa, and they feared the people and cultures they deemed ‘other’. All the while not-so-subtly promoting that the ‘good’ to Dracula’s evil in the story are the British men who use religious symbols to repel him.
5th Thesis:
This one is a little easier: monsters do stuff like kill people, manipulate others, and wish for immortality. Dracula, as the monster of the story, is also a lesson to the reader that his selfish mentality will not lead to success in the end.
Secondary Content:
I watched a 20 minute YouTube video about the topic, and while it’s a lot of opinion, I think the creator highlights some interesting and important context around the publishing of Dracula.
I don’t want to regurgitate all the points in the video, so I’ll briefly list what was touched upon and I recommend anyone watch it if they are interested
- Internalized homophobia resulting from the fallout of the Oscar Wilde trial
- Stoker’s own self-image
- Xenophobia
- Anti-Semitism and anti-Roma sentiments
- Racism
- Reverse colonialism narratives in politics
- Recent advances in medical sciences — transfusions
- ‘Heroic age of Medicine’
- Grave robbers
Marley: Very mixed in online vs har copy CPB. So with this in mind, you could easily do the first option with McKinney to show your development throughout the semester with your designs and formats. Show the first one being short and personally being related. Then move on to having one of the examples of your hardcover CPB entries and finish with one of your online entries to show that you had a mix of entry formats. Another point for your own reflection you could bring up is the fact that you discuss things in the beginning and then at the end you ask questions that would be a good lead into further research if that is something you would be interested in. You definitely make an effort to include a picture or video and that is a common pattern shown throughout your CPB that is evident. I like that you did not necessarily stick to one type, format, or topic (with varying novels) because it shows that each entry brought a new idea or expression out of you and what we were reading to give a kind of new experience to someone that is following along with your CPB.
I really like how you mix your media. There were other CPBs that I looked at that kept a consistent theme with the media they chose to look at and analyze, but you chose from a variety of sources, and that makes it very interesting to look through for me.