Dracula has been popular since the day it came out because of the threat of death in the battle of good versus evil. Lots of people adhere to scary movies or Halloween for similar reasons. The first step is having a sense of darkness, and in Dracula, the dark figure is Dracula. When characters are around these dark figures, like a vampire that drinks people’s blood, it gives the reader anxiety and pushes them to keep reading to find out if the character can survive. For example, when Jonathan Harker contemplated his escape from imprisonment, he stated, “I determined then and there to scale the wall again and gain the Count’s room. He might kill me, but death now seemed the happier choice of evils.” (Stoker, Chapter 4). In these moments, the reader is glued to the book because people tend to imagine what they would do in the same situation. For example, readers might ask themselves, how would I escape? or I wonder if Dracula will catch him.
The thought of not knowing what will happen next is what allows Dracula and many other stories like it to succeed. However, in order to establish the anxiety that keeps readers attacked, there has to be a display of evil to begin with. For instance, in Dracula’s attack on Lucy, Dr. Seward states, “the flowers which had been round her neck we found upon her mother’s bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white and mangled” (Stoker, Chapter 12). The reader is constantly exposed to the descriptive language of Dracula’s attacks, allowing them to have a great sense of the danger Dracula poses. Moments of violence from Dracula and other vampires create suspense and uncertainty for the reader, which allows the Novel to become exciting and popular.