{"id":1941,"date":"2021-10-28T13:14:17","date_gmt":"2021-10-28T17:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2021-10-28T13:14:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T17:14:17","slug":"into-the-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2021\/10\/28\/into-the-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Within Gothic literature the idea of the supernatural makes frequent appearances, but why is that? Because things and ideas we cannot comprehend to our fullest extent provoke feelings of fear and uncertainty. Throughout Bram Stoker\u2019s <em>Dracula<\/em> there is constant questioning and occurrences that trigger \u201cthe unknown\u201d. Within the first chapter when Jonathan is making his journey to the castle in the back of the carriage, he continuously notes the darkness of the night. During this journey Jonathan writes \u201che kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness\u201d (19). What he writes alludes to the idea that there is more beyond that layer of darkness, however, it is not visible to him. This inability to see in the darkness represents the inability to comprehend something unexplainable thus, causing Jonathan to feel unsettled. This theme of &#8220;the unknown&#8221; continues through events such as the time Jonathan was shaving near Dracula. He writes, \u201cI could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in the mirror&#8230;this was startling and coming on the top of so many strange things, was beginning to increase that vague feeling of uneasiness\u2026\u201d (32). While he notices that there is something incorrect in the way that there is no reflection, he cannot arrive at an answer to explain the phenomenon and is overtaken with a feeling of uneasiness. This idea of being unable to \u201csee\u201d the truth that is hidden by the darkness of the unknown is able to trigger fear and uneasiness within the author. I believe that this novel is trying to communicate that while monsters and creatures of the supernatural are scary as is, our inability to formulate answers or having understanding of them, is what fuels the fear that we experience reading <em>Dracula.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within Gothic literature the idea of the supernatural makes frequent appearances, but why is that? Because things and ideas we cannot comprehend to our fullest extent provoke feelings of fear and uncertainty. Throughout Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula there is constant questioning and occurrences that trigger \u201cthe unknown\u201d. Within the first chapter when Jonathan is making his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/2021\/10\/28\/into-the-unknown\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Into the Unknown<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4506,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4506"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/secretlives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}