Gothic comparison essay - "Compare and contrast the endings of Stoker's 'Dracula' and Morrison's 'Beloved'?"
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Course
Unit 1
Institution
OCR
This is an essay for the A Level English Literature 'Comparative and Contextual Study' Exam. For my exam I compare Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' and Bram Stoker's 'Dracula'. This essay targets the endings specifically and will help you to understand the structure I use to get top marks as well as the l...
Compare and contrast the endings of Beloved and Dracula
– DARCY MCDERMOTT
The endings of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, although
published ninety years apart and based on differing stories, present similarities in
their endings.
Both endings appear to contain some level of contradiction. For Morrison, the
purpose of “Beloved” was to serve as a literary memorial, to commemorate the
“sixty million and more”, as stated on the first page. In the epilogue however, the
repeated refrain “This is not a story to pass on”, contradicts this and at first may
confuse the reader, making them think that Morrison wants them to forget the
story and the slave period of history. This statement however serves to ironically
highlight the importance of not forgetting, so again there is contradiction between
what the words say and what they actually mean. Stoker’s contradiction is evident
through what he writes in his foreword and his ending note. His intention in the
foreword is to guarantee the reader of the authenticity of the record of the novel’s
events, having contained nothing “wherein memory may err”. This however,
completely goes against what is contained in the note as there; it states that the
multiple records in the novel were “nothing but a mass of type writing”. This
statement indicates that the documents are not proof for the reliability of the story
and leads to the reader having to decide themself what is fact or fiction.
Another similarity within the novels is the ambiguity surrounding the whereabouts
of the “villain” characters after the ending of the story. In “Beloved”, it is implied
that the eponymous femme fatalé is still present in a “photograph” or in a “rustle
of a skirt,” after it is presumed she is gone. This is suggestive that Beloved’s life
cannot be ended solely by an exorcism and she now lives on psychologically
haunting the other characters of the novel. Although it is not as clear in “Dracula”,
the reader can infer that the eponymous villain has not met his end, and in fact
still lives on. Throughout the novel, the procedure of killing a vampire includes
stabbing the vampire, cutting its head off and then stuffing its mouth with garlic.
This is not performed on Dracula however, as Quincey Morris stops after his
“bowie knife (is) plunged into the heart”. Having not finished the ritual suggests
that Dracula may have been able to come back to life and is therefore still
roaming the earth while his “castle stood as before, reared high”. The idea that
Dracula is still present is further indicated by the fact that Harker is recalling the
events, but only after “seven years”. This suggests that for those seven years he
has been trying to forget what happened, and during that time the feelings of
trauma were undealt with. This shares a similarity with “Beloved” as Morrison
uses her novel to make America aware that by forgetting the events of slavery
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