Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Pick one of the social spaces of the novel (i.e. Count Dracula’s castle, Dr. John Seward’s lunatic asylum, Count Dracula’s houses in London, Mina’s room, the outside spaces in or near London, etc.) and discuss its significance in relation to the characters, and ultimately your interpretation of the story. Put differently: Discuss how these settings, in all their details, contribute to build and mirror the characters’ thoughts and actions, which is what ultimately drives the plot and influences our interpretation. (Before you start writing, ask yourself a few questions: How do you interpret the characters that inhabit or act in “your” space? What drives them? What’s their status vis-à-vis the other characters? How and why are they important to Stoker’s story? Who or what might they represent in society? Once you’ve answered some of these questions for yourself, you’ll be able to tie your interpretation to your discussion of the symbolism of the space you picked, using direct quotes from the book.)
