Dracula vs. The Best Friends' Club

One of my greatest interests is friendship, and I love to analyze the differences in how friendship is viewed in different times and cultures. Bram Stoker's novel Dracula is great for many reasons, one of which is that it inc;udes a surprising portrayal of all the facets of late 19th century English friendship. When Jonathan and Mina join forces with their new found friends they truly gain all the special powers of a Best Friends' Club, and only through the awesome powers of friendship do they manage to defeat Dracula. Here's what I learned:

1. True friendship can cross gender and generational boundaries.

The Best Friends' Club includes people of varying ages from the young Jonathan and Mina to the wise old Dr. Van Helsing who has been around the block a few times, and both men and women. At first they try to exclude the gentle Mina from some of the gorier aspects of their pursuit of Dracula, but they soon learn their lesson--that they must all work together to defeat their foe!

2. Spurned loves can make the best of friends.

Towards the beginning of the novel we are introduced to the beautiful and charming Lucy Westenra who tells Mina through letter that she has received three marriage proposals in one day--one from Dr. John Seward, one from Quincy Morris, and one from her true love Arthur Holmwood. Although she rejects the first two men, her suitors are not angry, but rather promise that she has earned their friendship for life. Cool.

3. True friends always hold hands.

These people are constantly holding hands. Any emotional moment. The drop of a hat. You'll be as shocked by this as you will by the fate of card carrying Best Friend Lucy Westenra.

4. Diversity is key.

Just when you think this Best Friends' Club is bunch of stuffy white British people, we are introduced to Quincy Morris, a gunslinging Texan from Texas, USA. Basically, every Best Friends' Club needs some sort of token friend to show that the club isn't discriminating. I think it might be in the rule book.

5. Friends stay friends through thick and thin.

Need multiple, intense blood transfusions because a vampire is sucking you dry every night? The Best Friends' Club is on it. Need to have your corpse decapitated to save your immortal soul? Yeah, they can do that too.

But of course, all this friendship has its costs. Jonathan and Mina are lucky they got married before joining the club. Otherwise their wedding party would have been unwieldy with 4 best men (and possibly an undead maid of honor). The couple did not escape, however, the cost of the first born son, which according to the rule book must be named long-windedly after every member of the cost. A small price to pay, I guess.

Dear Abby

Five things about myself:

1) I don't like to talk on cell phones because I am afraid of cancer.

2) I don't like to text because I'm cheap (see my other blog, which is about this very subject)

3) I like to talk about myself verbosely and without any interruption or acknowledgment of any other communication partner

4) Due to the fact that my last two work places have been 1) the woods and 2) a ghost town, I am not used to having reliable access to email

5)I like to subject people to seeing my awful penmanship.

All of this leaves only one for medium to communicate: Letters.

Yes, I write letters--pages and pages and notebooks and notebooks of letters. It can get pretty friggin stressful, one of the many things in life that sends me into a feverish fit during which I pull at my hair and repeatedly yell "I CAN DO IT ALL! I CAN DO IT ALL!"

So...a healthy hobby.

I will also say that my letters are also always a mess. If I had a camera, I would take a picture of all the insane assemblages I've managed to come up with. Here is where my picture would be if I had a camera:















But I don't have a camera, so I'm going to have to describe it to you. About a month ago I ran out of envelopes so I've been making my own which is basically just a recycled piece of paper taped together with the bulkiest and most unattractive tape I can possibly find. Namely duct tape or sometimes masking tape. Today, on the other end of the crazy spectrum, I had ONLY envelopes but no paper, so I actually disassembled an envelope and wrote on it and then just stuff it into another envelope. Also, a masterpiece.

So why do I subject myself to this? Why do I subject others to this? Well...if that's your question, then have I got the question for you....

Have you ever gotten a letter? Opened up a handwritten letter by someone you really care about or from an acquaintance that may have intrigued you but you never got to know? Getting letters is an incredible feeling, something completely lost in emails and (do I even need to say it?) text messages. Writing something by hand allows you to express the nuances of language rather than stripping it bare. It's just a wonderful feeling and to imagine a friend's excitement about receiving a letter, opening it up like a present, makes it totally worth it.

...and did I mention you get to talk about yourself uninterrupted for, like, a page?