My 21st Century Monster

Monsters are one of the many scarry thoughts of a being from the mind and history. Starting with Bram Stoker's Dracula in the early nineteenth century representing a 15th Century cruel Romania ruler named Vlad III the Impaler. Vlad is remembered by many as a prince who defended his people from other foreign threats, like the Turkish invaders and German Merchants. Vlad used very torturous methods in killing these people, as you can see in the picture to the right. Why Bram Stoker used Vlad as Dracula? I believe that it is because if you look at Vlad's history he is already someone that we look at as disgust and fear. And what could be better for a basis of a horor story to take place then in his actual castle, Im scarred thinking about it, ugh!!

Also with Dracula there is so much symbolism in regards to Stoker's 19th century Romantic era. The Romantic era directly follows right after the Victorian era where people were supposedly more civalized and proper. In this Romantic period people were lets say more open to new experiences. Prostitutes and Pimps were running wild. However, with all of these new changes came new diseases. People were getting sick and dying because of this. Dracula in one theory symbolizes these prostitutes spreading the diseases. For example, Dracula (the "pimp") feeds off people by sucking their blood, in this process the victims are the women whom he poisened and soon turns into vampires (the "prostitutes"). Prostitutes obviously through having sex with many partners posioned society.

So basing my 21st century monster on someone like Dracula in our time will consist on many of different issues in our society. For example a monster could resemble things about the war on terror in Iraq that make us sick, the many different drugs that americans are getting their hands on, or something even gruesomer that symbolizes the sickness of people who molest kids and so on. (as I just mentioned in that last statement I was questioning on even putting that on my blog because its absolutely sick and disgusting that people even do that stuff. But thats exactly why I did, because in the days of Dracula, it was sick and disgusting things like that, that made as we know it today one of the most famous monsters of all time.)

I believe symbolism is important in a monster, but I also agree with Carrol's definition of one too. My monster would consist of being non existence with science, threatful, and disgusting.