Drugs and disease in Dorian Gray and Dracula Essay

Drugs and disease in Dorian Gray and Dracula - Essay Example Hungry for power, control and the bustle of a busy court, Dracula seeks to find dominion and lordship in new lands and has a most terrifying means of obtaining it – by destroying the lives of others as he converts them one drop of blood at a time, into his own personal slaves. However, a closer look at the character of Dracula reveals that the nature of evil is not necessarily the ugly, vile, immediately recognizable thing these types of interpretations suggest. Dracula instead presents himself as a well-mannered country gentleman who can easily charm his way into genteel company. In a similar mix of outward charm and inner brutality, Dorian Gray, the starring character in Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray, has all the outward appearances of youth and beauty as well as the education, intellect and natural charm to ease his way into any company he wishes to keep, but finds himself also the force of destructive evil in the lives of the young people he knows, eventuall y leading to the destruction of the one true friend he had ever really had. In each instance, Dorian Gray and Dracula reflect outward beauty and a natural charm yet each is a force of destruction that can only exist on the edges of society, never in the thick of the action. Both Dorian Gray and Dracula are portrayed as among the upper class elite of society in many ways, not the least of which is their appearance or proper use of upper class mannerisms. The words of Lord Henry perhaps best express the outward impression given by the aspect of Dorian Gray to Wilde’s Victorian audience: â€Å"Beauty is a form of Genius – is higher, indeed, than Genius as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty† (Wilde, 1891, p. 23). Such an expression was incarnate in the figure of Dorian