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The Role of Renfield in Stoker's DRACULA
Eric G Wilson's Musings on Words and Images
Overview
This video explores the character of Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula, analyzing his symbolic functions beyond his plot contributions. It details Renfield's zoophagous tendencies, his desire to consume life to gain power, and his role as a foil and double to Dracula. The analysis highlights how Renfield's grotesque actions and desires mirror and expose the underlying monstrosity and taboo nature of Dracula's vampirism, particularly through a Christian lens, contrasting the corrupted pursuit of eternal life with genuine spiritual grace.
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Chapters
- Renfield, a patient in Seward's asylum, exhibits zoophagous behavior, consuming increasingly complex life forms (flies, spiders, birds).
- His actions are driven by a belief that consuming the life force, particularly blood, of other beings grants power.
- This philosophy is linked to a biblical prohibition against drinking blood (Deuteronomy 12:23), which Renfield explicitly rejects.
- Renfield's desire to drink blood and gain life mirrors Dracula's own needs, albeit in a more primitive form.
Renfield's bizarre eating habits and his interpretation of 'the blood is the life' establish a disturbing parallel to Dracula's vampirism, revealing the primal, life-consuming nature at the heart of the vampire myth.
Renfield leaping on the floor to lap up Dr. Seward's spilled blood like a dog, exclaiming, 'The blood is the life.'
- Renfield serves as a foil by embodying a failed or lesser version of Dracula.
- While Dracula possesses supernatural powers, aristocratic lineage, and seductive charisma, Renfield lacks these qualities.
- Renfield desires to become a vampire and calls Dracula his 'master,' highlighting his subservient and incomplete imitation.
- His inability to achieve vampirism underscores Dracula's unique, albeit monstrous, power.
By contrasting Renfield's pathetic attempts with Dracula's terrifying success, the novel emphasizes Dracula's otherness and the profound, supernatural nature of his evil.
Renfield's raw consumption of flies and spiders is presented as a disgusting, natural approximation of vampirism, lacking Dracula's suave, supernatural, and eroticized predatory nature.
- Renfield also functions as a double, reflecting the hidden vulgarity beneath Dracula's noble facade.
- Both characters violate the biblical prohibition against drinking blood and engage in taboo, disgusting acts.
- Renfield's primitive consumption of raw animals suggests that Dracula's sophisticated blood-drinking is equally base and monstrous.
- This comparison strips away Dracula's aristocratic veneer, exposing his fundamental dependence on life-force consumption.
Renfield's character forces readers to confront the inherent grotesqueness of vampirism, suggesting that Dracula's refined evil is, at its core, just as repulsive as Renfield's primitive urges.
The argument that eating a fly raw is as fundamentally 'gross and disgusting' as sucking human blood, thereby revealing the shared monstrosity between Renfield and Dracula.
- Renfield's relationship with Dracula symbolizes a perversion of Christian tenets, particularly the Eucharist.
- In Christianity, communion involves freely accepting Christ's spiritual power for grace and eternal life.
- Renfield seeks eternal life from Dracula, his 'master,' but this path requires losing free will and becoming a controlled servant.
- Unlike the choice-driven grace offered by Christ, becoming Dracula's vampire means losing individuality and succumbing to base desires.
This chapter highlights how Renfield's corrupted pursuit of immortality through Dracula serves as a powerful symbol of evil's ability to mimic and pervert sacred rituals, offering a false salvation that leads to damnation.
The contrast between the Christian ideal of freely choosing spiritual power through communion and Renfield's desire to gain eternal life from Dracula, which necessitates losing free will and becoming a zombie-like servant.
Key takeaways
- Renfield's zoophagous behavior and his 'blood is the life' philosophy serve as a primitive, disturbing parallel to Dracula's vampirism.
- Renfield functions as a foil, highlighting Dracula's supernatural power and aristocratic status by being his failed, subservient imitation.
- As a double, Renfield exposes the underlying vulgarity and monstrosity of Dracula's actions, suggesting his refined evil is as base as Renfield's primitive urges.
- Renfield's pursuit of eternal life from Dracula symbolizes a perversion of Christian concepts like the Eucharist, where true spiritual gain requires free will, not subservience.
- The character of Renfield reveals the terrifying nature of Dracula's power by demonstrating how evil can corrupt fundamental desires for life and immortality.
- By analyzing Renfield, readers gain a deeper understanding of Dracula's character and the anti-Christian themes embedded in the novel.
Key terms
RenfieldDraculaZoophagous maniacBlood is the lifeFoilDoubleSupernatural powersEucharistCommunionEternal lifeFree will
Test your understanding
- How does Renfield's consumption of insects and animals serve as a symbolic representation of Dracula's vampirism?
- In what ways does Renfield function as a foil to Dracula, and what does this contrast reveal about Dracula's character?
- Explain how Renfield acts as a 'double' for Dracula, and what specific aspects of Dracula's monstrosity does this reveal?
- How does Renfield's desire for eternal life from Dracula mirror and corrupt Christian concepts of salvation and the Eucharist?
- What is the significance of Renfield's rejection of the biblical prohibition against drinking blood in understanding his character and his relationship with Dracula?