Stoker’s Dracula as a figure of pharmakos/ scapegoat

Abstract

Most critics on Dracula written by Stoker have examined Dracula, its eponymous hero, as a sexual metaphor or as a symbol of an “evil” other to be expelled, because Dracula has the self-contradictory nature, that is, Dracula is a portrait of ourselves we want to represent/ hide as “other” because of its potential threat to the society. Dracula, in this respect, can be approached in terms of a scapegoat, since a scapegoat is an insider which should be treated as “evil” other to be expelled, just like Dracula. Derrida and Girard expound the function and nature of a scapegoat (Derrida uses the term “pharmakos” instead of a scapegoat) in each of their works. According to them, a ritual of a scapegoat is performed when a great disaster takes place, because someone should take responsibility for it; and the author of the disaster is believed to pollute those who contact him/ her, that is, a scapegoat; and the scapegoat can be compared to a parasite in that it is an insider which should be put out of the body/ city. Hence the persecution of a scapegoat assumes a collective activity. Dracula is full of scapegoat-related motifs mentioned above, such as disaster, otherness, pollution, parasite, and collective persecution. Dracula whose “otherness” is emphasized throughout the novel is believed to threaten Victorian society by vampirizing women. Besides, he is regarded as an author of pollution or infection who taints the “purity” of females; he is also described as a parasite who feeds on people’s blood. Hence he becomes the object of collective persecution. The most important fact that makes Dracula a figure of a scapegoat, however, is that Dracula the vampire is us, and like a scapegoat, he should be executed “nor for their difference, but for not being as different as expected, and in the end for not differing at all.”