“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
For some audiences, works that engage this material are mistaken for blasphemy or gateways to evil. Yet this story stands comfortably alongside Paradise Lost or Pilgrim’s Progress. It is allegory, not provocation. A story about temptation, the loss of innocence, and the arduous journey back toward redemption
At its core, Dracula is a narrative of good versus evil. By creating an absolute “Big Bad,” Stoker provided a common enemy not to be pitied or psychologically unpacked, but confronted and destroyed. This clarity is intentional. Evil, in the novel, is seductive. That is its power. It is dark, forbidden, intimate, even alluring. But seduction is only the threshold. Once crossed, the cost is total.
The personification of evil as a tangible force is one of humanity’s oldest narrative strategies, stretching back to the serpent in Eden. This does not make the story Satanic. It makes the antagonist so. The protagonists are flawed, frightened, deeply human figures attempting to stand against something far larger than themselves.
"Thus are we ministers of God's own wish: that the world, and men for whom His Son die, will not be given over to monsters, whose very existence would defame Him. He has allowed us to redeem one soul already, and we go out as the old knights of the Cross to redeem more." --van Helsing
In the 1960s, a film was released titled Dracula, Prince of Darkness. From that point forward, Dracula became increasingly synonymous with Lucifer, Satan, the ultimate embodiment of evil. While Dracula is undeniably a prince of darkness, he is not the Prince of Darkness.
That distinction matters.
Dracula is not theology. He is allegory.
Around the same time, critics and scholars began referring to Stoker’s protagonists as the “Crew of Light.” The phrase is a simplification, but an effective one. It frames the story not as a gothic romance, but as a collective resistance
to an encroaching force
that cannot be reasoned with,
rehabilitated,
or redeemed.
oF
LigHt, dArkNess & nEcessiTy EviL
The
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for another.”
In this sense, Dracula is no different from modern heroic
myths. Even the strongest heroes do not triumph alone. They prevail because of loyalty, love, and the refusal to abandon one another.
The darkness is real.
So is the light.
And the story insists that the latter is worth fighting for.
