Dracula - Blog #5

"You deal with the madmen. All men are mad in some way or the other; and insamuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen, too--the rest of the world. You tell not your madmen what you do nor why you do it; you tell them not what you think. So you shall keep knowledge in its place, where it may rest--where it may gather its kind around it and breed" (132).

This quote, spoken by Van Helsing to Seward, stood out to me as I read. The quote reveals the wisdom of Van Helsing's character while revealing a truth--a belief which could have been shared by the author. Van Helsing is saying that everyone possesses some degree of insanity. He's also implying that Seward and his madmen are a microcosm of the whole world under God because everybody is crazy in some way. Van Helsing then goes on to say that Seward should not tell his madmen what he thinks of them or what he plans to do with them, and I connected that to how we are unaware of what God thinks of/plans for us. I don't know if Bram Stoker intended for this passage to have religious undertones, but I interpreted it that way and found it interesting how the world under God is compared to a mental health doctor and his patients. We are all insane, we all have some kind of problem, and God is secretly working as our doctor to help us. I wonder if Stoker really felt that way, if he was trying to convey a message, or if he even intended for that interpretation to appear in the first place.