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Popular Culture Review
he plans to go to a new level. He wants to change the world for the worse.
“Perhaps soon I will not need this form,” he says.
In short, Dracula in the early 1950s has servants around the globe. He vows
to make history. A special feature of the 20th century that he likes is the
possibility of wreaking havoc through mass terror. Instead of killing one person
at a time as in the 15th century, Dracula now sees great possibilities for mayhem
in modem weapons, especially the “divine fire” of the atomic bomb dropped on
Japan (617). To Rossi, Dracula asserts that “the nature of man is evil,” but this
thesis is opposed by the forces of good in the novel.
The Opposition to Evil in Kostova’s The Historian
The opposition to evil in Kostova’s The Historian falls into two main
categories: historical research and love.
First, we recognize that the unnamed narrator herself is the actual historian
of the novel’s title. Of course, her father Paul and his mentor Professor Rossi are
also historians. Working on the other side, however, is Dracula, and he is a
serious historian, as evidenced by his great book collection and his study of evil
throughout the ages.
The quest for truth about Dracula is one of the novel’s main themes. The
three parallel searches for knowledge are Rossi’s journey in the early 1930s,
Paul and Helen’s journey in the early 1950s, and Paul’s daughter and Stephen
Barley’s journey in the early 1970s. The setting is often a library and its
collection of documents about vampires and Dracula. Librarians are, for the
most part, working for the good, although a few have been corrupted and work
for Dracula’s evil ends. Little is made of “peasant remedies” that might ward off
the undead (115). But as a precaution, some characters do carry silver stakes,
garlic flowers, crucifixes, and silver bullets. In Istanbul, Professor Turgut Bora
maintains “an authentic vampire-hunting kit” that is around 100 years old (249).
The researcher Paul believes that, to a degree, we “must deal with evil on its
own terms” (176). Helen believes that “we are going to find the source of this
plague” (278). Even the long oral history provided by Helen’s Romanian mother
adds the helpful information that a vampire “can change his shape .. . can come
to you in many forms” (388).
Second, as in Stoker’s novel, love, faith in one’s fellow human, and
goodness all successfully oppose the evil legacy of Dracula. But, unlike Stoker,
Kostova does not allow the reader to think that Dracula’s evil is gone from the
world after Helen kills Dracula with a silver bullet and he turns to dust.
In addition to the three intertwined love stories—Professor Rossi and
Helen’s mother, Helen and Paul, and Barley and Paul’s daughter—there are
many close friendships in the novel. In a rare scene of graphic violence,
Professor Bora must stake his librarian friend Mr. Erozan because he has been
bitten a third time, but it pains him to do so, even though Erozan will now have
peace in real death. In a parallel scene later, Paul and Helen must also stake
Professor Rossi, whom they have found in Bulgaria, to save both him and
themselves.