SOURCE: Schaffrath, Stephan. “Order-versus-Chaos Dichotomy in Bram Stoker's Dracula.” Extrapolation 43, no. 1 (spring 2002): 98-112.

In the following essay, Schaffrath analyzes Stoker's use of the order-versus-chaos dichotomy in Dracula.

This paper pursues two goals. The first goal is to present evidence that shows that much of the critical readings that have been done on Dracula can be summarized under the concept of an order-versus-chaos dichotomy, a bipolar mental construct that permeates the entire novel. The second goal is to show that this order-versus-chaos dichotomy in Dracula does not function simply in the same ways that a good-versus-bad dichotomy would make a clean split into favorable and unfavorable characters and elements in a text. The order-versus-chaos dichotomy as it is used in Dracula makes apparent the interdependence and complementation of order and chaos. Then, in a sense, this order-versus-chaos dichotomy is not really a dichotomy but rather a relationship between order...