In the iconic movie Dracula 1931, the notorious and mysterious Count Dracula is rumored to be a vampire back at Renfields village. After dismissing the warnings from the village in hopes of fulfilling business matters, Renfield is next hypnotized into a mindless slave by Dracula. They travel to London by sea to seek for fresh blood where Dracula begins to wreak havoc, sucking the blood of young women, primarily workers, and turning them into vampires.  Dracula locks eyes with Mina, daughter of Dr Seward, who Mina later became a victim of Dracula. Dr Seward comes to the conclusion that Dracula is a Vampire through obvious evidence, such as when his reflection was invisible in a mirror and became repugnant to a holy crucifix. Dracula hypnotizes another target for his personal escapism to avoid getting caught from Minas family. As a result, Renfield betrays Dracula by guiding Mina’s family to them, this is where the divine immortality of Count Dracula comes to an end when he is stabbed in the heart, and Mina and the others are set free from his bloodlust.

Marxist Criticism is an economic and political theory invented by Karl Mark who  was concerned about implications and complications of the capitalist system (Karl Mark qtd.In Purdue).

Theorists aligning their theories with the Marxist tradition they investigate around finding out all parties that contribute to this conflict and how the lower classes are oppressed. They operate these theories through a program called The Material Dialectic, in which sustains their belief that there is some historical change to be discovered  that occurred simultaneously with the material realities that changed our economy.

The Marxist in question is Dracula, the main antagonist who embodies a capitalist that sucks the life from working classes. Benefiting him from fulfilling his life’s purpose  and bloodlust by taking advantage of mortals and turning them into mindless slaves.This is relevant to the marxism that exists today where capitalism takes a toll on laborers to overwork themselves to survive past low wages. The victims of Dracula represent the proletariat. The proletariat is the social class that’s work is more represented in the Dracula, whose values reinforce productivity and prosperity for the bourgeoisie, like Dracula. We see this occur when Dracula’s slaves help his plans go accordingly.  The values that it subverts is capitalism due to the wage exploitation on laborers to keep maximum profit, in the way that Dracula’s lifestyle of exploiting the lives of others by sucking their blood was later subverted by Dr Seward who used his wisdom to kill Dracula.

Works Cited Page:

Purdue Writing Lab. “ Introduction to Literary Theory // Purdue Writing Lab”. The OWL at Purdue, Purdue University, 2018, owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/index.html.