For my last post, I will examine a short story I read recently, The Secret of the Growing Gold by Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. It describes a man who seeks revenge on a rival family after his daughter is murdered.
Stoker eases into the tale with a myriad of descriptions and thoughts on the two families in question, the Brents and the Delandres. Looking through the reading, this appears to shrewdly address the issue that many writers seem to struggle with: how one starts a story. I have observed other writers employ this technique, namely Flannery O'Connor; it appears to snowball the background details into character action.
It is clear that his writing (at the very least) appears to flaunt his years spent on mastery of language, his scholarly devotion to it. Though he wrote this in 1914, the amount of Shakespearean references and influences detectable in even the opening page seems to blatantly showcase this. This deference to the principles of literary mastery makes the story both difficult to follow and brilliantly rich with detail.
The story takes an arc that would not surprise anyone who's read Dracula previously: a dark one. The daughter returns from the dead and commits a ghastly, supernatural murder using her hair. Although Stoker showcases human nature through the vulnerability of both Mr. Brent and the victims of his daughter's final deed, the most discernible angle he takes is one of providing a horror story. I would certainly recommend the read to those who enjoy dark fiction.
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