Dracula’s functional immortality has more disturbing consequences than just blood-sucking murder.

This is part two of a three-part series on Netflix/BBC’s Dracula. To learn about Dracula’s claim of immortality and what it means, read Part I. As always, spoilers abound.

Introduction

The resurgence of the ancient Greek school of Stoicism has popularized one of its slogans: Memento mori. This Latin phrase translates to “remember you must die.” While I’m no Stoic, the concept does have a certain simplicity to it that I admire:

The truth is, we have all been given a fatal diagnosis. The doctor who pulled you out of your mother knew for certain that you were going to die, he just didn’t know exactly when.

And neither do you.

This is a lesson Dracula failed — or refused — to learn. 

Death is the thematic heart of this revamped story — its lifeblood. (Can you forgive me for having two puns in one sentence?) This show, like the titular creature, relies on death for its survival. 

As discussed in Part I, Dracula actually fears death, though he doesn’t admit it for most of the series. In Part II, I’m going to discuss the implications of the one thing that keeps him from his greatest fear: his physical immortality. I’ll show you why his undying way is a curse, not a gift.

Undying Desires

In the Netflix/BBC iteration, this aristocratic Dracula stands out amongst other vampires as one who has retained his intellect, and like a fine wine, grows better with time. Yet…even though Dracula has what he wants — life, wealth, and social prestige — he is still not satisfied. 

Oh, he thinks that by going to England he’ll get more of what he wants, true. That’s his goal throughout the series. Though he has what most would envy, his ego and blood-thirst are unquenchable.

Though he lives “forever,” he’s never satiated. To me, that sounds like a torturous existence. It harkens back to the poignant 1959 Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough to Last” in which an overworked, henpecked husband — whose passion is reading — survives a nuclear holocaust. He gets excited because he can finally devour all the books he wants uninterrupted! Then he tragically breaks his glasses, never to read again. 

Dracula has far more time on his hands than poor Bemis (above). Perhaps too much time. The Old Testament recognizes this inevitable outcome of “immortality” in one of its famous books of wisdom:

Even if a man lives a thousand years twice, if he does not enjoy prosperity, both suffer the same fate! All of a man’s toil is for his mouth — yet his appetite is never satisfied.

So do the wise really have an advantage over fools? Can the poor really gain anything by knowing how to act in front of others? Better to be content with what your eyes see than for your soul to constantly crave more.

Ecclesiastes 6:6–9 (LEB)

Scientists and philosophers would not be surprised with Dracula’s predicament. Professor of psychology Laura King laments:

If life never ended, think about it, right? Isn’t that like every vampire story or sci-fi movie? If you live too long, after a while, you just lose it. Life no longer has any meaning, because it’s commonplace.

The thinker Bernard Williams unpacks this idea systemically as explained by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Williams argues that it would be bad to live forever. His view is based on an assumption about the relationship between our identities and the desires that motivate us to live. …Williams thinks that categorical [unconditional] desires are essential to identity, and give meaning to life.

Through categorical desires, we are attached to projects or relationships that are definitive of the self; faced with their destruction, we would feel our lives are meaningless, and that…we cannot survive as the persons we once were. To abandon [our] identities…is tantamount to death.

Dracula answers this concern through another of his peculiar abilities: he absorbs the knowledge and essence of a person when he drinks their blood, one of the additions to the lore made by Netflix/BBC’s incarnation of Dracula. By seeking upper-crust victims, the Count hopes to replenish his self-made blue-blood identity. Excitedly expecting to arrive in “Enlightened” England, he even paradoxically exclaims:

DRACULA: “My God, I can’t wait to eat some atheists.”

This constant challenge of capturing, seducing, and consuming new prey enables him to extend his life while avoiding utter identity transformation — that is, the destruction of his identity. If he were to lose his identity, or be physically killed, he’d no longer be physically immortal. Since he fears death, Dracula delays it by subsuming the identity traits of others ad nausiem. 

Another disturbing truth in Dracula is that physical death cannot be prevented — only delayed. A vampire’s functional immortality is just that: futilely staving off the inevitable. How many centuries could he keep this up until he becomes bored to insanity?

Undead Suffering

Our story explores another facet of immortality by using a new type of vampire dubbed the Undead, a sort of blood-sucking zombie. At the beginning of Episode 1, English lawyer John Harker suspects he’s become undead, he implores the Nun Agatha to explain to him his eternal predicament. 

She says of the pitiable Undead:

AGATHA: “They lose the divine ability to die.”

HARKER: “Is there any salvation for such creatures?”

AGATHA: “…I don’t know.”

Being vampires of sorts, they can be killed — but unless they are stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake, they cannot die. Though these people are dead, they live on in a sort of half-life. They reach neither heaven nor hell, but linger in the “real world” in a purgatory of their own making.

Their plight is germane because it displays how even though they have achieved a sort of immortality, they continue to suffer:

• Dracula’s “Brides” still hunger, feel pain, and endure captivity at his hand.

• Exhumed coffins show the marks of undead prisoners clawing to get out — sometimes for centuries unending.

• After she is conscious for her cremation (bringing to mind awful images of the Holocaust), Lucy endures a grotesque self-delusion as she experiences the loss of her appearance all over again.

Netflix/BCC’s Dracula makes one thing clear: Death does not bring an end to identity or suffering, which is in keeping with the theological concept of spiritual death. 

Gift of Mortality

To contrast with the Slavic nobleman, one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s immortal creations chooses a distinctly different path. The elf Arwen, upon the deathbed of her long-lived (but still mortal) husband King Aragorn, decides to become like him and taste death. Philosopher Anna Mathie explores this heart-wrenching footnote in The Lord of the Rings:

For Arwen, otherwise infinitely wiser than we, death is the one unknown, a new and unexpected discovery. Aragorn knows better; he knows, as all mortals should, that comfort is impossible and even unworthy in the face of death. Yet he still holds fast to what Arwen has only known as an abstract theological tenet: that death is truly God’s gift.

I cry whenever I reread this passage; it haunts me like no other, though it’s hard to explain why. At the heart of it is the phrase “the gift of the One to Men.” Tolkien looks unblinkingly at “the loss and the silence” of death, but remains steadfast: Death is our curse, but also our blessing.

In the same vein, Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings espouses this idea thematically through his lovable hairy-footed Hobbits:

The virtues of mortality are most obvious in the great paradox of the book[s]: that the very mortal Hobbits are the only ones who can resist the Ring’s seduction and destroy it. …As most characters in The Lord of the Rings remark, [Hobbits] are unlikely saviors of the world. In fact, their lowly mortality may be their greatest asset.

Why is mortality a gift? Why does Agatha refer to dying as a “divine ability?” It curbs human life in a restrictive but ultimately merciful way.

Eternal Consequences

In addition to the aforementioned fact that suffering continues for vampires no how long they linger, there’s another reason why to never die would ultimately be self-defeating. Never dying would mean never facing anything beyond physical consequences for our actions.

Dracula’s Undead reach neither heaven nor hell, but linger in the “real world” in a purgatory of their own making.

This has alarming implications, which the philosopher William Lane Craig eruditely explains. Keep in mind that when speaking of immortality, Craig means metaphysical existence after death, not an unending bodily life:

Morality is radically undermined without [spiritual] immortality. If there is no immortality then ultimately our fate is unrelated to our behavior.Whether we live as a Mother Teresa or as a Stalin, we all wind up the same. So even if there are objective values and objective moral duties that we have, if there is no immortality then morality becomes a charade because it is ultimately unrelated to our final fate. It becomes empty and meaningless. It because futile. No matter what you do, you just wind up the same. So the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky said if there is no immortality then all things are permitted. That is to say, there is no moral accountability.

So while physical death is a gift because it limits humanity, spiritual immortality (a person’s essence persisting immaterially) is likewise a gift because it confers meaning to temporal morality. This also shines light on the puzzle of physical death followed by an immaterial existence. Craig continues:

So if there is morality, if morality is to be significant and meaningful, this again requires immortality. The philosopher Immanuel Kant saw this point clearly….In order for virtue and happiness to be proportioned to each other, Kant said there must be these postulates of immortality of the soul and the existence of God.

While we won’t get to the worldview ramifications of an omni-benevolent God in a world with blood-sucking vampires until part 3 of this series, keep the main point in mind: Ethics and death are mutually dependent.

Summary 

Dracula’s unslakable greed and bloodlust show that no amount of life can satisfy. He has no pity for the Undead who endure unending suffering though they have already died. Other immortal characters like Arwen realized what Dracula could not: mortality is a gracious gift. This necessitates we examine the metaphysical implications of death and how it’s intertwined with morality. 

We’re not done with Count Dracula yet — stay tuned for part III! What do you think about the consequences of immortality?

Did you miss the first installment of this series? Read Part I about Dracula’s immortality and what the term means for us.