Dracula: Abraham Van Helsing: The Wisest Old Man in all of Horror Fiction

Why he rocks

There are few characters that have had the lasting popularity, have the gravitase or have the magnificence of Abraham Van Helsing. An incredibly fascinating character both in the conceptual sense and in the actual execution of the character, he seems to stride onto the scene from some mythical past, joshing and commanding the attention of all who read Dracula.

Those who knew the novel though, know though that he isn’t the main character, he’s actually kind of a secondary one. His role is one that can be understood as being a kind of mash-up so to speak of Ben Kenobi from the original Star Wars trilogy and that of the younger Obi-Wan Kenobi.

A scientist of a myriad of subjects, including medicine, Helsing is a genius of unparalleled talent. His mind is more than a match for that of Dracula, except where the villain lacks courage and impulse control, Abraham Van Helsing has both in spades. He is fierce, desiring to purge the world of the vampire, and yet he is a just and kindly man who always puts the health and safety of his friends above all else.

When he first appears it is as Lucy’s doctor and as a former mentor of Siward, whom is at his wits’ end with regards to the source of Lucy’s illness. Where Siward can’t crack the case, Helsing comes in and figures out what the problem is quickly enough, realizing that it is in fact a vampire they are hunting, he quickly tries to induct Siward into the art of hunting vampires but the younger man resists as he doesn’t believe in such things. It is only later that he comes to accept that which his mentor has been telling him, still later they recruit and pull the veil from the eyes of Arthur & Quincy, who join them in the quest to avenge Lucy.

Of course Mina and her heroic husband Jonathan join in, and the Fellowship is made, their compact sealed with oaths to Mina (who seems to here be presented as a type of Mary the Mother figure, and they as her knights). Of course if one is to look at them as a kind of Fellowship of Knights, Van Helsing would be the Grand Master, with Jonathan or Siward probably as next in line to the position.

Mina is the reason and person for which they are doing this, and it is she for whom they sail across the Mediteranean and for her liberation that they seek to destroy Dracula.

It will be interesting to movie fans to know that at no point do Dracula and Van Helsing ever talk, at no point do they exchange thinly veiled barbs. Rather, it is Jonathan and Dracula who do so a few times, while Helsing merely broods, strategizes, advises and leads and at times follows the lead of the likes of Quincy and Mina.

A resourceful man, who is as wily as he is patient, Helsing is a man wholly dedicated to medicine, as much as he is a devout and passionate Catholic. Dutch, he speaks English with a thick Dutch accent. Those from England not in the know, should be made aware that at one time the Dutch did not speak better English than the sons and daughters of England, to the country in some cases. As exemplified by Helsing, some could not speak a lick of it, or if they could it was heavily accented and quite mediocre if we’re being generous.

Catholic as no other character can be found to be, in recent years, he exemplifies not only the modern man’s faith but also a far older kind of faith. His is the old world’s faith, one which has been around for near to 2000 years, and is the sort that is his buckler and his sword.

Thematically it is this faith that grants him so much strength and resilience against the undead, who are incredibly vulnerable to the branch of Christianity that he belongs to. The view of Stoker it seems was that Anglicanism with its penchant for modernity, and passion for progress had somehow moved firmly away from the world to which Catholicism and even Dracula belong to.

And what world is that? It is an older world to which they belong, with Dracula being based off of Vlad the Impaler, and the idea being that Dracula was once Vlad, but became a vampire. While Catholicism can trace its roots back to the 4th century and to Constantine the Great, and if you want it can be traced further back into the past to St-Paul and St-Peter, who organized the followers of Jesus and spread his teachings throughout the whole of the Roman Empire.

Protestantism can trace its roots back to Martin Luther, with Anglicanism tracing itself back to the time of Henry VIII, with the faith of England having modernized at a faster pace than any other, once Britain entered into the Industrial Revolution.

New and modern, this religion with its eschewing of the symbols and many of the rituals devoted to Christ, is thus left vulnerable to vampires (or so it is implied in the novel), and so Van Helsing who belongs to the old world, and to the old faith one that is far older than Dracula has a kind of wisdom, a kind of protection against the undead, a kind that the new faith cannot emulate.

There is something almost mystical about Helsing, it is the mysticism of the ancient world, one which has been left behind by modernity and one which is representative of all the best things about the old ways/world. These older ways can be found in the politeness, the wisdom, the desire to balance new knowledge with that of the old and also the mental fortitude with which he is able to endure and combat against the tide of evil represented by Dracula.

All of these are part of Helsing, and they are part of the reason he towers over so many other characters. There is also the fact that those such as Arthur, Siward and Quincy are representative of a new world, one in which industry, modernism and newness is all important is its own faith, and is lacking in the ability to discern how best to fight against evil itself.

Just as Helsing and Dracula stand at polar opposites of a football stadium, so too does Helsing stand apart from the likes of the trio of modern Anglo-Saxons, who are bred from an entirely different stock and age from his own.

At the same time that he represents those things, in the story Helsing does not have the physical vigour anymore to ride into battle as the heroic Jonathan, Quincy, Siward and Arthur could. Wizened, he is left to dispose of the brides of Dracula, and to guard Mina, for he alone has the wisdom to perform the latter duty and is honestly someone who wouldn’t in an open gun and sword fight be of much use.

So he is both mentor and hero in a way, a mentor to a new generation of heroes who need guidance in how to combat evil, in how to use faith to dispell weakness, and in how to harness their own inner strength. He is in turn though the hero of the hour who purges Dracula’s brides so that the menace of vampirism is destroyed forevemore with the passing of Vlad into the next life after centuries of ravaging the world as a Vampire.