The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


Fiction


Copyright 2006


Protagonist- sixteen-year old girl who continually wants to learn more about the legend of Dracula. 


Antagonist- there really isn't a bad guy in this story.


Themes: 


Mystery- when the father tells the story of  how the letter came to be, more and more strange things happen that can't be explained.


Motifs: 


Anticipation- the daughters impulse to research more about the medieval times in Central Europe and why her father has trouble revealing the story to her.  I can probably argue that this could be a theme also because in the majority of the story she wants to know more about Dracula and her father's story. 


Brief Plot summary


Chapters 1-8:


The story is about a sixteen-year old girl who travels a lot with her diplomat dad. She becomes interested in a letter with the My Dear and Unfortunate Successor printed on it. She begs her father to tell her the story and origin of this letter. As she travels from Amsterdam to Italy to Spain, she learns bits of pieces of the story. The part of the story that interests her is that Dracula may be alive.


Sunday October 16, 2011


I have to say that this book is going at a slow pace, but I'm actually kind of enjoying it. This book is becoming very interesting to me because of all the places this girl gets to visit and all the history that surrounds her. If I had that chance to travel to so many countries every other weekend or month, I would be so psyched. This book also interests me because of the vampire legend. This fits so well considering my love for vampire literature and movies. It was strange finding out that Vlad was a real person, but he wasnt' a vampire.

My main theme is Mystery. Many interesting things happen as this story goes on. I have an example of perfect foreshadowing.

"I picked up my shabby suitcase, opened it and pulled out an envelope labeled in Rossi's handwriting. It said SAVE FOR NEXT ONE" (Kostova 51).

The girl's father looks at the documents that Professor Rossi, his adviser gives to him. This tells use that something bad is going to happen and that his successor must continue his work for him when he's gone.

"I had the feeling that he had been promising me this outcome, this equality, all along just waiting for the perfect time when I was ready" (Kostova 52).

He had the feeling that Professor Rossi has been prepping him for this information all along, and that this information wouldn't be passed down to him until later when he was able to handle such important documents.


The motif of this section is Anticipation.The young daughter of this diplomat has this unusual urge to research everything about Dracula and the Carpathians. Of course, her father is giving her bits and pieces and I can tell he is having trouble giving out this information to her and that he's trying to keep as much as he can from her. As she reads the letters she's starting to notice some patterns in his writing such as the print and the behavior toward writing the letters.

Final overview:

I have a feeling that this story is going to get more mysterious by the minute. I want to find out if Dracula really is alive and why was he supposedly killed. I hope my questions are asked as the story continues.

Personal reflection:

This story is going pretty well. I kind of envy this girl. She has a great education,  studies in England, and she gets to travel the world. I have a pretty good attitude about this book so far. It will take me a lot of reading, but hey what's wrong with a little bit of a challenge.


Character reflection
The characters are not named in the story so it's sometimes confusing. This girl is starting to to act more and more like her father when he was younger as the story goes on and her curiosity increased rapidly about this subject of Dracula.


Recommendation

 So far this book is going great. As he read more I'm sure I'll have a better understanding.

Time period

This book is set in the early 1970's , all I know is that it doesn't talk about the era at all. It talks about how the daughter is sheltered away from all the excitement and rebellion happening in this time era.