Travel with Rick Steves · Saturday, October 31, 2026
Fintan O'Toole argues that Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' serves as a manifestation of Irish anxieties, symbolically uniting Protestants and Catholics against a common enemy by combining science with Catholic symbols like the host.
“Van Helsing comes in and he's the Dutch guy. But also Van Helsing is a Catholic. Van Helsing uses the host. He uses the real symbol of Catholicism. It's actually a sort of fantasy of bringing these two sides of Ireland, the Protestants and the Catholic, which are very much at war. You could bring them all together to fight the bigger enemy, which is the vampire.”