"Stripped for the parts" by Jennifer Kahn
In the novel Dracula the process of body transplants is reversed. In the essay Stripped for Parts the author Jennifer Kahn goes through a journey in the harvesting of human organs. She shows how the dead man somehow saves a person’s life no matter how unlikely. In Dracula it is reversed. It is the living who gives life to the dead. Dracula ages the longer he goes without blood. When he receives blood from a living person he also receives life and his physical appearance becomes younger. Unlike the patients Kahn saw Dracula’s change was immediately seen. Just like the cadavers where kept mostly alive as a way to save the organs Dracula and Lucy treat their victims the same. Lucy keeps the children alive so she could come again and again to feed. Dracula keeps Lucy and Mina alive to be able to keep the blood fresh and be able to transform them.
The act of taking a body part or fluid and putting it into another person, human or not, has an emotional tie associated with it. The surgeons in Stripped for Parts dreaded having to do transplant operation did not enjoy working on the cadaver it is “somehow barbaric”. This mostly has to do with the emotional ties the people get while working on a patient they are ultimately letting die. This bond with the recipient, donor, and the operator is present throughout the novel as the doctors are trying to keep Lucy alive. Each person who donates blood receives a connection with Lucy that would otherwise not be there. The intermediary in this case would be the blood. The blood represents life and love in both the novel and the essay.
In the novel Dracula the process of body transplants is reversed. In the essay Stripped for Parts the author Jennifer Kahn goes through a journey in the harvesting of human organs. She shows how the dead man somehow saves a person’s life no matter how unlikely. In Dracula it is reversed. It is the living who gives life to the dead. Dracula ages the longer he goes without blood. When he receives blood from a living person he also receives life and his physical appearance becomes younger. Unlike the patients Kahn saw Dracula’s change was immediately seen. Just like the cadavers where kept mostly alive as a way to save the organs Dracula and Lucy treat their victims the same. Lucy keeps the children alive so she could come again and again to feed. Dracula keeps Lucy and Mina alive to be able to keep the blood fresh and be able to transform them.
The act of taking a body part or fluid and putting it into another person, human or not, has an emotional tie associated with it. The surgeons in Stripped for Parts dreaded having to do transplant operation did not enjoy working on the cadaver it is “somehow barbaric”. This mostly has to do with the emotional ties the people get while working on a patient they are ultimately letting die. This bond with the recipient, donor, and the operator is present throughout the novel as the doctors are trying to keep Lucy alive. Each person who donates blood receives a connection with Lucy that would otherwise not be there. The intermediary in this case would be the blood. The blood represents life and love in both the novel and the essay.