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Faith Alexis Johnson

Mrs. Pierce
AP English 4
April 20th, 2016
Mind Control
I would like to discuss the psychological theme of mind control of the books Dracula,
1984, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Throughout these books, mind control is
a predominant theme throughout all of them. From 1984, I will use Winstons character and
discuss how torture and manipulation was used against him to control him. From Dracula, I will
use Renfield (the patient in Dr. John Seward's mental institution) Lucy, and Mina. I will show
how Dracula controlled these characters. From The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I
will use Dr. Henry Jekyll (who is also Mr. Edward Hyde) and discuss how the drug that he took
to change him into Hyde began to slowly take over him.
Mind control, also known as brainwashing and manipulation, is not a very talked about
subject, to many it is a taboo subject, or something that is impossible. Mind control is a system
of influences that significantly disrupts an individual at their very core, to the level of their
identity, their values, beliefs, preferences, decisions, behaviors, and relationships, creating a new
pseudo-identity or pseudo personality. Throughout the three books the psychological theme of
mind control or brainwashing is a predominant theme. In 1984, Winston, the main character of
the story, is a man of his own beliefs and values, at the end of the story he is a completely
different person.
Mind control can happen to anybody, and you may not even be aware of it, victims of
mind control and brainwashing are mostly influenced by their friends, family, and loved ones. In

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the beginning of the novel 1984, Winston keeps a journal that he states he is writing to a man
named OBrien. Winston has never met OBrien but feels a connection with him, and he views
them as friends later on in the story.
Winston lives in the dystopian world of Big Brother, a communistic society, where one is
not allowed to have freedom of thought, freedom of privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of
anything. Big Brother is always watching, always listening, whether it be through telescreens or
through microphones. By taking away the protection of privacy, the characters in this story are
brainwashed to not trust anybody. When Winston first spots the dark haired girl he plots her
death, their whole society was brainwashed to not trust due to telescreens, microphones, and
Thought Police. By taking away privacy Big Brother can control what the people do, because the
people are afraid of what will happen to them if they step out of line. Big Brother controls the
minds of the whole society because he tells them what he wants them to hear. Big Brother erases
any kind of evidence that convicts him of being wrong.
By controlling what goes out to the public, whats erased, and even how history is
rewritten, Big Brother can make the society do what he wants. One day they are at war with
Eastasia the next Eurasia and no one bats an eye or questions it. Kids go to school and are taught
to spy on their families, to turn them into the Thought Police. Big Brother controls what
everyone is taught, what they see, hear, taste, own, and even wear.
With all of this control, this is also how the communistic society is kept in line. Everyone
fears what would happen to them if they disobeyed Big Brothers wishes, and they should be. By
conforming to him they let him have all control. By creating fear of individual thought, Big
Brother makes it almost impossible for someone to commit thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime is an

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occurrence or instance of controversial or socially unacceptable thoughts. Most of the people that
were against Big Brother kept quite and didnt attempt to make a difference.
Winston was one of the people who wanted to make a difference, who wanted to stand up
to Big Brother, and he actually attempted to make a difference. He found different ways of
rebellion, from buying a journal to keep his independent thoughts, to buying a coral paperweight,
something he found beautiful. Winston felt a connection with OBrien. They met one day and
OBrien told him about the brotherhood. Little did Winston know that it was just a trick to get
close to him. OBrien ends up being the person who brainwashes Winston in Room 101. Room
101 is where your deepest and darkest fears are used against you in a way of torture. Winston
was beaten, starved, scratched, and stretched to his breaking point. OBrien put him on a
stretcher and would hold up four fingers, saying its five to the party, he then asked Winston how
many he saw, and when Winston would say four, OBrien would stretch his body even further.
Through these endless and multiple scenes of torture, Winston was changed into a completely
different person. At the end of the story he would recite the Big Brother beliefs and agreed that 2
+ 2 = 5.
Multiple characters throughout the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker fall victim to the
power of Count Dracula. Renfield, Lucy, and Mina are the characters in the story that are
victimized by mind control and hypnosis. Renfield is a patient at Dr. John Sewards mental
institution. Renfield worships Count Dracula, he takes drastic measures to become like him.
Renfield even consumes and lures didnt types of insects and animals to his cell. Multiple
times Renfield escapes his cell and tries to reach Dracula. The effect and control Count Dracula
has on Renfield is more mind control than brainwashing or hypnosis. Renfield looks up to
Dracula and wants to be like him, so The Count takes full advantage of that.

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Lucy Westenra is in the same situation as Renfield. Dracula begins to feed from Lucy.
She gets blood transfusion after blood transfusion until the men can spare no more blood and
think that they have solved the Count Dracula problem. Unlike Renfield, Lucy doesnt want to be
like Dracula but he chose her, her started feeding from her until she unfortunately passed away
due to all the blood loss.
When she is buried, the men in the novel know what they have to do to her corpse. They
have to rip her head off and stab her heart with a wooden stake. Unfortunately, the men do not
accomplish this and her corpse comes to life. Lucy is an undead victim of Dracula, he can
control what she does and where she goes. Once Lucy passed to the other side she was no longer
herself, just Count Draculas puppet.
In the story, the reader doesnt get told if Dracula can see what Lucys corpse sees, or feel
what she feels. But one can think that maybe since Mina could sense where Dracula was while
under hypnosis, Dracula can sense where Lucy is, even control her.
Mina Murray on the other hand, is not being controlled by The Count at all. Mina gets
bitten by Dracula and his virus or curse begins to take over her, making her super sick. The
men in the story (Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Arthur Holmwood, John Seward) come up with
a plan of putting Mina under hypnosis. While Mina is in her hypnotic state, she can hear waves
breaking against the side of a boat. This is how they eventually track Dracula down and kill him.
Hypnosis nowadays isnt a man dressed in a cloak holding a watch in front of your face
and telling you to follow it with your eyes. Hypnosis also isnt control over a person's mind,
while under hypnosis a person is hyperattentive. This means that the person is abnormally or
extremely active. Hypnosis is defined as an induction of a state of consciousness in which a

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person apparently loses the power of voluntary action and is highly responsive to suggestion or
direction, they have complete free will to do what they please.
Mind control is a very predominant theme in Dracula, from Renfield, Lucy, and Mina,
every one of these characters is somehow controlled by some supernatural power.
In the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson,
mind control through drug addiction is a very big theme. In this novel, Dr. Henry Jekyll is a very
rich, well known, and respectable, successful man. But one day he creates a drug that can turn
him into a completely different person. His alter ego, or doppelganger, is Mr. Edward Hyde.
Mr. Edward Hyde in comparison to Dr. Henry Jekyll is a scary, short, ugly, and nonrespectable man. He is Henry Jekyll, just his evil side. When Jekyll takes this poison, it turns him
into Hyde, it physically turns him into a completely different person. Changing him from short to
tall, thin to fat, handsome to hideous.
This drug slowly begins to take over Dr. Henry Jekylls mind. He needs more and more
of it to make him feel good, until this addiction eventually kills him. This is an example of how
actual drug addiction works. Drugs cause your brain to release endorphins, chemicals that make
you feel good, and as you take or use the drug more, you become tolerant to it. To get over the
tolerance, one needs more to feel the same amount of this good feeling the endorphins release.
By the increase of your endorphins, you actually can ruin the reward path that is in your brain.
You will no longer find joy in the things you used to. Thats what happened to Dr. Henry Jekyll.
Him purging out his evil side made him feel so good that he did it nearly every night, to where
he became tolerant to it and needed more and more. Drug addictions that are really bad can lead
to death, whether it be from an overdose or from the withdrawal. Sadly, as the reader one doesnt
know whether it was overdose or withdrawal that killed Dr. Henry Jekyll.

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Drug addiction is related to mind control because the addiction can basically control a
person. They want the high, they need it, and they will do anything they have to or anything they
can to get it. The person is being controlled by this drug, when they are on it, they arent
themselves and arent thinking clearly.
Mind control is a very diverse and taboo thing. Mind control can be anything that
controls or changes a person. Brainwashing, hypnosis, mind control, and addiction all fall into
the same category. All of these things influence a person and decisions. Most of these subjects
are not very talked about because people can feel weird discussing drug addictions, hypnosis,
brainwashing, and mind control.
Throughout every single one of these books there is a different way a character is
controlled or influenced. Winston from 1984 is changed and brainwashed by being tortured. In
the 1950s American troops were being killed and captured by Koreans. When the Koreans
captured them, they took them in and started a process of brainwashing them. The concept of
brainwashing was the brainchild of Edward Hunter. He published an article about
brainwashing in 1950. He determined that the Reds had specialists on their brainwashing
panels experts in the use of drugs and hypnotism, as he later told the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. Their ultimate goal was conquering America (Weiner).
Out of the Americans that were captured and set free, a small percentage of them were
successfully brainwashed and did not want to return to America. This is why brainwashing is not
a very talked about subject, it isnt a huge threat yet, but it does work in a small percentage.
This is what happened to Winstons character. He was tortured into the beliefs of Big
Brother, he related his freedom of thinking and his overall freedom with pain. This tricked his
brain into thinking that his own thoughts were bad, since he was being punished for them. This

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in the end, resulted into him being a completely different person, a person that had the same
beliefs as Big Brother.
In Dracula a supernatural being was actually controlling two of the characters in the
story, with a minor influence on Mina. With his vampire powers he controlled Lucy and
Renfield. He controlled lucy by killing her, which made her become a vampire, she was the
living dead. The influence or power that Count Dracula had over Renfield is that Renfield
wanted to be like Dracula when he first saw him. He saw how powerful Dracula was and he
wanted to get his hands on just a fraction of that power. With Renfield being so desperate,
Dracula didnt have to turn him into a vampire, he only had to promise he would if Renfield
would do as he was told, and Renfield did. Which ultimately caused the end of him when
Dracula no longer needed him, he just used Renfield as a distraction. Using his death as the last
piece to his puzzle. With Dracula trying to make Mina like him, he ended himself. His own tricks
were used against him and Mina was used to track Dracula down.
Drug addiction is what controlled Henry Jekyll. He needed more and more of this
addicting drug and this caused the fate of him. He locked himself away from everybody and kept
taking the drug over and over again until he died. This substance ate Jekyll away until he was
ultimately Hyde in the end. Drug addiction is a type of control because of the effect it has on
your brain. It rewires it so one does anything they can to get that high just one more time.
In the end, almost every character that was being controlled by something came to their
own fates, Mina being an exception. Any type of control or influence over the mind comes in
many shapes and forms, brainwashing, hypnosis, and addiction just being a few examples over
things that control or have a strong influence over a person and their brain.

Annotated Bibliography

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HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com. N.d. Web. 22 May 2016.

This source is helpful for my paper because it talks about how hypnosis works and the
history of hypnosis. Hypnosis is not the man in a cloak waving a watch in front of you and
making you drowsy. While under hypnosis one is actually hyperattentive, which means
abnormally or extremely active. Mina is hypnotized in the story Dracula by Bram Stoker. Mina
is hypnotized so they can find the location of the Count Dracula. While under hypnosis, Mina
hears waves breaking against the side of a boat and thats how they know Dracula is on a boat
and on the way to one of his hiding spots. Hypnosis is usually portrayed as the person being
under it as if they are being controlled. But the person under hypnosis actually has full free will.
This source is reliable and helps add to my thesis statement and backs up mind control and
brainwashing.

HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com. N.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2016.

This source is helpful for my paper because it also talks about how mind control works. It
also gives the history of brainwashing of Americans by Korean and Chinese captors during the
Korean War. Twenty one of the 20,000 soldiers that were captured and set free refused to go back
to America because they had been successfully brainwashed by the Chinese and Koreans. Mind
control falls under social reform and influence, which is happening around us every second of
every day. It's the collection of ways in which people can change other people's attitudes, beliefs
and behaviors. For instance, the compliance method aims to produce a change in a person's
behavior and is not concerned with his attitudes or beliefs. It's the "Just do it" approach.
Persuasion, on the other hand, aims for a change in attitude, or "Do it because it'll make you feel
good. This source is reliable and helps aid to the point in my paper.

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"Mind Control Explained - the Dangers and How to Protect Yourself."

Decision-making-confidence.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.
This source is useful to my paper because it explains what mind control is. Mind control
can also be known as manipulation and brainwashing. Mind control is a system of influences that
significantly disrupts an individual at their very core, at the level of their identity, their values,
beliefs, preferences, decisions, behaviors, and relationships, creating a new pseudo-identity or
pseudo personality. This source explains different ways mind control can be used to benefit or
hurt people. Mind control can help benefit drug addicts, by helping them overcome their
addiction, or addiction can be used as a way to control the mind in a harmful way (Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde). This source also talks about how mind control was used in the past and subtle signs
of mind control. This source is reliable and helps back up the points I will make in my paper
about mind control and how it is used in the novels.

Orwell, George. 1984. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

This source is useful to my paper because one of its predominant themes is the
psychological theme of brainwashing/mind control. Throughout the book 1984, the main
character Winston becomes a completely different person because he is brainwashed. In the
beginning of the story, Winston is a man who cannot stand the idea of Big Brother but, after
ruthless sessions of beatings, torture, and starvation, he is brainwashed and eventually he claims
to love Big Brother. After he is brainwashed Big Brother takes over his mind and begins to
control him. OBrien holds up four fingers and before Winston was brainwashed he did not see
five. But after many sessions of torturing he sees five fingers and agrees that 2+2=4. This source
is helpful and reliable because it enhances my thesis statement and aids my research by showing

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how somebody could potentially be brainwashed and changed into a whole new person. I will
use the information from this story line and facts to further back up my thesis statement later on
throughout my paper.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, n.d. Print.

This source is useful to my paper because it helps back up the idea of mind control. In the
book Dracula by Bram Stoker, there are three characters that fall victim to Draculas power. The
first one being Renfield, a patient at Dr. Holmwoods mental institution. Renfield is obsessed
with the idea of becoming a vampire, he escapes his cell and couple of time and seems to be
talking to himself, when he is actually speaking to a higher person. Renfield also lures bugs
and other types of animals to his cell to sacrifice them to Dracula. Mina and Lucy fall victim to
Dracula in a different way, they arent obsessed with becoming like him, they just got bit by him.
Mina tries to protect Lucy from him the best that she can, getting Van Helsing's help. With him
they do many blood transfusions, techniques to keep vampires away, and watch over Lucy day
and night. But it doesnt work, Lucy falls victim and becomes Draculas puppet. After she gets
all the blood sucked out of her body, Dracula can use her against her friends. Mina falls victim
by also getting bit, she doesnt become like Lucy immediately, but is getting there. She uses
Draculas power against him, since they get mentally connected she can give his where abouts
away to Van Helsing, which ultimately causes the end of Dracula.

Weiner, Tim. "Remembering Brainwashing." The New York Times. The New York Times,
2008. Web. 24 May 2016.
This source is helpful to my paper because it defines brainwashing and the different ways
it is used and signs of being brainwashed. Brainwashing" or "mind control" refers to the

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unethical use of persuasion methods with the aim of recruiting people into joining or remaining
involved with a group, movement, or cause. Nowadays often referred to as psychological
manipulation or coercive control. This source explains how brainwashing can be used to keep
somebody in an abusive relationship or in a cult. It also says that people that are being
brainwashed often dont know it because the person that is brainwashing them is somebody they
consider their friend. I will use that to backup when OBrien was brainwashing and
manipulating Winston, at first Winston was completely oblivious to the fact that OBrien was a
bad guy and that he was falling into his trap. This source aids to my thesis statement and supports
statements and scenes from the novel 1984.

Williams, C. Kingsley, A. G. Eyre, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Harlow: Pearson Education, 1999. Print.
This source is useful to my paper because it also helps back up the idea of brainwashing.
In the book The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the psychological theme of
brainwashing is shown by how the drugs that took over Dr. Henry Jekylls mind and soul. Dr.
Henry Jekyll is a well respected, handsome man. He has many friends and a good social life,
until he creates a drug that changes him into a whole new person. The drug that Dr. Henry Jekyll
creates changes him into Mr. Edward Hyde, a short, old, scary man. Edward Hyde is not
respected and doesnt have a social life, Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekylls complete opposite. I will use
this source to further back up my research and statements on mind control and brainwashing.
This source aids my paper by showing how drugs and addiction can control somebody, and in
some cases, changing who they are as a whole.
Works Cited
http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2009/07/20/25-scary-facts-about-brainwashing/

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http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brainwashing.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/weekinreview/06weiner.html?_r=0
http://science.howstuffworks.com/ultrasonic-mind-control.htm
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/hypnosis.htm
http://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hypnosis/basics/definition/prc-20019177
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/understanding-drug-abuse-addiction
1984 by George Orwell
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Dracula by Bram Stoker