Brittany+Stoker's+Dracula

"It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion." -Jonathan Harker's diary (Stoker 49)   Dracula starts out with the journal of Mr. Jonathan Harker, who went in Transylvania to do business with Count Dracula, a mysterious and rather frightening old man. "Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a speck of colour anywhere about him" (Stoker 16). Jonathan soon begins to realize that there is something not quite human about the strange Count, and has the immediate desire to leave castle Dracula as soon as he can. However, he makes the discovery that he is a prisoner in the dark and gloomy castle. When he makes this startling discovery, he also realizes that the Count has been leaving the castle at night, but not through the locked front doors. "But my very feelings changed to repulsion and terror when I saw the whole man slowly emerge from the window and begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings" (Stoker 33). At the same time, Jonathan's fianc é, Mina,    is staying with their friend Lucy, who is exhibiting some rather odd behaviors, such as sleep walking, wandering around cemeteries at night, and returning from her nightly adventures with two tiny holes on her neck. Soon, Lucy's nightly romps make her gravely ill. Dr. Seaward, one of the multiple men in love with poor Lucy, treats her, and brings in his friend Van Helsing for help. Van Helsing realizes Lucy's illness for what it really is, and death suddenly is a much better option for poor Lucy. Soon Van Helsing, Dr. Seaward, American Cowboy Quincey Morris, Jonathan and his new wife Mina, and Lucy's fianc é   Arthur Holmwood are in an epic fight against Count Dracula...a dangerous battle that might not leave everyone alive at the end.   This book is written in a series of journal entries and letters that have been 'collected' by characters in the story. It is considered a horror book; however the horror part of it is limited. When it is evident it's wonderfully and skillfully written and even gave me chills. The rest of the book is adventurous and suspenseful.  The journal entries help the audience see the book from several different perspectives, which adds to the plot line. Since the main problem, Count Dracula, threatened more than one person in one place, it wouldn't have been as interesting of a book if it was just from the point of view of Jonathan Harker, or Mina, or Dr. Seaward. Seeing it from multiple points of view allowed you to see the path of destruction the Count made and how it affected a lot of people. In this book, there really isn't anything that //didn't// work. There were a few parts that were confusing, but that doesn't mean the parts didn't work. It is just a harder part to understand in these more modern times. One part in particular was the way a character that is referred to as 'the old man' spoke. In the book, Mina even writes in her journal "I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect" (Stoker, 63). Other then the way this man and at times Van Helsing, spoke, there was nothing confusing about this book.

This book is outstanding because not only did it introduce the world to Vampires, a creature that is still a favorite topic of many great novels today, but it did it in a way that was subtle. Never in the whole book did it come right out and say 'Dracula is a Vampire' and yet you still knew that's what he was. It was dark and creepy without being gory or gross. The characters were wonderfully developed but there wasn't large paragraphs describing them. It was gradual throughout the entire book. It was wonderful in it subtleties.  __ About the Author  __  Bram Stoker was born November 8th, 1847, in Dublin Ireland as the third of seven children born to Charlotte and Abraham Stoker. He was sick as a child and spent most of his childhood in bed, barley able to walk. Growing up, his mother told him a lot of horror stories. However, he fully recovered by his late teens and attended Trinity Collage to study mathematics and was involved in athletics, despite his previous illness. After graduating with honors in 1870, he followed in his fathers footsteps and joined the Civil Service with Dublin Castle. Eight years later he married Florence Balcombe and had a son named Irving Noel Thornley, named after his good friend Sir Henry Irving. He published 18 books before he died in 1912, at the age of 64, due to exhaustion. View the trailer for the 1931 movie of Dracula: media type="youtube" key="ZKx8Qs_TpRQ" height="344" width="425"

__Bibliography__ Stoker, Bram. __Dracula__. Ann Arbor: J.W. Edwards, inc., 2006. __Information on the author found at__: Bram Stoker. __Online-literature__. 2008. Oct 2nd, 2008. http://www.online-literature.com/stoker/