Kristen+Dracula

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=**Dracula**=

By:Bram Stoker
=== //"It is the Eve of St. George's Day. Don't ypu know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have their full power? Don't you know where you are going and what are you going to?"// -Jonathan Harker's journal- chap. 1 ===

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 * Author Biography** - Abraham "Bram" Stoker was born on November 8 1847 in Clontarf, a suburb in Dublin Ireland. He was often sick as a child and spent great amounts of time bed-ridden. In 1864 he went to Trinity College in Dublin, to study mathematics, and despite his earlier illnesses he competed in athletics and won many awards. After graduating in 1870 he followed in his father's footsteps and joined the civil service with Dublin castle. From his great love of the arts Stoker beagn to write theatre reviews, and he soon became the manager of the Lyceum theatre in London. He also started to publish many theatre based stories at this time. In 1878 he married actress Florence Balcombe and they had a son Irving Noel Thornley. In 1890 Stoker holidayed in the north-east coast fishing village of Whitby in Yorkshire, where it is said he found much of his inspiration for his novel Dracula. Bram Stoker died in London, England on April 20, 1912. His ashes were mingled with his son's and they now rest in the Golders Green Crematorium in London, England. His wife Florence survived him by twenty-five years and had //Dracula's Guest and Other Weird Stories// published in 1922.=====

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Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a house in London. At first the young lawyer is excited to travel and meet new people, but he soon realizes that he is trapped in a nightmare that he can't escape. He is locked inside of the Count's castle, and while wandering through it he encounters three vampire women and he begins to fear for his life. Meanwhile Jonathan's wife Mina and her friend Lucy are in the old fishing village of Whitby, where Lucy is visited by the Count while she is sleepwalking in a graveyard. Mina just thinks that the two puncture wounds on her friends neck are just pin pricks, and she hurries off to a hospital in Hungary where her husband shows up with a horrible fever. But Lucy becomes weaker and paler with each visit in the night from Dracula, and her husband Arthur,oblivious to what is really happening, thinks that she is sick and calls in his friend Dr. Seward for help. Seward calls in his old teacher Van Helsing to take a look at Lucy and try to figure out what is happening to her. Van Helsing soon realizes that a vampire is sucking the iife out of Lucy, but unfortunately it was to late to save her, and she became one of the undead herself. Not wanting her to hurt other people Van Helsing, Dr. Seward, Arthur, and Quincy Morris, who was a good friend of Lucy's and Arthur's went to destroy the monster that she had become. They cut of her head and put a stake through her heart to free her soul from the evil that had taken over her body. Not wanting anybody else to have to go through what Lucy did they set off with Jonathan and Mina Harker to find and kill Dracula. But Dracula visits Mina in the night, while the unsuspectiing men are busy with their plans. Will they be able to save her, or will the undead triumph?=====

===// "The count's eyes gleamed, and he said "Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!" I suppose he saw the expression on my face, for he added, "Ah, I forgot. You city people cannot understand how a hunter feels."" Jonathan Harker's journal, chap. 2 //===

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Dracula is an outstanding book because it is so interesting and riveting, that you don't want to put it down becasue you want to find out what is going to happen next. I love how Bram Stoker told the whole story with passages from the diary's and journal's of the characters, because it really gives you a sense of conectivness with what is going on. It also gives you the different perspectives of the charecters, which you get to know through their writtings. I would recomend this book because it has a very interesting plot that grabs your attention at the beginning of the book and keeps it until the end. It also has a varity of characters who have a lot of different personalities, which really makes the storyso great. This novel was also made into a black and white film in 1931, staring Bela Lugosi. The movie was a milestone for vampire movies and it inspired other movies such as Dracula 2000, Horror of Dracula, Blackula, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and other remakes.=====

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Other sites of interest
Merriman,C.D "Bram Stoker." __The Literature Network.__ 2008. Jalic Inc. 10/3/08 <[|http:/www.online-literature.com/stoker/]> Miller, Dr. Elizabeth. __Dracula's Homepage.__ 2008 10/19/08  New York Times. "Dracula (1931)." __Movies__. 2008. 10/25/08 