By Christina, Robert, and Mike
Dracula
• by Bram Stoker
• published in 1897 constable & co. , London
About Bram stoker
• Abraham Stoker (November 8, 1847- April 20, 1912) better known for
his gothic Novel Dracula.
• Abraham Stoker was born in Marino Crescent, which was then in
Clontarf in Ireland on 8th November 1847. The writer of one of the
best vampire horror novels, Dracula, this Irish author gained fame
after his lifetime was over. He was the third of the seven children of
Abraham Stoker (1799-1876) and the feminist Charlotte Mathilda
Blake Thornely (1818-1901).
• Bram had a childhood during which he could not walk. He started to
walk after he was seven years old and he started school where he
recovered completely. His idea is this childhood gave him time to
think.
• In 1878, Bram married Florence Balcombe, and they moved to
London.
•
Stoker's Dracula came in 1897. Dracula, based on Vlad the Impaler
aka Vlad III - a cruel impaler from Transylvania, is a vampire novel and
a masterpiece of horror.
• Though it was not even the first ever vampire novel written, Dracula
stands out to be the real fore-runner of the modern-day vampire by
its class of story-telling and the quality of the story.
• Bram Stoker passed away on 20th April, 1912, at No 26 St George's
Square.
other works
• Dracula, The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lady of the Shroud, The Lair of
the White Worm, The Man, Dracula's Guest, The Judge's House
Setting
• Dracula mainly takes
place in the eastern
European country of
Transylvania and a little
bit in England.
• During the 19th century
Characters
•
Count Dracula - A centuries-old vampire and nobleman,
Count Dracula lives in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains.
• Under his aristocratic charm, the count has a dark and evil
soul.
• He can take the form of an animal, control the weather, and is
stronger than twenty men.
• he cannot enter a victim’s home unless invited, cannot cross
water unless carried, and is left powerless by daylight.
•
Van Helsing - A Dutch professor and one of the most advanced
scientists of his day.
• Called to cure Lucy Westenra, Van Helsing’s contributions are
essential in the fight against Dracula.
• Van Helsing is not affected by the limitations of Western medicine: he
knows that he faces a force that cannot be treated with traditional
science and reason.
• Knowledgeable about vampire folklore, Van Helsing becomes
Dracula’s antagonist and the leader of the group that hunts Dracula
down and destroys him.
•
Jonathan Harker - A lawyer, whose firm sends him to Transylvania to
end a real estate transaction with Dracula.
• Young and inexperienced Harker finds himself a prisoner in the castle
and barely escapes with his life.
• He shows a fierce curiosity to discover the true nature of his captor
and a strong will to escape.
•
Later, after becoming convinced that the count has moved to
London, Harker becomes a brave and fearless fighter.
• Mina Murray - Jonathan Harker’s fiancée. Mina is a practical young
woman who works as a teacher.
• victimized by Dracula, Mina is also the best friend of the count’s first
victim, Lucy Westenra.
• Mina is in many ways the heroine of the novel, embodying purity,
innocence, and Christian faith—virtues she maintains despite her
suffering at the vampire’s hands.
• She is intelligent and resourceful, her research leads Van Helsing’s
men to Castle Dracula.
• Lucy Westenra - Mina’s best friend and an attractive young woman.
• The first character in the novel to fall victim to Dracula.
•
Lucy becomes a vampire, which compromises her much-praised
chastity and virtue, and banishes her soul from the promise of
eternal rest.
• Van Helsing’s crew hunts down the demon she has become and kills
it, following the rituals of vampire slaying(cutting off the head, staked
through the heart, and garlic stuffed in the mouth.), and thus
restoring Lucy’s soul to her body and to heaven.
•
John Seward - A young doctor, Van Helsing’s pupil.
•
Seward is the administrator of an insane asylum not far from
Dracula’s English home.
• Seward conducts ambitious interviews with one of his patients,
Renfield, in order to understand better the nature of life-consuming
psychosis.
•
Although Lucy turns down Seward’s marriage proposal, his love for
her remains, and he dedicates himself to her care when she suddenly
takes ill.
•
After her death, he remains dedicated to fighting the count.
Renfield - A patient at Seward’s mental asylum.
• A strong behemoth and a refined gentleman.
• Renfield has a habit of consuming living creatures—
flies, spiders, birds, and so on—which he believes
provide him with strength, vitality, and life force.
•
Arthur Holmwood - Lucy’s fiancé.
• Arthur is the son of Lord Godalming and inherits that title upon his
father’s death.
• In his fight against Dracula’s dark powers, Arthur is the first to offer
Lucy a blood transfusion, and he agrees to kill her demonic form.
• Quincey Morris - An American from Texas, and another of Lucy’s
suitors.
• A brave and good-hearted man, never begrudging Holmwood his
success in winning Lucy’s hand.
•
Quincey ultimately sacrifices his life in order to rid the world of
Dracula’s influence.
• Mrs. Westenra - Lucy’s mother.
• A brittle woman of failing health, Mrs. Westenra
inadvertently sabotages her daughter’s safety by
interfering with Van Helsing’s folk remedies.
• She dies of shock when a wolf leaps through Lucy’s
bedroom window.
Plot
• Jonathan Harker is a real estate agent who travels to
Count Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania to complete a
deal for an estate in England. Along the way, the
people of Transylvania warn him of Dracula One lady
in fear of his life gives him a silver crucifix to wear
around his neck.
• Then when he reaches the castle a servant comes up in
a black carriage. And Jonathan goes with him to
Dracula's castle on the way there is fog and the sounds
of wolves circling them. Then they see blue fire in the
distance and they follow it. Then the wolves start to
attack and the servant who is actually Dracula holds up
a hand and stops the attack. They reach the castle.
• Jon meets Dracula and stays with him in his castle. As he is
staying there, however, he realizes that he is a prisoner. He is
restricted to almost two rooms seeing as how all of the doors
around him are locked. He also notices strange things about
Dracula like how he has no reflection and how when he sees
blood he almost attacks him. Also how he is never out during
the day time. Then one night he looks outside his window to
see Dracula ninja scaling down the wall. (Climbing in ur
windows snachin’ ur people up.)
• During his time he also breaks into one of the other rooms in
the castle and is almost attacked by three vampire sisters.
Dracula saves him however then explains how they can have
him once he is finished with him. Panicked the next day Jon
scales the window outside and goes down to Dracula’s room.
There he finds Dracula in a coffin ‘asleep’. He leaves and then
comes back again and steals Dracula’s key. He escapes the
castle.
Vampire Sisters
• Lucy Westenra writes to her
best friend Wilhelmina “Mina”
Murray about her three suitors
Dr. Seward, who owns a lunatic
asylum. Quincey P. Morris, and
American. Then the one
whom she accepted a proposal
to Arthur Holmwood.
• Then we see the journal of Dr.
Seward on his patient Renfeild
who collects flies then eats
then or feeds them to his
spiders. Apparently he wants a
cat. (Probably to eat)
Lucy begins to start sleep walking and one night Mina wakes
to find that Lucy is gone. She leaves the house to go look for
her and finds her in a grave yard, a strange man standing over
her. Mina rushes to Lucy who is in a faint and takes her back
home. After a while this continues with Lucy waking up and
going to the window every night. She starts to look pale so Dr.
Seward is called to see her. She has lost a lot of blood ,but is
not anemic. Dr. Seward dose not know what's wrong so he
calls his old professor to come and look at her, Dr. Van
Helsing. Dr. Van Helsing comes and after seeing two small
puncture wounds in her neck he seems to know what is
wrong with her, but will not share what he knows. He has her
ware a wreath of garlic around her neck. However Lucy’s
mother Mrs. Westenra who has been diagnosed with a severe
heart condition that could lead her to die at any time takes
off the wreath. Lucy worsens and has to be given blood
transfusions.
• Mina receives a letter from a nun saying that her fiancé Jonathan
Harker was found and is in her care he has a mental illness and for
her to come immediately. She leaves Lucy to find Jon. She goes to
him and they get married.
• Meanwhile one night Lucy is in her room and a wolf jumps through
her window Mrs. Westenra seeing the wolf suffers a heart attack
and dies. the wolf leaves, the servants seeing all the confusion
moves Mrs. Westenra’s body to another room. Lucy follows her
and tells the maids to go into the dinning room and drink some
wine because their so frantic. At this point Lucy is fearing for her
life and writes in her diary that she doesn’t think she will leave to
see the next day.
• Mean while Dr. Seward and Dr. Van Helsing fear that Lucy is in
danger and go to her house to find it locked. So they break in to
find the maids passed out on the floor after drinking the wine
which seems to have been tampered with. Then they go into the
room and find Mrs. Westenra dead and Lucy past saving. After
putting Lucy in the Mausoleum, a few nights later they hear a new
story about children going missing the children have puncture
marks in their necks and say that they were playing with the
bloofer lady.
At this point Dr. Van Helsing realizing what has happened to Lucy lets Dr. Seaward, Arthur, and
Quincey in on the secret of world of vampires.
Renfeild starts acting up escaping from his room and
quite possibly meeting someone, whom he refers to
as master. He also has lost interest in his fly
collection.
Mina reads Jon’s Journal of the events that happened
at Dracula's castle and realized what had taken
place with Lucy. Dr. Van Helsing, Dr. Seaward,
Quincy, and Arthur hunt down Lucy and
simultaneously stake her through the heart, cut off
her head with a silver knife, and stuff garlic in her
mouth. Her soul is saved and she is at peace.
Huzzah.
Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seaward, Arthur, Quincey, Jon, and
Mina all team up to destroy Dracula.
Dracula forces Mina to drink his blood and he falls in love
with her.
Mina begins to have traits of a vampire, and she has a
mind connection with Dracula. Van Helsing puts a
Eucurist on her forehead and it burns a mark into her
head. The group now has a pressing reason to find
Dracula, because if they do not kill him one day when
Mina dies she will become a vampire.
They hunt them down while making all the boxes of earth
unlivable for Dracula.
They find Dracula attempting to flee in a gypsy cart they
drag his undead villainous A$$ out and stake him.
Literary elements
• The Consequences of Modernity
• As Harker becomes uncomfortable with his lodgings and his
host at Castle Dracula, “unless my senses deceive me, the
old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which
mere ‘modernity’ cannot kill.” Here, Harker voices one of
the concerns of the Victorian era. The end of the
nineteenth century brought drastic developments that
forced English society to question the systems of belief that
had governed it for centuries. Darwin’s theory of evolution,
for instance, called the validity of long-held sacred religious
doctrines into question. Likewise, the Industrial Revolution
brought profound economic and social change to the
previously agrarian England.
• The Threat of Female Sexual Expression
• Dracula is, as much as anything else, a novel that
indulges the Victorian male imagination,
particularly regarding the topic of female sexuality.
In Victorian England, women’s sexual behavior was
dictated by society’s extremely rigid expectations. A
Victorian woman effectively had only two options:
she was either a virgin—a model of purity and
innocence—or else she was a wife and mother. If
she was neither of these, she was considered a
whore, and thus of no consequence to society.
• The Promise of Christian Salvation
• The folk legends Van Helsing draws upon suggest
that the most effective weapons in combating
supernatural evil are symbols of good. In the fight
against Dracula, these symbols of good take the
form of the icons of Christian faith, such as the
crucifix. The novel is so invested in the strength and
power of these Christian symbols that it reads, at
times, like a propagandistic Christian promise of
salvation.
• Blood
• Blood functions in many ways in the novel. Its first
mention, in Chapter III, comes when the count tells
Harker that “blood is too precious a thing in these
days of dishonorable peace; and the -glories of the
great races are as a tale that is told.” The
count proudly recounts his family history, relating
blood to one’s ancestry—to the “great races” that
have, in Dracula’s view, withered. The count
foretells the coming of a war between lineages:
between the East and the West, the ancient and the
modern, and the evil and the good.
• Science and Superstition
• We notice the stamp of modernity almost
immediately when the focus of the novel shifts to
England. Dr. Seward records his diary on a
phonograph, Mina Murray practices typewriting on
a newfangled machine, and so on. The threat
Dracula poses to London hinges, in large part, on
the advance of modernity. Advances in science have
caused the English to dismiss the reality of the very
superstitions, such as Dracula, that seek to undo
their society. Van Helsing bridges this divide:
equipped with the unique knowledge of both the
East and the West, he represents the best hope of
understanding the incomprehensible and ridding
the world of evil.
• Christian Iconography
• The icons of Christian, and particularly Catholic,
worship appear throughout the novel with great
frequency. In the early chapters, the peasants of
Eastern Europe offer Jonathan Harker crucifixes to
steel him against the malevolence that awaits him.
Later, Van Helsing arrives armed with crosses and
Communion wafers. The frequency with which
Stoker returns to these images frames Van Helsing’s
mission as an explicitly religious one. He is, as he
says near the end of the novel, nothing less than a
“minister of God’s own wish.”
Robert’s quote
• I write this and leave it to be seen, so that no
one may by any chance get into trouble
through me. – Lucy Westenra
• Taken from Lucy’s diary this quote shows that
Lucy knew what was happening to her and did
not become a vampire willingly, it also shows
that she doesn't want anyone else to share
the same fate.
Christina’s Quote
“Denn die Todten reiten schnell” Translated“For the dead travel fast”
Spoken by one of the travelers on the wagon in
the scene where Dracula rides up to take
Jonathan to his castle. At this time Dracula is
posing as a servant to Dracula.
Mikes quote
• “ how good they are to me”- Lucy Westenra
• spoken by Lucy this quote is an expression
that even though they have to kill Lucy she
feels loved and that they did everything in
their power to help her.
Critical analysis
Dracula is an interesting and exciting story,
however, it is long and the way it is written is
complex and difficult to read though. I found
myself counting pages. Then as you where
reading it took two pages to get one simple
point across. Also the blood injection was
fake as you need people of the same blood
type to do blood transfusions. The characters
however were well personified. -Christina
• Dracula started out painfully slow I mean the first
chapter was a description of a car ride slow…..
Dracula also had a lot of build up though because of
this slowness you can really feel harkers
desperation as he slowly realizes what is happening
to him. I could also appreciate the cunning of
Dracula slowly picking people off one by one. –
Robert
• Dracula was an interesting read when you get
down to it, but I think you can still have a
suspenseful horror novel without the slowness in
the beginning. This seems like a book that people
would pick up read the first few chapters then put
it back down because of a loss of interest but still
a good book. – Mike
reference
• Stoker, Bram. Dracula. unabridged ed. Mileola,
New York: Dover Publications, inc., 2000. Print.
• peter. “Dracula.” WWW.literature.org.
knowledge.com, n.d. Web. <Abstract retrieved
from http://www.literature.org/>.
• editor. “Dracula.” Www.webliterature.net. google,
n.d. Web.
<http://www.webliterature.net/literature/Stoker/
WL1-dracula/>.
Job division
• About the author,(revenge on Taylor),
characters, - Robert kail
• Plot, setting, - Christina Heflin
• literary elements, reference slide – Mike paul