Dracula

The tale of Dracula begins through the eyes of young Jonathan Harker, a newly appointed London solicitor who is embarking on a journey from England to Transylvania to meet a client. Travelling through the Transylvanian countryside, Harker remarks on the significant disparity between modern England and the odd traditions and superstitious beliefs of the Transylvanian locals. He is very much an outsider in their midst, and the behaviour of the locals soon leads to him having perturbing premonitions. Harker is ill-equipped to deal with the primordial nature of Transylvania in comparison to progressive England; he is alarmingly like a fish out of water. Upon meeting his wealthy noble client, Count Dracula, Harker immediately senses that something is very wrong. His client is only ever awake at night, and never appears to have an appetite... (what could it mean!?). Eventually, Harker reaches the conclusion that he is trapped within Dracula’s castle, and he has been given a very short expiry date! He manages to escape, but this only the beginning of the affliction that Dracula will unleash upon England.

Mina Murray, Harker’s fiancée, and her close friend Lucy Westenra are introduced to the novel during their vacation in the town of Whitby, England. Lucy begins to display symptoms of a perplexing ailment unknown to Western medicine; she is sleepwalking and sustaining significant blood loss. Arthur Holmwood, Lucy’s fiancé, and Doctor Seward, who is in charge of an insane asylum in London, are contacted to come and treat Lucy’s deteriorating condition. Seward’s strong foundational roots in science and rational ex- planations are no match for the supernatural elements that underpin Lucy’s worsening condition, and thus he contacts Professor Abraham Van Helsing who possesses deep knowledge of the occult. Van Helsing appears to know exactly what is wrong with Lucy but does not voice this for fear of sounding insane. However, by the time they realise Dracula is preying upon Lucy in the night and drinking her blood, Lucy is unable to be saved by the men’s blood transfusions, and she transforms into a demonic, undead creature of the night. She is no longer human; the men are forced to kill her in order to release her soul.
 

The group formulate a plan to eradicate Dracula entirely as he had begun to feast on his next victim – Mina. It is now a race against time to prevent her inevitable death. Desperate and instilled with vengeance, the men track down Dracula to his Carfax estate in England where they destroy the wooden boxes that provide him protection during daylight, leaving just one intact. The group track the final box to his castle in Transylvania and eventually kill him, releasing his soul and incidentally granting him eternal peace. One of Lucy’s suitors, Quincey Morris, dies during the altercation in a heroic act of self- sacrifice, reuniting him in death with Lucy.

The story of Dracula is told through multiple voices and formats, similar to a compilation of evidence that one would collect after a tragedy. While told dispassionately, it would be impossible completely expel objective bias and emotional inferences from the accounts of events. This compels readers to question the reliability of the narrators and prompts interesting questions about the ambiguities of reality and insanity. Without further ado, let us delve into the world of Dracula that is, as Lucy cries, a “presage of horror.”