dracula

bram stoker (1897)

i could really honestly say i LOVED this book! it was like reading a grown up harry potter. i just could not put the damn thing down. when i think about dracula, all i can say is "i vant to suck yo blooood". everyone around me was like "YIKES isn't that a scary book?" well it was and it wasn't. it was good though.

the book is composed of a series of diary/journal entries, letters and memos. there are many characters in the book, starting with jonathan harker who goes to transylvania to meet with count dracula. at the count's castle he experiences many strange things. the count is most noticeably nocturnal, doesn't eat anything and is described as such:

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

mr harker realizes that he is a prisoner in this castle without a way out. meanwhile, his fiancee mina murray and her friend lucy westerna spend time together. mina is worried when she doesn't hear about jonathan for awhile. lucy meanwhile had 3 marriage proposals in one day: arthur holmwood (later lord godalming) who she marries, quincey morris and dr john seward (a psychiarist in an insane asylum with an interesting patient renfield, who eats flies and spiders).

i sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats. -seward

lucy becomes sick, weak and pale without any reason. dr seward calls on his friend professor van helsing to check her out. he is immediately suspicious (especially since she has two little holes in her neck) but does not tell anyone of what, at first. they resort to giving lucy blood transfusions, which works for awhile by giving her strength. then next thing they know she is weak again. eventually she dies from a wolf bite and is buried. not soon after there are stories of attacks on children who are found to have holes in their necks. van helsing, along with dr seward & co figure out lucy's become a vampire by visiting her grave at night and day. they drive a stake through her heart and behead her to release her soul.

jonathan made it out of the castle, only to end up crazy. he is recovering and mina gets words eventually that he is in budapest. she goes to him, they marry and return, only to join forces with the rest. they all realize that his stories from the castle and all the going-ons in london were related. so together they seek out to destroy dracula.

i don't know why reading about wolves, vampires and bats did not scare me. neither did the awesome manga-style pictures by jae lee. it was suspenseful but somehow i knew how it would end up. i kept waiting to see who would turn into vampires and how they would figure out where dracula was, since he could take the form of animals and fog. it was pretty cool.

For life be, after all, only a waitin' for somethin' else than what we're doin', and death be all that we can rightly depend on.