A Summary of Bram Stokers Dracula Essay -- English Literature

A Summary of Bram Stoker's Dracula Dracula is an epistolary novel, meaning that is composed from letters, journal and diary entries, telegrams, and newspaper clippings. Jonathan Harker, Mina Murray (later Mina Harker), and Dr. Seward write the largest contributions to the novel although the writings of Lucy Westenra and Abraham Van Helsing constitute some key parts of the book. The novel has a slightly journalistic feel, as it is a harrowing account supposedly written by the people who witnessed the book's events. A young Englishman named Jonathan Harker travels through Transylvania on a business trip. He is there to aid Count Dracula, a Transylvanian nobleman, in buying an English estate. His journey into the remote Eastern European landscape is fearsome, although initially he is charmed by the Count's generosity and intelligence. Gradually, he comes to realize that he is a prisoner in Dracula's castle, and that the Count is a demonic being who plans to prey on the teeming masses of London. Possessing the supernatural ability to scale vertical walls and live without a reflection. Dracula leaves him to die at the hands of three female vampires, but Jonathan attempts a desperate escape. Meanwhile, in England, Jonathan's fiancà ©e Mina visits her best friend, Lucy Westenra. Lucy has recently been proposed to by three men Arthur Holmwood, Dr. Seward, and Quincey Morris. She chooses Arthur to be her happy fiancà ©. Mina and Lucy vacation together at Whitby, a quaint seaside town renowned for its ghostly history. While they are there, a Russian vessel is shipwrecked. A large dog leaps from the wreck and runs away. All of its crew are missing apart from one dead captain. The ship was carrying fifty boxes of e... ...la's chest. Now, after enough time has passed she will become one of the undead unless they can destroy Dracula first. They set to work, sterilizing (with holy wafer) all but one of the boxes in one day. Dracula, in the last box, flees back to Transylvania to rest and regroup for another attack. The band of friends tracks him down, splitting up so that Van Helsing and Mina will go to purge the castle while the four young men track the last box. Van Helsing and Mina succeed, killing the three female vampires and using holy wafer to render the castle uninhabitable for the undead. They then regroup with the others, and all together they surround the gypsies who are transporting Dracula in his coffin. During the struggle against the gypsies, Quincey receives a mortal wound. Jonathan and Quincey deliver the killing blows to Dracula just as the sun is setting.