Day 71: Dracula

!Spoilers for this one!

In his wildly popular novel 'Dracula,' Bram Stoker explores the unseen forces of the supernatural, and the goodness within humankind that those forces threaten. In 19th century London, evil is making an inquest. The titular villain Dracula is a nightmarish predator that stalks unseen in the night, spreading his demonic will against the good English Christians who are all very good friends and definitely don't discriminate against women in any way. While the protagonists array the strength of their cooperation against him, Dracula wields the 'brute forces' of nature: rats, flies, spiders, bats, wolves, and other creatures of the night, as well as the elemental powers of darkness, fog, and thunder to cripple their every attempt to thwart his spreading corruption. The friends are brought together by their shared love of the wonderful Lucy Westenra, who is tragically turned by Dracula after a long period of suffering. Despite the best efforts of her friends (who are also medical doctors) John Seward and his mentor Abraham Van Helsing (who also happens to be a knowledgeable vampire hunter, because of course he is), Lucy cannot be saved. Seward and Van Helsing are joined by Lucy's grieving husband Arthur, and their laconic, gun-toting American friend Quincey Morris (yes, really), who agree to become really-good-vampire-hunting-friends upon seeing the evil that Dracula is spreading.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Harker is recovering from his near death encounter with Dracula that serves as the introduction of the novel. His wife Mina is a friend of Lucy, and upon hearing of her tragic death she relates the similarity of her strange fate to Jonathan. They get in touch with Helsing, who confirms that Harker's supernatural experience was legitimate. The duo immediately resolve to join the really-good-vampire-hunting-friends and lend their aid against the forces of evil. They gather at the insane asylum that John Seward manages, and with Jonathan and Mina's help the friends are able to put together a series of clues and events that lead them to Dracula's underground operation. He has been spreading safehouses for vampires throughout London, and must be stopped before the safehouses can be populated. They need the safehouses because they cannot go out during the day, I guess. I mean I don't know why Dracula doesn't just hang out in a cave in bat form instead of going to all the trouble to buy up property, but I digress (by the way, there is a forensic real estate investigation scene, just so you know).

!Big spoilers for the second half of the novel ahead!

Unfortunately, since Mina Harker is a woman, and therefore must be protected at all costs including her own safety, she is quickly put on the bench, so to speak, by her own husband and his vampire hunting friends. This naturally only makes it easier for Dracula to catch her all by herself without any recent knowledge about how the search for Dracula goes or anything to defend herself with, even though they already knew that Dracula can mind control people from their window while they're asleep and are completely aware that he knows that they've been messing around in his house which just so happens to be RIGHT NEXT DOOR to the asylum. Oh, the folly of men. And apparently women also, who are too stupid to notice that Dracula is eating them alive every single night even though all the symptoms perfectly align with what she knows about Dracula because she recently reviewed the entire case of Dracula's corruption in detail. Sigh.

Also, there's a madman at John Seward's asylum named Renfield. He's been in contact with Dracula the whole time, and that's partially why he is insane, but also he was insane to begin with? I don't know man, this character is weird, I'm not sure what to make of him. Dracula has been tempting Renfield with his dark powers, but when he realizes Dracula has been preying on Mina, who was nice to him one time, he ambushes Dracula (who for some reason can only enter the asylum through Renfield's cell due to a weird rule about inviting vampires into your house), and then gets body slammed and breaks his back and dies. Dracula proceeds to enter the asylum and molest the Harkers, including forcing Mina to drink his blood. The really-good-friends scare Dracula off with the power of Christ, and then waste no time in sweeping Renfield's death under the rug to avoid any awkward conversations with the law.

Mina is traumatized by her close encounter with Dracula, but the upside is now that she is so messed up by her brush with evil she's no longer pure enough to deserve being lied to by her friends. Yay.

They take advantage of Mina's newfound telepathic connection to Dracula, and spend the next 100 pages or so hunting him down. Eventually they find his castle. With the power of Christ and sheer violence, Helsing kills him and the other few vampires there. Quincey dies heroically after being wounded during the assault, and everybody else gets away clean. 7 years later, all the unmarried ones get married, the Harkers live happily ever after, and then the novel ends.

I think Dracula is proof that as long as a book is entertaining it doesn't necessarily need to make all that much sense along the way. Some parts were so cheesy that it bordered on parody, while other scenes were so dark and dreary that I could hardly stand to read through them. The wild swings in tone, the aggressively puritan subtext, and the drawn out nature of the narrative really make this novel feel a lot more dated than it would otherwise, but I can't deny the captivating power of the themes of good versus evil, friendship and corruption, and the sheer pulse-pounding horror of Dracula's evil doing. While I think this novel has too many flaws for me to call it a great book, I also recognize that the impact it made on horror culture, and culture in general, is enough to make it a more than a worthwhile read. Just ... don't think too hard about what you're actually reading on this one.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley