Dracula (English)

Dracula is a Gothic horror novel told through letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, telegrams, and ship logs. This fragmented structure gives the story the feeling of a documentary investigation, as if the characters are gradually assembling the truth about a terrifying supernatural threat.
The story begins with Jonathan Harker, a young English solicitor, travelling to Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase property in England. At first, Dracula appears courteous and aristocratic, but Jonathan soon realizes that he is a prisoner in the count’s castle. Dracula behaves strangely: he does not appear in mirrors, has unnatural strength, moves about at night, and is associated with wolves and mysterious supernatural powers. Jonathan also encounters three seductive female vampires who nearly attack him. He eventually understands that Dracula is not human and that he intends to travel to England.
Dracula leaves Transylvania aboard a ship called the Demeter, whose crew mysteriously disappears during the voyage. The ship arrives in Whitby with no living sailors on board, carrying only boxes of earth from Dracula’s homeland. Around this time, Lucy Westenra, a young woman admired by several suitors, begins to suffer from sleepwalking and a strange illness. She grows weaker, loses blood, and bears small marks on her neck.
Lucy’s friends call in Professor Abraham Van Helsing, a learned Dutch doctor who gradually realizes that Lucy is being attacked by a vampire. Despite several blood transfusions from the men who love her, Lucy dies and then becomes one of the undead. She begins preying on children, becoming known as the “Bloofer Lady.” Van Helsing convinces Lucy’s former fiancé, Arthur Holmwood, and the others that she must be released from vampirism. They enter her tomb and destroy the vampire Lucy, restoring her peace.
The group then turns its attention to Dracula himself. The main characters — Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, Jonathan’s wife Mina, Dr. Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris — work together to track Dracula’s movements and destroy the boxes of Transylvanian earth that give him refuge. Mina becomes one of Dracula’s victims after he forces her to drink his blood, creating a psychic connection between them. This link is dangerous, but it also helps the group follow Dracula as he tries to escape back to Transylvania.
The final part of the novel becomes a pursuit across Europe. Dracula flees toward his castle, but the group follows him. In the climactic scene, they intercept the count just before sunset, when his powers would return. Jonathan and Quincey destroy Dracula, ending his curse. Quincey dies from wounds received in the struggle, while Mina is freed from the vampire’s influence.
Dracula explores fear of the unknown, sexuality, religion, science, foreign invasion, disease, and the conflict between modern rational methods and ancient supernatural evil. The novel helped define the modern image of the vampire: aristocratic, nocturnal, seductive, dangerous, and dependent on blood.