Dracula - The Original Vampire

A horror novel laced with suspense and seduction, Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' is indeed the original classic vampire story. It primarily begins with one of the heroes leaving England and his fiancé, Mina, to travel to Transylvania to conduct business with Count Dracula. His journey is less than pleasant and when he finally meets the Count at his castle, things go from bad to worse. Harker ends up a prisoner at Castle Dracula, while back home in England, Mina's best friend, Lucy, is mysteriously losing blood every night and becoming very ill and a patient in a mental institution is behaving extremely disturbingly. We then meet Van Helsing, a vampire hunter, who realises what is happening to Harker in Transylvania and the chase is on to stop Dracula from coming to England and to save Jonathan and Lucy.On the surface, 'Dracula' is a horror story with all the trimmings. We encounter Dracula crawling down the wall of his castle, the terrifying events that lead Lucy to having a stake driven through her heart, the horrific description of Dracula resting in his coffin during the day and how he forces Mina to drink his blood from a wound in his chest.The account of the mental patient, Renfield is particularly chilling, as he believes he is serving the Count and begins to ingest living creatures, such as flies, spiders and birds, as he is led to believe 'the blood is the life' and he will be made immortal on completion of his 'duties'.One of the most horrifying things of all though, is that the vampire is a natural seducer. He makes himself irresistible to the women in the novel and it is here that we can make the link to the underlying sexual connotations. When the novel was published in 1897, sex was a taboo subject, so Stoker cleverly entwined it into his novel disguised by the attack of the vampire. There are several seduction scenes, such as Jonathan Harker's encounter with the three brides, the description of Lucy's execution and when Mina is forced to drink Dracula's blood from a thin, self-inflicted orifice in his chest.The thick language and symbolism make the novel an intense read. It is written in diary entry form, but don't be put off by this. You just need to concentrate on whose entry it is you are reading.One more thing, if you've seen the film and think there's no point in reading the book, think again. As with all Hollywood epics, they have taken Stoker's story and twisted it into more of a love story. In the film, you end up feeling kind of sorry for Dracula at the end. Not so in the book. He is a monster from start to finish and Mina is not his long lost bride. Yes, we love Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins and Keanu Reeves (minus the dreadful accent), but do have a read at the book.If you're a horror fan who loves the classic vampire story - garlic, blood, stakes through the heart, decapitation, death by sunlight, sleeping in coffins, then this is the book for you. seuss book collection sets cat hat