Chapters 9-12: Who you gonna call? VAN HELSING!

I think it's safe to say these are the best chapters of Dracula I have read since I started. Admittedly, that's not saying much, but believe me, it gets a lot better here.

Ok, so Lucy has been bitten by a vampire. She is terribly ill and nobody knows why. Mina decides to call on  Dr. John Seward (psychiatrist guy, got rejected by Lucy) to help diagnose her illness. At first, he was about as helpful as a colour-blind interior decorator. All he could do is call upon Abraham Van Helsing, a highly acclaimed professor who is very tolerant of supernatural ideas.

Van Helsing is a pro. He did everything possible to save an impossible situation. He sorted out several blood transfusions on Lucy (although it made me wonder how they all had the same blood type). He conjured up several bouquets of garlic flowers and decorated the whole of the bedroom with it (it obviously worked). He's the bloke for an odd and confusing situation which makes no sense. Top guy.

Abraham Van Helsing, M.D. D.Ph. D.Lit. B.O.S.S.

On with the story. Van Helsing spends most of the next two chapters trying to stop vampiritis from developing and killing her. We get this constant limbo between her getting better and then getting worse, and this spreads to Seward and Van Helsing, who almost go through the fight with her. Blood from Seward, Van Helsing, Quincey Morris (the yank who also proposed to Lucy) and Arthur satisfies her temporarily, but only for a day or so. The garlic thing works well, mainly because it's common knowledge that garlic helps ward off vampires. Despite their best efforts, she remains in this state of purgatory.

I felt really for Lucy. It must be so scary watching your body get beaten to a pulp by something seemingly invisible and having to deal with the pain. All this false hope she would get better; she 'dies' without really having a clue what's going on. There's millions of people every day that goes through this problem, but it's not the transition into a vampire. It's cancer. It's AIDS. It's starvation. We all know of this tragic truth.

Lucy does die, with her friends by her side on her bed. Van Helsing ends Chapter 12, however, with an awesome cliffhanger: 'It is only the beginning.' Brilliant.

The sub-plot of these chapters are Mina and Jonathan's love trials. Jonathan was not dead, just mentally ill. How he managed to escape Dracula's mansion I'll never know but he does and Mina travels to Transylvania to see him. (I actually wanted to him to die personally, too stupid for his own good). They get married and, when he finally recovers, returns to England which must be of great relief for Jonny, certainly not a great holiday for him.

Also, it's the same old story in the Psychiatric ward. Hannibal Renfield is up to his normal antics: escaping a very flimsy psychiatric ward and returning home. He did try and kill a few of the doctors in there. No more animal-housing though.

Well, that's just about it. I don't think I've given these pages justice; they really do make for great reading. I only hope that this really does set the trend for the rest of the book. I may actually finish it then!

Chapters 5-8: The Gothic Horror has turned into a Chick Flick!

And my 'adventure' continues...

So, we moved on, assuming Jonny Harker succumbed to a gruesome death. We are then transported back to England and to the focus of two women: Mina, Harker's fiancé, and Lucy Westenra, who I'm guessing are about the same age. They are good friends and they write to each other on a regular basis, exchanging their many experiences and their feelings.

In Chapter 5, the main event is the three proposals Miss Westenra receives from three blokes. I couldn't help but think this was a very typical storyline from a poor soap opera or maybe even a chick-flick (Three's a crowd' could be a decent name) and thus it bored me to tears. The three blokes, one's a shrink, one's a yank and the other is... Arthur. They are all mates (note the connection between all the characters) and they all gossip.

All I was bothered about was that Mina had received the three final letters from Jonathan and her continuing worry at his lack of correspondence, which continues all up until the eighth chapter.

Chapter 6: Mina travels up to the charming town of Whitby to visit Lucy. There she meets an old codger named Mr Swales. Now, as much as I'd like to talk extensively about Swales and his opinions, I couldn't understand a thing he was saying. I'd like to congratulate Stoker on his efforts to perceive accent and dialect (he did well with the American) but he has made it near impossible to understand in the written word!

The most interesting part of the four chapters I read was from the journal of John Seward, the shrink. He tells a very in depth account of a patient named Renfield. He notes Renfield's unusual behaviour, including his love of animals and his lack of violence. He describes heavily a ritual Renfield keeps of collecting an animal, growing its numbers to an absurd level and introducing a predator to eat it, continuing the phases. He calls him a 'Zoophagous' and says he lives off of the lives of other living creatures, absorbing its power per-say.

I found that part very intriguing, not because I have any affiliation with Psychology but just because of my love of Psychological horror (i.e. The Shining, Silence of the Lambs). Is it bad that the part about eating live Sparrows made me LOL?

Perhaps Renfield should eat his raw Sparrows with some fava beans and a nice chianti?

As you may have guessed, I do not find Dracula thoroughly entertaining. This is the case for Chapter 7. I felt the way in which it was written was way too expansive for a newspaper article. I felt the urge to just skip the whole section at one point.  What we learn from the article is a ship called the Demeter was found shipwrecked with none of its crew on board apart from the captain, who died at the wheel. The journal of the Captain describes the slowly dwindling numbers of the crew. Funny what one man/supernatural being can do to a ship. Dracula reduced the ship down to the captain, who chained himself at the wheel so he wouldn't suffer the same fate.

Ok, now it gets interesting.

Mina discovered Lucy had accidentally walked out of the house and into the town, as you do when you sleepwalk. Mina finds her, all delirious, with two puncture holes in the neck. The dramatic irony here is that I know she's had a little encounter with Count Dracula, who has finally found his way to England (good for him, he could do with a holiday!).

We go back to the asylum where John finds Renfield had escaped. He quickly finds him and wraps him up in a straghtjacket, proclaiming nonsense about his master coming to visit him.

So, getting better, but I fear this book's entertainment will alternate as it has done in the previous chapters. Damn.