Dracula

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Dracula Summary and Complete Study Guide

Name: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker

by Bram Stoker

Published: 1897Horror

Complete Study Resources:

✓ Full plot summary

A vampire count terrorizes Victorian England in this epistolary novel told through diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings.

Complete Plot Summary

Jonathan travels to Transylvania for business with Count Dracula and realizes too late he's a prisoner in a castle with a vampire. He escapes, traumatized, while Dracula sails to England in a ship where he kills the entire crew. In London, Lucy starts sleepwalking and develops a mysterious illness. Despite blood transfusions from multiple suitors, she dies and becomes a vampire who feeds on children. Van Helsing convinces the men to stake her. They realize Dracula is behind everything and begin hunting him while he hunts Mina.

Main Characters in Dracula

Dracula features complex characters representing different aspects of society and the human condition.

Count Dracula is the ancient vampire who moves from Transylvania to London seeking fresh blood. Jonathan Harker is the lawyer who first encounters Dracula and barely escapes his castle. Mina Murray is Jonathan's fiancée, intelligent and brave. Lucy Westenra is Mina's friend who becomes Dracula's first English victim. Professor Van Helsing is the Dutch doctor who knows about vampires and leads the fight. Renfield is the asylum patient who eats bugs and serves as Dracula's unwitting herald.

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The Ending Explained

Dracula bites Mina, creating a blood connection between them. The team uses this connection to track him as he flees back to Transylvania. They pursue him in a desperate race against sunset. Just before Dracula reaches his castle at dusk, they catch up. Jonathan slashes Dracula's throat while Quincey stabs him in the heart. Dracula crumbles to dust. Quincey dies from wounds sustained in the fight, but Mina is freed from Dracula's influence. What Stoker tells us: ancient evil can invade modernity, technology and science can fight superstition, and teamwork beats individual power. It's also about Victorian anxieties—foreign threats, sexuality, women's roles—wrapped in a terrifying package that invented most vampire tropes we still use today.

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