Dracula: Post 2: Brandon Greer: Discussion Director
The next 7 chapters as you know chronicle the strange illness of Lucy and her death. Below I have some questions relating to these chapters. These questions are as deep as some of the other ones because this section of the novel is pretty straight forward.
1. Van Helsing seems to know exactly how to help Lucy. However, he does confide with Seward anything about the illness or its treatments. Why do you think this is?
2. Dracula has not been seen since his time with Jonathan Harker. How does this create the atmosphere of the novel?
3. A lot of information has been given about Renfield, the patient at the asylum. What can you conclude about him?
-Brandon
Category: Per 3 TBT DD 5 comments »
April 5th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
To answer your first question, I thought at first that Van Helsing might have been a vampire himself, but I quickly discarded the idea, seeing that he comes in the sunlight to see Lucy. He might have encountered vampires before though, or had a patient like her and by trial and error, fixed it up. Either answer is probable and through it the reader may be able to presume that Van Helsing and Dracula may have encountered each other before now.
For the next question, the fact that Dracula has not been in the story since then leaves an air of mystery around him. By the way, he has been with the story, in the form of a bat and wolf. He is just not physically present. When he comes back, there is going to be a big surprise, I can feel it.
The final question, about Renfield, I have been waiting for for a bit. He is obviously going to be used somehow in the story and we (as the readers) have not been told much about him. We know he likes to have the circle of life in his room and kill off animals for his enjoyment and through assumption, he is Dracula’s lackey. The guy is a nut job, most likely from the fact that his master is a psychotic person. Renfield gives me the creeps.
There’s my blog!
-Jenni Kantor
April 5th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I think that Van Helsing has had a patient like Lucy before; therefore he knows how to treat her. He recognizes the symptoms and responds to her losing blood by doing transfusions. He also knows to give her garlic flowers to keep in her room, so she starts to feel relaxed a little bit. He even has Seward stay with her at night to keep her ’safe’. Another possibility can be that he himself has been a victim of Dracula’s and has studied the philosophy on how to save himself, seeing how he was a man of logic.
The atmosphere of the Dracula not being presented in the novel since his meeting with Jonathan Harker is quite suspicious. Stoker is eluding the reader as to what is going to happen next. Jen, I also have a feeling that Dracula’s reappearance will be a shocker.
Renfield is quite obscuring at the moment, seeing how we don’t have full details about him. He is definitely Dracula’s servant, but we don’t know how he is helping him quite yet. He is notorious for being fanatical about Dracula, and knowing him so well. I agree with Jen, that he is definitely going to be used as a key point character in the story.
-Kianat Zamir
April 5th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I know I’m finishing this up before everyone answered, but I have somewhere to go and won’t have time to finish it before 5:00.
Unfortunately, I realized that I made some serious mistakes that impacted the answers that I was looking for. In the first question, I wanted to know why Van Helsing does NOT confide with Seward his thoughts on Lucy’s illness. As a result, you answered my questions as I had them written.
It seems likely that Van Helsing has probably met other vampires before and therefore knows how to treat Lucy. As far as your opinions on why Van Helsing does not share his thoughts with Seward, I think it’s probably because he does not want Seward to be close minded that it might be a supernatural event. He also does not want to scare him.
Without Dracula in the picture, suspense is created. You do not know when or how Dracula is going to reenter the story. A mysterious atmosphere is created from this.
For my last question, I thought that Renfield was probably a person that Dracula has under a trance. I don’t however, think that Renfield himself is a vampire.
-Brandon
April 5th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I thought these were due at eight Brandon?
April 5th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I think that he doesn’t tell Seward becuase of what Jenny and Kianat said. He has been a patient, or experienced something with vampires before, maybe even met Dracula and knows what he does?
I don’t completely agree that the atmosphere is mysterious. I can see where that’s coming from though. It is just a different view of the novel. Without him in the picture, other characters can be developed, like Lucy and Mina. We learned a lot about these two specific characters in this section of the story.
Also, Renfield is being developed, and we are learning that he is very odd. He is Dracula’s servant and he is most likely going to be a huge part of the story as both Jenny and Kianat said. If he wasn’t going to be, the author would not have mentioned as much about him as he did.
And Brandon, where do you have to be at 5:00??? Ohhhh hot date??!?!?
-Dan