It turns out that Renfield was pressured by Dracula into obeying him, and he was not inherently aligned with Dracula as I had suspected. Dracula ends up killing him because of his incoherence with his wishes and his attempt to fight back.
Mina's superiority for a woman shines through again in her idea to have herself hypnotized in order for the men to get information about the whereabouts and plans of Dracula. This idea of Mina's leads the men to Dracula, like a horse being led to water. She is the main reason that their journey was successful. I think, in Mina, Stoker was creating the ideal woman of the Victorian time. He makes her loyal to the men and humankind throughout the novel, intelligent, and clever/able to work through problems. This is in contrast to the other woman character of the novel, Lucy, who was not independent-minded and who 'gave in' to evil more willingly than Mina seemed to.
The ship that I was confused about earlier in the blog entries happens to be the ship that Dracula uses again to try and make his escape from his pursuers. It turns out that the dog that ran off the ship before was in fact Dracula, who transformed himself into a dog for disguise, and he had killed all of the people on that boat, presumably for the sole reason that he was thirsty. It was a preview of the damage he was able to cause.
I enjoyed the part of the book where all of the pursuers split up and took different routes to Dracula's castle (train/carriage/foot, ship, horseback). It shows their ability to work cohesively and efficiently together and their intelligence in leaving no ground untended to. Stoker gathers suspense during the long journey of the band of people.
The scene where Dracula is finally destroyed is epic. The pursuers' timing is nearly perfect; they all arrive and are ready at nearly the same time as Dracula arrives. Also, the story ends in basically the same place it was begun; Dracula's castle in Transylvania. It is ironic and it adds intensity at the same time, because it draws up emotions in the reader that were present in the beginning of the book when the big looming castle is described. In this, it is obvious that this is the moment that Dracula's fate will be unveiled to us.
The band of friends prevailed in eliminating Dracula just in time. Unfortunately, Quincey Morris, one of Lucy's previous suitors and one of their helpers, died in the process. There is one more entry at the end that describes Mina and Jonathan's life seven years after the events; they had a child and named him Quincey. This is quite endearing but also very cliche. "And they lived happily ever after..."
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