what i have read so far

am moving through the novel well now and have just got past chapter 11. i found that in this period the books got alot more intresting, ( more like it was when i was reading about Dracula and his castle, before Mina's diary extracts were introduced). i feel that part of the reason that i am enjoying reading the novel at present is that Bram Stoker has created tension well. i think that the Dramatic irony used in the novel has kept me reading on. we the reader know why these strange goings on are happening to Lucy yet the characters do not, we also know why Dr stewards Patient is suddenly acting strangly but he does not. i think that we as the reader want to see the point that the characters realise what Dracula is doing and when they discover his power.

The character Van Helsing also interests me as i have seen him portrayed in a film, however in that film he was shown as a action hero who was young and slayed vampires as a day job. it came as a suprise to me that in this novel he was an old man who was calm and very clever.

im starting to see some of the Vampire sterotypes come through the novel now and Dracula is becoming more like the Vampire that i expected him to be. namely when Lucy has garlic put around her room. i would like to know whether people of the time this was written would know about these ideas like vampires are scared of garlic and that they can turn into bats. because i think if they were aware of these concepts this would add to the dramatic irony that Bram Stoker is creating as the characters can't make sense of these things but the reader would be able to. i enjoy it when these ideas are mentioned in the book. makes Dracula seem like a more familiar character to me.

chapter 8

that was a vital chapter i think. this answers alot of my questions. i knew that these diary extracts from Mina would be important to the plot but i found it hard to guess how. we can see as the reader that Dracula has taken a boat to England and has on the journey snacked on the crew of the ship whilst living in a wooden box. his ship has stopped of at the same beach resort (Whitby) as where Mina and her friend Lucy are staying. im also guessing that the dog that jumped of the ship was Dracula himself ( infact im sure because liturally strieght after i read this chapter i turned on the TV to Derren Brown who said " im at Whitby the place were Dracula first touched British soil, in the shape of a big black scary dog, was really strange!!!)

i would like to know however what he is going to do in Britain and what has happened to Mr Harker. im also dying to know how the other characters diary extracts aid the plot of the story and how they come across Dracula and whether they survive this encounter.

Chapter 6

i must say some of the language in that chapter confused me. Minas' Diary extract described an extremly old man talking using so many odd terms i couldn't get my head round. i struggled to go more than five words without having to look up at least two of them! however in the end i sort of uncovered the jist of what he was saying about the dead people of the town that Mina and Lucy have gone to visit. I hope anyway. i think that it is Bram Stokers intention however to make this old man extremely hard to understand. this is because he wants the reader to feel the same as Mina, who herself can't make head or tail of his language, like us. we can see this when she agrees with what he says even though she tell us she doesn't understand what he is saying, (like us). i think what he was trying to say was that people make up stories about this town to do with the supernatural which he believes to be just spin to attract tourists. however the old man does believe in the supernatural as he talks about "the Day of Judgement". Mina's curiosity in the supernatual stories of the town i think were used make the novel current as people of the time were intrested in the supernatural again. this is also shown in the need for such stories to attract tourism to the town and create intrest. i think that this is one of the writers main aims of the novel to make it current to the time it was written.

the description of the mad man i find alittle unsettling and i think that it is cleverly created to make the reader feel this way. im still unaware of how these fit in with the plot of the novel as a whole, but im sure it is important somehow.

i think this ship described at the end of the chapter will have something to do with Dracula because it is described as being Russian. but how it is linked with him or if he is on the ship itself i will be intrested to find out

chapter 5

well that was a random change. it goes from Jonathans diary extracts to an exchange of letters between Mina and a girl called Lucy. i wonder if this will be at all relavent to the story as a whole. we also read letters of men that have proposed to Lucy. I would like to know how this fits into the story aswell. this i think has taken the scary and tense atmosphere down a few notches and provides some rest-bite from the tension of the novel. i found this chapter a suprise as i thought that it would be a story told entirly by Jonathan Harker. i think that these letters by other characters will have relavence to the plot as i think that they would not be in there if they weren't. but how they are going to aid the plot i am intrested to see.