Dracula: Chapters 1-5
- Jonathan goes to Transylvania to meet with a noble.
- Elderly couple at hotel look confused and refuse to even speak of Count Dracula.
- Elderly wife pleads with Harker begging him not to go.
- Coach driver talks to landlady and others, queer words are spoken: witches, Satan, hell, werewolf, and vampires.
- Carriage gets surrounded by wolves but driver sweeps hand and they disperse.
- Harker meets Count Dracula.
- Harker cuts himself while shaving and Dracula flinches away from the cross.
- Harker comes to conclusion that he is a prisoner.
- Dracula tells Harker of his family history.
- Three female vampires find him and are about to bit his neck but Dracula comes in and saves him; when he woke up, Harker hoped that he dreamed what happened.
- Harker’s clothes get stolen.
- Slovaks unloading boxes.
- A distressed woman comes to the castle begging for her child, but is eaten by wolves.
- Harker finds Dracula sleeping in coffin and tries to kill him; fails.
- Slovaks bolt up Dracula’s coffin and move to different location.
- Introduced to Lucy and Mina who are exchanging letters pertaining to their love lives.
- Lucy gets proposed to by three men: Dr John Seward, Quincey P. Morris, and Arthur Holmwood, but only says yes to Arthur Holmwood.
- John Seward interviews and documents one of his patients named Renfield.
Response to Dracula Chapter 1-5
Within these first five chapters of Dracula by Bram Stoker, many items and occurrences caught my attention. One of the first things that I noticed was Dracula is written in first person point of view as it is written in journal entries or letters. I believe that was very clever on the part of Stoker because it forces the reader to critically question if the character’s perspective is accurate or if their viewpoint is biased to what they chose to see or think they see. For example, on the way to Dracula’s castle, Jonathan Harker is unsure if it is his eyes deceiving him or if the wolves are being controlled by the driver (Stoker 15). Because it is written in first person, it is very possible that Harker could be imagining what he is seeing and the reader can only take his word for it.
Concerning the type of conflict taking place in the story, there is a very prominent person vs. societyelement. With the person vs. society conflict I’m referring to is Dracula vs. the society that he lives in. Society, itself, wants nothing to do with Dracula – hence many character’s silence about him during the early pages of the book: “They avoided my gaze at the mention of the Count’s name (Stoker 8). Also, Dracula is outside the laws of man; he takes what he wants, when he wants, which is against a societal code of ethics. For example, he takes a woman’s child to feed his wives with, and to further emphasize that no law of man (even one of kindness and mercy) can touch him, he has his wolves devour her as she begs for her child’s return (Stoker 37-38).
Based off the first four chapters, the genre of the literature was horror and mystery, but after reading the fifth chapter, it changed a bit and became more of a love story with Lucy and her many suitors. It will be interesting to see if the genre changes again. To foreshadow what will happen next, I believe that Harker’s escape will be prevented (maybe temporally) by some deterrent, possibly by the wolves, three female vampires, or the Slovaks. Concerning Lucy and Mina I don’t foresee too much excitement yet, but as the novel progresses I’m sure that the action will escalate. I do think Renfield had big part to do with the overall plot, but I’m not sure how yet. Maybe he is connected to Dracula in some way I don’t see yet?