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Introduction
In 1816, due to a heavy rain, Byron, Shelley, Mary and Byron's
private doctor Polidori were trapped in holiday villa. In order to kill
the boring time, the literati decided to create a horror story as a
competition. As the ending of this competition, you may know that
the story which created by Mary Shelley ——the famous
"Frankenstein", but few people know that the work by Dr.
Polidori,which he did not finish in the competition, is the beginning
of the vampire novel "Vampire". After 70 years , In order to pay
tribute to this novel. , Stoke wrote the novel which I want to
introduce today. ——"Dracula"

The book “Dracula”


Dracula is a horror novel, which was written by lrish author Bram
Stoker. In the

Jonathan Harker Count Dracula


https://www.livescience.com/40843-real-dracula-vlad-the-impaler.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5QM1bpGsT4

form of letters, diaries, telegrams, newspaper communications,


Dracula describes the story of a vampire's violence and demise.

The story begins with Jonathan Harker, a young solicitor, one day he
was sent to Transylvania to deal with the property of Count Dracula.
But after coming to the count's castle, he was confined by the
count. At the beginning he did not even notice that until he slowly
found that some strange things happened. For example he could
sometimes see 3 beautiful young woman who only appear at night,
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or count Dracula never goes out by foot but by climbing. These sort
of unnatural things make he felt that the count might be a vampire
who came out of the coffin at night. He tried to write message to his
fiancée Mina to ask for help, but all his message was found by
Dracula and Dracula even message mina that Jonathan have to stay
in the castle for a long time in order to to receive medical treatment.

Mina Murray Lucy Westenra

dracula/https://lgbtfansdeservebetter.com/character/lucy-westenra-dracula/
https://www.google.de/search?
q=dracula+mina&safe=strict&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&v

Jonathan did not give up, he will not wait for death. Harker correctly
assumes that he is to be the count’s next victim. He attacks the
count, but his efforts are
unsuccessful. Dracula leaves Harker trapped in the castle and then,
along with 50 boxes of dirt, departs for England. (But later he still
successfully escaped from the castle).

The nightmare did not end yet. Dracula followed Jonathan Harker
and tried to take Jonathan’s fiancée William Mina. At first, the count
took the upper hand, he managed to kill Mina’s friend Lucy and
turned her a vampire. In order to prevent

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Arthur Holmwood Quincy Morris

John Seward Van Helsing


https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560416747364309460/
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/865674556456736534
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/234656767977667453
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/345324532453245565
the Vampire’s attack, Dr. John Seward invited his teacher, the Dutch
expert in hunting vampires, Professor Abraham Van Hersing, and the
American vampire hunter Quincy Morris.

With the help from Van Helsing and Quiency Morris,they found
Lucy’s body, they unearth her body,take her heart, cut off her head,
and stuff her mouth with garlic. After that they also destroy
dracula’s 50 boxes of dirt from his hometown to cut off Dracula’s
source of power and forced him to go back to Transylvania.
Unfortunately Mina was also under the vampire curse before Dracula
leaved. The determined group followed Dracula to his castle. They
broke through the perimeter of the wolves and gypsies. Jonathan cut
off count’s head with a kukri knife and Morris pierced Dracula’s
heart with a Bowie knife. It made him immediately into ashes, and
Mina was also saved (the vampire curse is gone).

Background story of the book


According to the myth of Romanian, the vampire’s name” Dracula”
comes from the meaning of "dragon", “Dra” means Dragon, and
“cula” represent “son” so Dracula is the "son of the dragon" and the
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vampire Dracula has the honor of the dragon knight,it means that
maybe Dracula used to be a very fearless warrior, and he fought
hard for his country and finally won the respect and the title of
nobility. just like the book says“ We Szekleys have the right to be
proud, for in our veins flows the the blood of many brave races, who
fought as the lion fights. “ Later, the Romanians associated this
word with the devil. Because the Saxons who lived in southern
Germany went to Romania to escape the famine at that time.
Dracula treated these behaviors as betrayal and punished them. So
the Saxons called Dacula a devil.

At that time, the Dragon Knights had a sacred status, created by the
Holy Roman Emperor in Germany today, with the aim of loyalty to
the church and the protection of Catholics against the invaders from
Turkey. Dracula was given this title for his father’s brave battle, he
became the Duke of Vlad III of the duchy in Wachachia. One of his
two nicknames is "Dracula", and the other is Tepes (Tepes means
the person who punishes others by puncturing , impalement)

Vlad III Impalement

According to historical records, in 1442, Vlad and his younger


brother were sent to Ottoman Turkey as hostages due to political
reasons, and they stayed there for
https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/Impalement--Method-of-Torture-and-
Execution--1552-SS2881465.html
https://www.google.de/search?
safe=strict&biw=1536&bih=706&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=-HJLXKWGBM_ekgXtjby
six years. The life there was pretty hard just like hell. In Turkey, they
have to learn
how to be the most cruelhearted killer in order to survive. Just those
unhuman
treatment made Vlad lll a strong and crazy warrior. He is same cruel
like a vampire.

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During this period, not only the whole environment was full of
hostility, but also Vlad’s father and brother were assassinated by the
rebellious nobilities. At the age of seventeen, Vlad led the army to
fight back to his home and retake it with the
support of the Turkish Sultan. The first thing after being the king of
the nation is
that he used his political power and strict laws to reorganize the
whole country, including harsh punishment, the most famous of
them is the impalement punishment.

After being a king, Turkish Sultan treated this behavior as a kind of


betrayal, so Sultan planed to organize army to take Vlad’s country.
But Sultan did not realise that his enemy-Vlad is the most powerful
king he ever known. Vlad has defeated the Turkish army several
times with the Romanian Army, he rescued his country and became
a national hero of Romania. He always uses some cruel and insane
tacticals and let his soliders "complete killing and plundering."

What really scared the Turks was the battle of 1462. In this battle,
Vlad was betrayed by the allies and fled to the capital. When the
Turkish army recovered to the city, they saw more than 20,000
Turkish prisoner of wars (P.O.W) were naked and punctured by big
wooden sticks and piled up for one kilometer. They were killed by
Impalement alive and the $ticks which stick through the dead
soliders from the mouth to the ass were everywhere. The crows and
vultures continued to feed on these dead bodies. The Turkish army
still tried to march forward, but they were so scared by this place
which was filled with a strong rancid smell of their friends’ bodies.
After that they finally decided to retreat.

There were thousands of stories which can show Vlad lll is a


extremely cruel king. For the Turkish messenger who did not want to
take off his hat in front of the Duke of Vlad, he ordered: "If you don't
want to take off your hat, I will let you never able to take it off." So
the hat was nailed on the top of the head of the messager.

With such stories Vlad repelled the powerful Turkish army and saved
the Christian countries from the aggression of the Islamic countries.
At the same time, Dracula saw the name of blood madness, so the
title of "vampire" spread throughout Europe.

But every story has a end. Dracula finally died in the suburban
battlefield of Bucharest. In the winter of 1476, he fought the
Ottoman Turkish Empire until the last soldier with no reinforcement.
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The Turkish army later divided Dracula's body. The head was sent to
Constantinople, and the soul of Dracula was enshrined in a
monastery in Romania. It guards Romania

The film “Dracula Untold”

The film which I want to present is also called “Dracula Untold”.


Compared with the history of the Dracula, they have many similar
plots. In the 15th century, the Ottoman Turkish Empire spread the
flame of war to everywhere. The young Dracula was sent to the
Turkish Sultan as a hostage. He became the only survivor of all the
hostages and he was trained as a cold-blooded killer and became a
member of the war machines of the nation. But Dracula didn’t like
killing . After he proved that he is one of the strongest soldiers of the
nation. He left Muhammad and returned to his hometown to
become a king and live a peaceful life. Dracula’s accidental
disappearance let Muhammad doubt Dracula’s loyalty to him, and
ordered Dracula to give him 1,000 teenagers aged 15 to Turkey and
join
https://intl.target.com/

the army. Muhammad also ask Dracula to give his son to him as a
hostage. Thinking of the torture he had suffered, Dracula didn't want
his son to go his own way. He killed the messager of Muhammad
and prepared for the coming war.

Dracula's country and people will face a devastating disaster. In


order to protect his family and nationals, King Dracula used the
power of the Darkness. He drank the blood of an evil vampire. So
that he could have the power of the darkness, from then on he had
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the ability to call bats and use evil power until 3 days. if Dracula
could hold the desire - not to drink human blood, then three days
later, he will be able to restore his original free body. In these three
days, he used the power of the vampire to defeat the empire, but on
the third day of dawn, the Sultan used the sneak attack and killed
Dracula's wife and held his son who hided at the back to the empire.
In order to save his son, Dracula, who became weak under the sun,
took his wife's blood and possessed supernatural power. He called
the dark clouds and turned the whole world into a night. In the
darkness. He transformed his solider to become real vampires and
killed the Sultan. However, the vampires began to enjoy the
invincibility that this power brought to them, hoping to have this
supernatural ability forever, and to kill all the aliens who were not
vampires. In order to protect his son and human beings, Dracula
chose sacrifice again and turn the world again into day. The holy $
light of sun burn all the vampires, and he himself became the corpse
who has eternal life.

Summarize

Count Dracula has pale skin, bloody eyes, and he has the power to
control the beasts and transform humans into vampires. Dracula,
who wants to avenge the human world represent an inhuman
creature. They are catastrophes, beasts, and anti-human, anti-
Christian creatures. This is the reason why they are afraid of the
cross —because they were set up to be an anti-Christian force from
the beginning. Dracula’s vampires have bodies which can live
forever, but all of them lose their souls. Mina (in the novel), after
becoming a vampire, seems to have lost all the feelings of her life
and turned to an evil demon. This is exactly the character of
vampires in 19th-century novels, which appears totally as dark side
and evil forces.

The horror image and the atmosphere in the novel are created and
realized by setting the dark devil world. And of course the centure of
this dark world is the vampire Dracula .the story makes the reader
slowly go into the horrible drama and the dark shadow of the old
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castle. At the beginning of the novel, a series of mysterious and


scared images are presented. The mystery castles, the long dark
nights, the sudden arrival of the wolves, the strange bats, the
unknown smoke
http://time.com/5411826/bram-stoker-dracula-history/

and other thing build up background factors. The readers’ memories


and impressions will be changed by this world which is full of fear
and horror. This technique is also widely used in Gothic novels of the
19th century. The authors always use various terror factors to form
the surrounding environment. On the one hand, it introduces the
characteristics and identity of Dracula, on the other hand, it also
expand the reader's imagination and understanding, laying a tone of
panic for the whole novel. Jonathan’s visit to the castle was the
beginning of the fight and struggle between “justice” and “evil”, and
at the same time it showed us impliedly the subtle relationship
between the British Empire and the colonized countries at the end of
the 19th century. The novel is presented to the readers a a
whimsical world. In this world, how terrible the monster is, how
scared the reader is.

The life of a vampire is actually a great example of the people who


life in poverty or life at the edge of society. The author tried to tell
us, whether these people are homosexuals or wanderers, they
have no different from us. These people and us are all human
being. But exactly the cruelty of mankind make this group of
people be isolated, the imperfection of human being make them
poor and have a hard life, just like Dracula. In the film The different
between rich people and poor people leads to the birth of vampire
literature.

The protagonist Dracula in the novel is different from the vampire’s


ugly and unintelligent animal character in ancient myths and
legends. Stoke describes the vampire(the Dracula) as a gentleman
who is gentle, intelligent, attractive and able to control the victim's
thoughts. But of course his appearance has a huge contrast with
his quality. The vampires’ characters are always horrible, they
always have weird behaviors, extreme violence, and twist human
nature (they’re even not human). Their ambition is grand but
twisty, their desire of conquest is strong, and their way of conquest
is crazy, which often break the religious traditions of the society.
They also encourage paganism and rush out the exclusion zone of
religion .These distinctive behaviors highlight the vampire's
character, which is different from others , people use these special
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characters of vampires to reflect the British society at that time—


The whole British society is full of anxiety and panic, After knowing
that their country will develop in a imperialistic way, all of them are
very confused. They don’t know if they should support their new
political system or not. For the British, those Imperialists are same
dangerous and mythic like Vampires.

Now I want to express some of my critical(stupid) opinions about


this book. Although the Vampire Count Dracula is the origin of the
vampire-themed novel, as a story created more than 100 years
ago, there are still some techniques and details which can be
improved. I have to admit that the beginning of the novel is very
very great, with all those terrible wolves, mysterious castles, and
elegant mythic counts. It is easy to attract people into the vampire
world built by the author. Actually I was deeply attracted by the
situation which Jonathan faces at the beginning. However, the story
ends abruptly. Dracula’s head and heart were just easily cut off.
( and I just thought ‘WTF? Is he dead? A great evil vampire died like
that?), a great novel shouldn’t end like this. This could give people
a feeling that the author was a little bit unserious when he wrote
this part of the story. Secondly, the distribution of the last part of
the book is not completely suitable. In the last period of the story,
the protagonists have been continuing in the vigils, meetings, and
discussions. It make the plot of this chapter very boring , and
unreadable.

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