Van Helsing example essay topic

Chapters 13-15 Summary John Seward's diary continues the story, describing how Lucy Westenra and her mother are buried together. Before the funeral, Van Helsing covers the coffin and body with garlic and places a crucifix in Lucy's mouth. He tells a confused Seward that, after the funeral, they must cut off the corpse's head and stuff her mouth with garlic. The next day, however, Van Helsing learns that someone has stolen the crucifix from the body, and he tells Seward that they have to wait before doing anything. Arthur Holm wood (Lord Godalming since his father's death) is heartbroken and turns to Seward for consolation. Looking at Lucy's corpse, he cannot believe that she is really dead.

Van Helsing asks Arthur for Lucy's personal papers, hoping that they will give some clue as to the cause of her death. Meanwhile, Mina Murray's diary describes how she and Jonathan Harker are together in London when he sees a tall, fierce man with a black mustache and beard. Jonathan is convinced that it is Count Dracula, grown young and come to England, but he becomes so upset that he slips into a sleep and remembers nothing when he wakes. Mina decides that she must read his Transylvanian diary, for the sake of his health. That night, a telegram informs Mina of Lucy's death. An excerpt from a local paper follows, describing how a number of children have been temporarily abducted in Hampstead Heath (the area where Lucy was buried) by a strange woman whom the children call 'the Bloofer Lady.

' Mina transcribes her husband's journal and is horrified by its contents. Van Helsing comes to see her, to discuss the events leading up to Lucy's death, and she is so impressed with him that she gives him Jonathan's diary to read. He reads it and comes to see the couple at breakfast the next day. Jonathan begins a new diary: Van Helsing's belief in him restores his memories of Transylvania, and he realizes that Dracula has indeed come to England. Meanwhile, Seward records how R enfield has returned to his fly-and-spider habits.

Van Helsing comes to see him and points out the newspaper accounts of the 'Bloofer Lady,' especially the fact that the abducted children re-appear with wounds on their necks like those suffered by Lucy. Seward is skeptical of any connection, but his mentor urges him to believe in the possibility of the supernatural, and then tells him that the marks on the children were made by Lucy. Seward is appalled by this suggestion, but his respect for Van Helsing is such that he agrees to accompany him to see one of the children. The neck wounds prove to be identical to Lucy's, and that night the two men proceed to Lucy's tomb, open the coffin, and find it empty. Seward insists that a grave robber must have taken it, but Van Helsing makes him wait in the cemetery.

Near dawn, a 'white streak' appears, and the two men find a child lying nearby; when they enter the tomb in daylight, Lucy is back in her coffin and 'radiantly beautiful. ' Van Helsing insists that they must cut off her head, fill the mouth with garlic, and drive a stake through her heart; Seward insists that they must talk it over with Arthur and Quincey Morris. The four men gather and Van Helsing explains what must be done; Arthur is opposed to mutilating his fiancee's corpse but agrees to go with them to the graveyard. Commentary Now that Lucy is dead, events begin to turn against Dracula. Once she rises from the dead, Van Helsing gains the proof he needs to convince Seward, Morris, and Arthur to assist him in his quest. Indeed, it might be argued that only her transformation into a vampire, terrible though it is, allows for the ultimate defeat of the Count.

The behavior of the undead Lucy, of course, echoes the behavior of the female vampires in Castle Dracula -- like them, she preys on children as the 'Bloofer Lady' (a term never explained to us), in what must be regarded as a hideous distortion of maternal affection. Just as vampirism transforms sexual innocence into lewdness, it turns motherly love into an evil appetite for the blood of children. Meanwhile, the friendship between Mina and Lucy brings Van Helsing into contact with the Hackers -- a lucky coincidence for the forces of good in the novel, because Jonathan's diary provides the missing piece for understanding Dracula's plans. The extent of the coincidence is never made clear: Was it an accident, the reader wonders, that led Dracula to Lucy Westenra and later Mina herself, or did he plan to victimize those close to Jonathan from the beginning? Van Helsing's delight in Mina, after their first meeting, seems almost extreme. He calls her 'one of God's women fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth.

So true, so sweet, so noble... ' In a different novel, this would suggest an infatuation on the part of the old professor, but Stoker is less interested in the interior lives of his characters than in articulating broad themes. The goodness of Mina -- her holiness, one might say, since the language of Dracula is Christian -- makes her the center of the second half of the novel, which is concerned with eliminating the taint that Dracula places on her purity. Through the words of Van Helsing and the other men, she comes to embody moral perfection -- more so even than the professor, she is the vampire's true antagonist, combating his pseudo-sexual perversions with her own unflinching purity of soul.