Thursday, May 19, 2011
Chapter 21
Post your own observations, questions, and remarks about Chapter 21. When you respond to this posting, DO NOT simply repeat the thoughts of your classmates. You can add something new to a previous comment. You can comment or critique a previous posting, but your main goal is to add something new to the discussion. Remember, try to include direct quotes as much as possible!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Its hard to believe no one else has had any comments about this chapter. This was, to me, a truly intriguing chapter. To start off with we find Renfield on his death bed and telling how Dracula manipulated him to be invited in. Renfield also tells that he noticed that Mrs Harker 'was like tea after the teapot had been watered.', and with this the men realize that this means Dracula was upstairs with Mrs Harker, and go up to find a horrible sight. They find Dracula holding Mina to his chest as she drinks his blood from a gash. Then when Mina recalls in detail of this and how Dracula lacerated his own vein in his breast and pulls her to his wound, forcing her to swallow his blood.
I read all this with abhorrence. Can you imagine having your blood drained from you then watching as someone tears open a vein, with a single nail, and having to drink their blood? This whole chapter just completly astounded me.
Yes, major major events going on here. Okay, so let's start with some comparisons/contrasts. HOw is the situation with Lucy and Mina similar/different?
Do you find the situation here between Dracula and Mina to be intimate in any way? Good or bad? Closely consider Dracula's actions and motivations here?
I could not agree more with Ashley when she mentions this being an intriguing chapter. It was a page-turner for me as well. This chapter confirmed what I assumed since a few chapters before. On page 305, Lucy is explaining the experience she just had. While doing so, she quotes the Count; " First a little refreshment to reward my exertions. You may as well be quiet; it is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!" A couple chapters before, there were little clues here and there that led me to think that Mina had possibly had an experience with Dracula. For example, Jonathan thinks to himself that she looks more pale than usual, and Mina notes that no matter how much she sleeps, she still feels weakened, without rest. These were unusual characteristics for Mina.
With Lucy and Mina the situations were similar in a way that Dracula wants to turn them both into their polar selves. They both are dutiful Victorian woman that the Count wants to be 'voluptuous', a word that is used multiple times to describe the women turned.
I do find the situation between Mina and Dracula to be intimate as in Dracula wants to turn her into a voluptuous women that no man could resist even though she is 'his'. In its obviousness its not in a good way. Dracula taunts the men by saying "Your girls that you all love are mine already; and through them you and others shall yet be mine.” This to me shows that he doesn't want Mina for an intimate way we would all assume, but wants the men to know she is his.
Post a Comment