Compare And Contrast Dracula And Van Helsing

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Dracula by Bram Stocker, has proven to be an interesting read. In the beginning of the book the readers are introduced to Jonathan, and to Count Dracula. Jonathan travels to the Count’s home to help him conduct business, per his boss’s request. Mina, who later becomes Jonathan’s wife, becomes worried about Jonathan and doesn’t know if he is okay. Jonathan returns to her in August and they wed. Throughout the book there are terrible events that occur to Lucy and to Jonathan because they become the victims of Dracula. Jonathan copes by not remembering anything that happened to him while he was with the Count, until Van Helsing visits him and believes what he is saying.
Van Helsing serves the purpose in the novel as an educator, and as an all-natural doctor in a sense. He knows what to do with Lucy when she gets extremely sick. He knows how to treat her, even when Dr. Seward does not. He …show more content…

While Dracula embodies the past, superstition/ritual, and the East. Van Helsing seems to be caught somewhere in the middle. He does not follow modern science and medicine exactly. Although, he does give Lucy a blood transfusion several times throughout her sickness. “My friend John and I have consulted; and we are about to perform what we call a transfusion of blood.” (Stocker 140). He does a blood transfusion about four times, and Dr. Seward is astonished in how Lucy can receive that much blood in her little body. “Man alive, her whole body wouldn’t hold it” (Stocker 167). Van Helsing also follows all-natural and traditional medicine. He uses garlic, which Lucy mistakes as white flowers. “’For me? Oh. Mr. Van Helsing!’ ‘Yes, my dear, but not for you to play with. These are medicines’” (Stocker 147). He uses this technique throughout Lucy’s sickness in hopes that she eventually would get better. Van Helsing would fall somewhere in-between both East and West regarding which he would

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