In Chapter 3 of Dracula, Harker is approached by three un-human women. Instead of Harker being scared, his feelings are described as a desire instead of fear. Do you think that the scenario would be the same if Harker had been a women? (Maira A.)
Dracula tells Harker, " 'Well I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me. Here I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, and I am master. But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one; men know him not - and to know not is to care not for. I am content if I am like the rest, so that no man stops if he see me, or pause in his speaking if he hear my words, to say, 'Ha, ha! a stranger!' I have been so long master that I would be master still -- or at least that none other should be master of me.' "
Why do you think Dracula feels this way? Why do you think that he wouldn't want to seem like a stranger in London? (Amanda K.)
In Chapter 3, after discovering he is imprisoned, Jonathan Harker approaches the Count with questions about Transylvanian history, a subject to which the Count "warmed up wonderfully," and which Harker calls "most fascinating." The Count speaks with pride, as if he was there--a ruler, a king, plural--and giving the account caused him to "[walk] about the room pulling his great white moustache and grasping anything on which he laid his hands as though he would crush it by main strength." What do you think Stoker's motive was for including such an impassioned oration? More specifically, is it possible there is a correlation between human royalty, power, and vampiric rule? In what way does this oration confound the distinction between lore and history's accounts of conquest? Consider how crucial to the account the Szekelys and "the Dracula as their heart's blood, their brains, and their swords" are. Finally, does this deserve such intricate attention after Harker's imprisonment early in the novel, and what implications for vampirism's role in history (or at least the history of Harker's and Dracula's world) does Stoker seem to leave us by closing this journal entry without interpretation of the discussion from Harker? (Carlie L).
Isolation seems to be a recurring theme that we have discussed in Polidori's "The Vampyre" with Aubrey and in Matheson's I Am Legend with Robert Neville. How does isolation seem to affect Johnathan Harker's character early on? Furthermore, do you think that there is a sense of isolation that his character feels prior to the end of Chapter 2 in which he claims to be a prisoner in Dracula's castle? Is the isolation of being a prisoner different from the isolation that Aubrey or Neville dealt with? (Micaela M.)
When Harker enters the castle do you think his fear disappears because Dracula enthralls him or is it just Harker losing his fear, because the image of the vampire he imagined wasn’t as ugly or monstrous as he thought it would be. I thought this would be some later foreshadowing for Dracula’s powers that are so famously emphasized in every movie or book I have ever read, his beauty incapacitating those around him they are somewhat compelled and they are victims to his will as theirs diminish. (Kevin S.)
