Want to learn the ideas in Dracula better than ever? Read the world’s #1 book summary of Dracula by Bram Stoker here.
Read a brief 1-Page Summary or watch video summaries curated by our expert team. Note: this book guide is not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher or author, and we always encourage you to purchase and read the full book.
Video Summaries of Dracula
We’ve scoured the Internet for the very best videos on Dracula, from high-quality videos summaries to interviews or commentary by Bram Stoker.
1-Page Summary of Dracula
Overall Summary
Dracula begins with a young solicitor’s assistant, Jonathan Harker, traveling to Transylvania to meet Count Dracula at his castle. The locals are afraid of the Count and think he is odd because he does not eat during the day or come out in daylight. He only comes out at night.
Harker realizes that the strange driver who brought him to Dracula’s castle was, in fact, Dracula himself. He also discovers that he is a prisoner of Dracula and must escape from his clutches. Harker witnesses several bizarre occurrences while there; for instance, he sees Dracula crawl up the walls like a lizard. This leads Harker to believe that Dracula can turn into a bat. Meanwhile, Harker stumbles upon three demonic women in one room of the castle who appear as if they want to drink his blood but are stopped by Dracula saying “he” (Harker) belongs to him now and carries him back to his bedroom. In an attempt to flee from this prison-like setting, Harker finds what appears to be a basement chapel where he suspects that it is where Dracula sleeps at night in an earthen box filled with dirt and soil. After attempting unsuccessfully to kill Dracula by stabbing him with a shovel (it only seems superficially hurt), he manages finally after many attempts and escapes through the window bringing along his journal which contains all these experiences with Mina so she will believe them when reading them later on
Meanwhile, in England, two friends are on vacation at Whitby. One of them begins sleepwalking and the other one finds her bent over a grave. The first friend brings the second to her house. They notice that it’s getting worse day by day and call for help from some people who used to date this girl: an asylum doctor and his former professor from Amsterdam.
Van Helsing believes he knows the cause of Lucy’s illness. He doesn’t explain it to Seward and the rest of the group, though, because that would be too difficult for them to understand. However, they do try different things in order to save her life. They give her transfusions but that doesn’t work so they try something else. In the end nothing works and she dies at night when everyone is gone except her mother who sees a wolf kill Lucy and then die from shock after killing his daughter.
Meanwhile, Mina has been taking care of Harker after he suffered a nervous breakdown from his time with Dracula. After returning to England, Van Helsing tells Harker that what he saw in Castle Dracula was real and not just a hallucination. He also tells the men that Lucy is dead but she’s really an Un-Dead vampire who preys on children at her grave site; the men go there and find this out for themselves, which shocks them all. They vow to track down Dracula because they believe he bit Lucy while they were in England.
As the group prepares to do this, however, Harker notices that Mina appears to be getting sick as well. One night he sees Dracula bite her and force her to suck his blood. She feels like she’s been poisoned by Dracula in the process. Dracula has also communicated with an insane man named Renfield who talks about wanting to gain life from animals he eats. He is discovered communicating with Dracula and allows him into the asylum so he can attack Mina and form a link between them through their shared blood.
The group finds out that Dracula sent 50 boxes filled with earth from Transylvania to England. He needs these boxes in order to sleep, so he can maintain his powers. The group realizes they need to destroy the power of those boxes by using holy communion wafers on them, thus destroying their special restorative properties and killing Dracula. However, they find 49 of the 50 boxes at various locations in London; but the last box is still in Transylvania. They track down Dracula and this final box back to his castle.
