Another important aspect to vampire stories is the transformation. How does one become a vampire? The answer to this question, as seen in most movies and novels, is that someone becomes a vampire by being bitten by a vampire.
This is what seems to be the case in Dracula. Lucy Westenra, Mina’s best friend, gets into the habit of sleepwalking. One night, Mina finds her gone. She runs around town and when she finds Lucy, there is a large red-eyed figure looming over her. As Mina comes closer, the figure runs off leaving Lucy asleep and unaware of what happened. Mina walks Lucy home and notices that she has two small puncture wounds on her neck near one of the major veins. Over the next few weeks, Lucy starts to weaken. She complains of nightmares and is sometimes frightened of sleep.
Eventually Lucy becomes so weak that her mother becomes concerned. She calls Dr. Seward who notices that Lucy has lost a lot of blood. The doctor is unsure what is happening to her as she shows no signs of anemia. He calls his friend Dr. Van Helsing. He comes and upon examining her, starts to fill the room with garlic. Lucy starts to recover in the days afterwards. Seeing her daughter’s noticeable improvement, Mrs. Westenra removes the garlic despite Van Helsing’s orders.
Van Helsing returns the next morning to find Lucy looking worse that she did before. He and Seward place the garlic back and hope for the best. That night, a wolf breaks into the house and gives Lucy’s mother a fatal heart attack and Lucy loses consciousness. Seward and Van Helsing find them but it is too late. They try to keep Lucy alive, but she dies despite their efforts. As she dies, they notice her face is extremely pale, her canine teeth are elongated, and the puncture wounds on her neck have disappeared.
From what happened, it is obvious that Dracula bit Lucy multiple times. Lucy became weak and eventually died. She appears to have become a vampire by the time she died. The vampire transformation in Dracula appears to require enough blood loss to weaken the victim considerably but leave them to die on their own. I have read many books with transformations similar to this. However, there is one book I have read that claims otherwise. The Cirque du Freak series says that vampires are created when the vampire and the victim exchange blood willingly. Dracula seems to follow the typical pattern as far as transformations are concerned.
This is what seems to be the case in Dracula. Lucy Westenra, Mina’s best friend, gets into the habit of sleepwalking. One night, Mina finds her gone. She runs around town and when she finds Lucy, there is a large red-eyed figure looming over her. As Mina comes closer, the figure runs off leaving Lucy asleep and unaware of what happened. Mina walks Lucy home and notices that she has two small puncture wounds on her neck near one of the major veins. Over the next few weeks, Lucy starts to weaken. She complains of nightmares and is sometimes frightened of sleep.
Eventually Lucy becomes so weak that her mother becomes concerned. She calls Dr. Seward who notices that Lucy has lost a lot of blood. The doctor is unsure what is happening to her as she shows no signs of anemia. He calls his friend Dr. Van Helsing. He comes and upon examining her, starts to fill the room with garlic. Lucy starts to recover in the days afterwards. Seeing her daughter’s noticeable improvement, Mrs. Westenra removes the garlic despite Van Helsing’s orders.
Van Helsing returns the next morning to find Lucy looking worse that she did before. He and Seward place the garlic back and hope for the best. That night, a wolf breaks into the house and gives Lucy’s mother a fatal heart attack and Lucy loses consciousness. Seward and Van Helsing find them but it is too late. They try to keep Lucy alive, but she dies despite their efforts. As she dies, they notice her face is extremely pale, her canine teeth are elongated, and the puncture wounds on her neck have disappeared.
From what happened, it is obvious that Dracula bit Lucy multiple times. Lucy became weak and eventually died. She appears to have become a vampire by the time she died. The vampire transformation in Dracula appears to require enough blood loss to weaken the victim considerably but leave them to die on their own. I have read many books with transformations similar to this. However, there is one book I have read that claims otherwise. The Cirque du Freak series says that vampires are created when the vampire and the victim exchange blood willingly. Dracula seems to follow the typical pattern as far as transformations are concerned.
2 comments:
I think this a great description of the book so far but I really want to know what Lucy says and the other characters. After reading Transformation it reminded me of a movie I seen once. I believe it was called rage and the do the same thing the go around sucking blood and after that happens they turn into these bloodsucking monsters that end up destroying an entire city. Do you think that these vampires you read about are capable of doing the same? And how much of what you read do you think is true because I believe that there are other creatures that exist?
Unfortunately, I've never heard of this movie and Google is coming up with nothing that sounds like your description (is that the right title?).
In response to your question, though, I suppose that if there were enough vampires, they probably could destroy a city. However, this would definitely not be in their best interest.
It's hard to say exactly what would happen because different sources say different things about when people are bitten. Some say they automatically become vampires while many others claim that if too much blood is taken, they die and don't come back. If the latter claim is true, then there is bound to be a large group of people that would notice what was happening and come in to destroy the vampires. If things get too far, the government may get involved and send in the armed forces. Honestly, if I had to bet on whether a few (being about 5-10) vampires could win against tanks and trained army slayers, my money is on the government.
If being bitten automatically turns one into a vampire, this would have different results. If this were true, I highly doubt they would go about destroying a city and killing everyone in the first place. This is because they would have an increasing amount of vampires and a decreasing amount of humans (their food supply). Eventually there would be no humans left to feed off of and they would all die off. This wouldn't be good for them.
Your last question confuses me slightly because of the way it is stated, but I assume you want to know how much of this I believe. I've never seen a vampire with my own eyes so as of right now, I highly doubt they exist in the sense that I read about. Even if they were real, it would be difficult to say what is true and what isn't because sources vary so much.
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