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Dracula Reading Guide – Chapter 6 (11 pages)Before Reading:In this chapter, Mina travels by train to Whitby to stay with her childhood friend, Lucy, whose family has a grand house in the village.“Marmion” was a poem by Sir Walter Scott (published in 1808) about an evil nun who was punished by being walled up behind bricks in her convent. (This is the same punishment that Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess of Hungary, received for her hundreds of murders.)Waterloo was the famous battle between the English (led by Lord Wellington) and the French (led by Napoleon), in which Napoleon lost.White Lady legends are common ghost stories (found all over the world) about a female ghost dressed all in white; in England, particularly, the White Lady ghost was thought to mean that someone who saw her would die soon.One of the characters that Mina meets in this chapter – an old man who used to be a sailor – speaks with a strong local accent. Do your best to understand his words. Have some fun with it! Try pronouncing what he says to see if it makes sense. In summary, Mina asks him if some local superstitions are true, and he says that it’s just foolish talk. He tells her that the inscriptions on the gravestones in the cemetery about how people died are so outlandish that they must be false. The old man says that on the Day of Judgment, all the dead people who have been buried in the cemetery will rise up and carrying their gravestones with them as evidence that they lived good lives and deserve to go to Heaven.Whitby is a small city on the northeastern coast of England:Questions:(*Note – you may skim [skim, not skip!] the section in which Mina is talking to the old man about superstitions.)What is Dr. Seward’s attitude towards his new patient, Renfield?What motivates Renfield? (explain in detail)Why is Dr. Seward working so hard at this point in the novel?Why is Mina anxious towards the end of the chapter?At the end of the chapter, the old man Mina has been talking to comes up to her and apologizes for talking about death so much. What excuse does he give for why he has been preoccupied with morbid thoughts?What strange sight do the characters see on the horizon at the end of the chapter? ................
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