Content area
Teks Lengkap
AS POWERFUL and resourceful as Bram Stoker's Count Dracula is, his freedom to move in space is quite limited. He is, Van Helsing explains in his grammatically incorrect English at the first meeting of the future vampire-hunting crew,
more prisoner than the slave of the galley, than the madman in his cell. [H]e may not enter anywhere at first, unless there be someone of the household who bid him to come; though afterwards he can come as he please. His power ceases, as does that of all evil things, at the coming of the day. Only at certain times can he have limited freedom. If he be not at the place whither he is bound, he can only change himself at noon or at exact sunrise or sunset.1
Dracula's mobility, then, is almost exclusively limited to the dark hours of the day, between sunset and sunrise. What is more, he "can only pass running water at the slack or the flood of the tide"; "garlic," "a branch of wild rose," and "things sacred," such as crucifixes, can make him lose his powers.2 Because of all these physical limitations, to get to London unharmed, Dracula must seek the assistance of non-vampires. He thus hires Slovaks and Gypsies.
Jonathan Harker's account of the diversity of Transylvania's population identifies "four distinct nationalities"-"Saxons in the south, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the west, and Szekelys in the east and north"3-omitting the Slovaks and Gypsies. Nevertheless, these two ethnic groups play a vital role in the plot of Dracula : they help the Count on his way to London from his castle in Transylvania and from London back to his castle. The Slovaks furnish the wooden boxes in which the Count must travel, and the Gypsies handle the transportation of the boxes with the vampire cargo from Castle Dracula back to the Slovaks. The latter then transport the boxes to the seaport in Varna, Bulgaria, where they are loaded onto a Russian schooner, the Demeter, and shipped to London. Forced out of London by Van Helsing and the band of vampire hunters, the Count once again must resort to the help of the Slovaks and Gypsies, who unconditionally provide it to...