Summary of Dracula

J onathan Harker, a young English lawyer, travels to Castle Dracula in the Eastern European country of Transylvania to conclude a real estate transaction with a nobleman named Count Dracula. As Harker wends his way through the picturesque countryside, the local peasants warn him about his destination, giving him crucifixes and other charms against evil and uttering strange words that Harker later translates into “vampire.”

Frightened but no less determined, Harker meets the count’s carriage as planned. The journey to the castle is harrowing, and the carriage is nearly attacked by angry wolves along the way. Upon arriving at the crumbling old castle, Harker finds that the elderly Dracula is a well educated and hospitable gentleman. After only a few days, however, Harker realizes that he is effectively a prisoner in the castle.

The more Harker investigates the nature of his confinement, the more uneasy he becomes. He realizes that the count possesses supernatural powers and diabolical ambitions. One evening, Harker is nearly attacked by three beautiful and seductive female vampires, but the count staves them off, telling the vampires that Harker belongs to him. Fearing for his life, Harker attempts to escape from the castle by climbing down the walls.

Meanwhile, in England, Harker’s fiancée, Mina Murray, corresponds with her friend Lucy Westenra. Lucy has received marriage proposals from three men—Dr. John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and an American named Quincey Morris. Though saddened by the fact that she must reject two of these suitors, Lucy accepts Holmwood’s proposal.

Mina visits Lucy at the seaside town of Whitby. A Russian ship is wrecked on the shore near the town with all its crew missing and its captain dead. The only sign of life aboard is a large dog that bounds ashore and disappears into the countryside; the only cargo is a set of fifty boxes of earth shipped from Castle Dracula. Not long after, Lucy suddenly begins sleepwalking. One night, Mina finds Lucy in the town cemetery and believes she sees a dark form with glowing red eyes bending over Lucy. Lucy becomes pale and ill, and she bears two tiny red marks at her throat, for which -neither Dr. Seward nor Mina can account. Unable to arrive at a satisfactory diagnosis, Dr. Seward sends for his old mentor, Professor Van Helsing.

Suffering from brain fever, Harker reappears in the city of Buda-Pest. Mina goes to join him. Van Helsing arrives in Whitby, and, after his initial examination of Lucy, orders that her chambers be covered with garlic—a traditional charm against vampires. For a time, this effort seems to stave off Lucy’s illness. She begins to recover, but her mother, unaware of the garlic’s power, unwittingly removes the odiferous plants from the room, leaving Lucy vulnerable to further attack.

Seward and Van Helsing spend several days trying to revive Lucy, performing four blood transfusions. Their efforts ultimately come to nothing. One night, the men momentarily let down their guard, and a wolf breaks into the Westenra house. The shock gives Lucy’s mother a fatal heart attack, and the wolf attacks Lucy, killing her.

After Lucy’s death, Van Helsing leads Holmwood, Seward, and Quincey Morris to her tomb. Van Helsing convinces the other men that Lucy belongs to the “Un-Dead”—in other words, she has been transformed into a vampire like Dracula. The men remain unconvinced until they see Lucy preying on a defenseless child, which convinces them that she must be destroyed. They agree to follow the ritual of vampire slaying to ensure that Lucy’s soul will return to eternal rest. While the undead Lucy sleeps, Holmwood plunges a stake through her heart. The men then cut off her head and stuff her mouth with garlic. After this deed is done, they pledge to destroy Dracula himself.

Now married, Mina and Jonathan return to England and join forces with the others. Mina helps Van Helsing collect the various diary and journal entries that Harker, Seward, and the others have written, attempting to piece together a narrative that will lead them to the count. Learning all they can of Dracula’s affairs, Van Helsing and his band track down the boxes of earth that the count uses as a sanctuary during the night from Dracula’s castle. Their efforts seem to be going well, but then one of Dr. Seward’s mental patients, Renfield, lets Dracula into the asylum where the others are staying, allowing the count to prey upon Mina.

As Mina begins the slow change into a vampire, the men sterilize the boxes of earth, forcing Dracula to flee to the safety of his native Transylvania. The men pursue the count, dividing their forces and tracking him across land and sea. Van Helsing takes Mina with him, and they cleanse Castle Dracula by killing the three female vampires and sealing the entrances with sacred objects. The others catch up with the count just as he is about to reach his castle, and Jonathan and Quincey use knives to destroy him.

Summary of Pride and Prejudice

The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor of Netherfield Park causes a great stir in the nearby village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet household. The Bennets have five unmarried daughters—from oldest to youngest, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia—and Mrs. Bennet is desperate to see them all married. After Mr. Bennet pays a social visit to Mr. Bingley, the Bennets attend a ball at which Mr. Bingley is present. He is taken with Jane and spends much of the evening dancing with her. His close friend, Mr. Darcy, is less pleased with the evening and haughtily refuses to dance with Elizabeth, which makes everyone view him as arrogant and obnoxious.

At social functions over subsequent weeks, however, Mr. Darcy finds himself increasingly attracted to Elizabeth’s charm and intelligence. Jane’s friendship with Mr. Bingley also continues to burgeon, and Jane pays a visit to the Bingley mansion. On her journey to the house she is caught in a downpour and catches ill, forcing her to stay at Netherfield for several days. In order to tend to Jane, Elizabeth hikes through muddy fields and arrives with a spattered dress, much to the disdain of the snobbish Miss Bingley, Charles Bingley’s sister. Miss Bingley’s spite only increases when she notices that Darcy, whom she is pursuing, pays quite a bit of attention to Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth and Jane return home, they find Mr. Collins visiting their household. Mr. Collins is a young clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennet’s property, which has been “entailed,” meaning that it can only be passed down to male heirs. Mr. Collins is a pompous fool, though he is quite enthralled by the Bennet girls. Shortly after his arrival, he makes a proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. She turns him down, wounding his pride. Meanwhile, the Bennet girls have become friendly with militia officers stationed in a nearby town. Among them is Wickham, a handsome young soldier who is friendly toward Elizabeth and tells her how Darcy cruelly cheated him out of an inheritance.

At the beginning of winter, the Bingleys and Darcy leave Netherfield and return to London, much to Jane’s dismay. A further shock arrives with the news that Mr. Collins has become engaged to Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s best friend and the poor daughter of a local knight. Charlotte explains to Elizabeth that she is getting older and needs the match for financial reasons. Charlotte and Mr. Collins get married and Elizabeth promises to visit them at their new home. As winter progresses, Jane visits the city to see friends (hoping also that she might see Mr. Bingley). However, Miss Bingley visits her and behaves rudely, while Mr. Bingley fails to visit her at all. The marriage prospects for the Bennet girls appear bleak.

That spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte, who now lives near the home of Mr. Collins’s patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is also Darcy’s aunt. Darcy calls on Lady Catherine and encounters Elizabeth, whose presence leads him to make a number of visits to the Collins’s home, where she is staying. One day, he makes a shocking proposal of marriage, which Elizabeth quickly refuses. She tells Darcy that she considers him arrogant and unpleasant, then scolds him for steering Bingley away from Jane and disinheriting Wickham. Darcy leaves her but shortly thereafter delivers a letter to her. In this letter, he admits that he urged Bingley to distance himself from Jane, but claims he did so only because he thought their romance was not serious. As for Wickham, he informs Elizabeth that the young officer is a liar and that the real cause of their disagreement was Wickham’s attempt to elope with his young sister, Georgiana Darcy.

This letter causes Elizabeth to reevaluate her feelings about Darcy. She returns home and acts coldly toward Wickham. The militia is leaving town, which makes the younger, rather man-crazy Bennet girls distraught. Lydia manages to obtain permission from her father to spend the summer with an old colonel in Brighton, where Wickham’s regiment will be stationed. With the arrival of June, Elizabeth goes on another journey, this time with the Gardiners, who are relatives of the Bennets. The trip takes her to the North and eventually to the neighborhood of Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. She visits Pemberley, after making sure that Darcy is away, and delights in the building and grounds, while hearing from Darcy’s servants that he is a wonderful, generous master. Suddenly, Darcy arrives and behaves cordially toward her. Making no mention of his proposal, he entertains the Gardiners and invites Elizabeth to meet his sister.

Shortly thereafter, however, a letter arrives from home, telling Elizabeth that Lydia has eloped with Wickham and that the couple is nowhere to be found, which suggests that they may be living together out of wedlock. Fearful of the disgrace such a situation would bring on her entire family, Elizabeth hastens home. Mr. Gardiner and Mr. Bennet go off to search for Lydia, but Mr. Bennet eventually returns home empty-handed. Just when all hope seems lost, a letter comes from Mr. Gardiner saying that the couple has been found and that Wickham has agreed to marry Lydia in exchange for an annual income. The Bennets are convinced that Mr. Gardiner has paid off Wickham, but Elizabeth learns that the source of the money, and of her family’s salvation, was none other than Darcy.

Now married, Wickham and Lydia return to Longbourn briefly, where Mr. Bennet treats them coldly. They then depart for Wickham’s new assignment in the North of England. Shortly thereafter, Bingley returns to Netherfield and resumes his courtship of Jane. Darcy goes to stay with him and pays visits to the Bennets but makes no mention of his desire to marry Elizabeth. Bingley, on the other hand, presses his suit and proposes to Jane, to the delight of everyone but Bingley’s haughty sister. While the family celebrates, Lady Catherine de Bourgh pays a visit to Longbourn. She corners Elizabeth and says that she has heard that Darcy, her nephew, is planning to marry her. Since she considers a Bennet an unsuitable match for a Darcy, Lady Catherine demands that Elizabeth promise to refuse him. Elizabeth spiritedly refuses, saying she is not engaged to Darcy, but she will not promise anything against her own happiness. A little later, Elizabeth and Darcy go out walking together and he tells her that his feelings have not altered since the spring. She tenderly accepts his proposal, and both Jane and Elizabeth are married.

Summary of The Picture of Dorian Gray

In the stately London home of his aunt, Lady Brandon, the well-known artist Basil Hallward meets Dorian Gray. Dorian is a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man who immediately captures Basil’s artistic imagination. Dorian sits for several portraits, and Basil often depicts him as an ancient Greek hero or a mythological figure. When the novel opens, the artist is completing his first portrait of Dorian as he truly is, but, as he admits to his friend Lord Henry Wotton, the painting disappoints him because it reveals too much of his feeling for his subject. Lord Henry, a famous wit who enjoys scandalizing his friends by celebrating youth, beauty, and the selfish pursuit of pleasure, disagrees, claiming that the portrait is Basil’s masterpiece. Dorian arrives at the studio, and Basil reluctantly introduces him to Lord Henry, who he fears will have a damaging influence on the impressionable, young Dorian.

Basil’s fears are well founded; before the end of their first conversation, Lord Henry upsets Dorian with a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth. Worried that these, his most impressive characteristics, are fading day by day, Dorian curses his portrait, which he believes will one day remind him of the beauty he will have lost. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting could bear the burden of age and infamy, allowing him to stay forever young. After Dorian’s outbursts, Lord Henry reaffirms his desire to own the portrait; however, Basil insists the portrait belongs to Dorian.

Over the next few weeks, Lord Henry’s influence over Dorian grows stronger. The youth becomes a disciple of the “new Hedonism” and proposes to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He falls in love with Sibyl Vane, a young actress who performs in a theater in London’s slums. He adores her acting; she, in turn, refers to him as “Prince Charming” and refuses to heed the warnings of her brother, James Vane, that Dorian is no good for her. Overcome by her emotions for Dorian, Sibyl decides that she can no longer act, wondering how she can pretend to love on the stage now that she has experienced the real thing. Dorian, who loves Sibyl because of her ability to act, cruelly breaks his engagement with her. After doing so, he returns home to notice that his face in Basil’s portrait of him has changed: it now sneers. Frightened that his wish for his likeness in the painting to bear the ill effects of his behavior has come true and that his sins will be recorded on the canvas, he resolves to make amends with Sibyl the next day. The following afternoon, however, Lord Henry brings news that Sibyl has killed herself. At Lord Henry’s urging, Dorian decides to consider her death a sort of artistic triumph—she personified tragedy—and to put the matter behind him. Meanwhile, Dorian hides his portrait in a remote upper room of his house, where no one other than he can watch its transformation.

Lord Henry gives Dorian a book that describes the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman; it becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption. He lives a life devoted to garnering new experiences and sensations with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions. Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful. The figure in the painting, however, grows increasingly wizened and hideous. On a dark, foggy night, Basil Hallward arrives at Dorian’s home to confront him about the rumors that plague his reputation. The two argue, and Dorian eventually offers Basil a look at his (Dorian’s) soul. He shows Basil the now-hideous portrait, and Hallward, horrified, begs him to repent. Dorian claims it is too late for penance and kills Basil in a fit of rage.

In order to dispose of the body, Dorian employs the help of an estranged friend, a doctor, whom he blackmails. The night after the murder, Dorian makes his way to an opium den, where he encounters James Vane, who attempts to avenge Sibyl’s death. Dorian escapes to his country estate. While entertaining guests, he notices James Vane peering in through a window, and he becomes wracked by fear and guilt. When a hunting party accidentally shoots and kills Vane, Dorian feels safe again. He resolves to amend his life but cannot muster the courage to confess his crimes, and the painting now reveals his supposed desire to repent for what it is—hypocrisy. In a fury, Dorian picks up the knife he used to stab Basil Hallward and attempts to destroy the painting. There is a crash, and his servants enter to find the portrait, unharmed, showing Dorian Gray as a beautiful young man. On the floor lies the body of their master—an old man, horribly wrinkled and disfigured, with a knife plunged into his heart.

Summary of White Fang

Two men are out in the wild of the north. Their dogs disappear as they are lured by a she-wolf and eaten by the pack. They only have three bullets left and Bill, one of the men, uses them to try to save one of their dogs; he misses and is eaten with the dog. Only Henry and two dogs are left; he makes a fire, trying to drive away the wolves. They draw in close, and he is almost eaten, saved only by a company of men who were traveling nearby.

The wolves are in the midst of a famine. They continue on, lead by several wolves alongside the she-wolf, and when they finally find food the pack starts to split up. The she-wolf mates with one of the wolves and has a litter of pups. Only one survives after several more famines, and he grows strong and is a feisty pup.

They come to an Indian village where the she-wolf's (who is actually half-wolf, half-dog) master is. He catches her again and White Fang, her pup, stays nearby. Soon, she is sold to another Indian, while White Fang stays with Gray Beaver, her master. The other dogs of the village terrorize White Fang, especially one named Lip-lip.

White Fang becomes more and more vicious, encouraged by his master. He kills other dogs. Gray Beaver goes to Fort Yukon to trade and discovers whiskey. White Fang is passed into the hands of Beauty Smith, a monster of a man. He fights other dogs until he meets his match in a bulldog and is saved only by a man named Scott.

Scott tames White Fang and takes him back to California with him. There White Fang learns to love his master and his master's family and even saves Scott's father from a criminal that escaped from the nearby prison. White Fang has puppies with Collie, one of the master's dogs, and lives a happy life.

Anita Desai

BIOGRAPHY

Novelist, short-story writer and children's author Anita Desai was born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India. She was educated at Delhi University.

Her novels include Fire on the Mountain (1977), which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, and Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984) and Fasting, Feasting (1999), each of which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In Custody was made into a film by Merchant Ivory productions. Her children's book The Village by the Sea (1982), won theGuardian Children's Fiction Award.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Girton College, Cambridge and Clare Hall, Cambridge. Her most recent novel isThe Zig Zag Way (2004), set in 20th century Mexico.

Anita Desai lives in the United States, where she is the John E. Burchard Professor of Writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.

PRIZES AND AWARDS

1978 National Academy of Letters Award Fire on the Mountain

1978 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize Fire on the Mountain

1980 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) Clear Light of Day

1983 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize The Village by the Sea

1984 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) In Custody

1993 Neil Gunn Prize

1999 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) Fasting, Feasting

2000 Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)

Selected works:

• The Peacock, 1963
• Voices in the City, 1965
• Bye-Bye, Blackbird, 1971
• The Peacock Garden, 1974
• Where Shall We Go This Summer?, 1975
• Cat on a Houseboat, 1976
• Fire on the Mountain, 1977
• Games at Twilight and Other Stories, 1978
• Clear Light of Day, 1980
• Village by the Sea, 1982
• In Custody, 1984 - film 1993, dir. by Ismail Merchant, starring Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi, Om Puri, screenplay by Anita Desai
• Baumgartner's Bombay, 1988
• Journey to Ithaca, 1996
• Fasting, Feasting, 1999
• Diamond Dust, 2000
• The Zigzag Way: A Novel, 2004

My Primary School Days

It was hard during those days

Homework and tuition were my days

May be I would be crazy

But my friends would be first

Canes was so thin

But it was pain when they are angry

It made my hand red like blood

But in the end is noting

Prizes was all I care

I had to get one of those I swear

It looks so shiny

And also worth a lot of money

When it was result's time

Me and friend were shaking

We want to win another

It was our objective

With my friends I say

Lovely everyday

Even with some girl-friends

It was OK.

My life in Primary School

Will not be the same

Without my lovely, lovely

lovely school, Sin Kwang

Analysis on "The Son is in Secondary School" by Affian Sa’at

The Son is in Secondary School by Affian Sa’at

My badge has a Latin motto
Hope for the future
The future is hope
Or something

At times black crows try to interrupt
When we sing the National Anthem

It is difficult to maintain
The whiteness of my shoes
Especially on Wednesdays

I must admit there is something quite special
About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts

The Malay chauffeurs
Who wait for my schoolmates
Sit on the car park kerb
Telling jokes to one another

Seven to the power of five is unreasonable

On Chinese New Year
Mrs Lee dressed up
In a sarong kebaya
And sang Bengawan Solo

The capital of Singapore is Singapore

My best friend did a heroic thing once
Shaded all A’s
For his Chinese Language
Multiple-choice paper

In our annual yearbook
There is a photograph of me

Pushing a wheelchair and smiling
They caught me
At the exact moment

When my eyes were actually closed

Q1. Write an analysis of the poem.

My badge has a Latin motto
Hope for the future
The future is hope
Or something

From this, I can see that the motto means noting to him. Because of the "Or something", it feels like it is not important to him.

At times black crows try to interrupt
When we sing the National Anthem

From this, I can see that when the poet is singing the National Anthem, he is always searching for crows and he thinks that the crow did it on purpose as "black crows try to interrupt".

It is difficult to maintain
The whiteness of my shoes
Especially on Wednesdays

From this, the shoes of the poet was hard to be clean. This shows that the poet was a active boy. And his shoes were hard to be clean especially on Wednesday. This shows that maybe P.E. is on that day that it made the shoes dirty and hard to be clean.

I must admit there is something quite special
About the bare thighs of hardworking scouts

From "about the bare thighs of hardworking scouts", it clearly shows that the poem is about Singapore earlier days, the days where scouts wore short pants that show their thighs. Unlike now, scouts wear pants at a certain length.

The Malay chauffeurs
Who wait for my schoolmates
Sit on the car park kerb
Telling jokes to one another

This is a quatrain. From this, I can see that the poet came from a poor family, but the poet's classmate are from a wealthy background.

Seven to the power of five is unreasonable

From this, I can conclude that they were not allowed to use calculator and seven to the power of five was very hard to be calculated.

On Chinese New Year
Mrs Lee dressed up
In a sarong kebaya
And sang Bengawan Solo

From this, I can see that Mrs Lee is most likely a Straits Born Chinese.

The capital of Singapore is Singapore

My best friend did a heroic thing once
Shaded all A’s
For his Chinese Language
Multiple-choice paper

From this, I can see that the poet's friends were daring and extremely mischievous.

In our annual yearbook
There is a photograph of me

Pushing a wheelchair and smiling
They caught me
At the exact moment

When my eyes were actually closed

This is the last part of the poem which mainly shows how the son was unluckly.