Chapter 21 Practice Quiz — Dracula
by Bram Stoker — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: Chapter 21
How is Renfield found at the beginning of Chapter 21?
Lying on the floor in a pool of blood, his face horribly bruised, his back broken, and his right side paralyzed.
What surgical procedure does Van Helsing perform on Renfield?
Trephining—drilling into the skull to relieve pressure from a depressed fracture and hemorrhage in the motor area of the brain.
What creatures does Dracula send to Renfield as promises of "lives"?
Flies with "steel and sapphire on their wings" and Death's-head Moths (Acherontia Atropos), followed by promises of rats, dogs, and cats.
What words does Renfield use to invite Dracula into the asylum?
"Come in, Lord and Master!"
What made Renfield turn against Dracula?
He noticed that Mina Harker had grown pale and weak—"like tea after the teapot has been watered"—and realized Dracula was draining her blood.
What happens when Renfield tries to physically fight Dracula?
Renfield grabs the mist and forces Dracula into solid form, but when he looks into the Count's eyes, his strength becomes "like water." Dracula raises him up and flings him down, breaking his back.
What does Van Helsing hold up to repel Dracula in the Harkers' bedroom?
An envelope containing the Sacred Wafer (consecrated Communion Host).
What simile does Stoker use to describe Dracula forcing Mina to drink his blood?
"A child forcing a kitten's nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink."
What biblical language does Dracula use to claim Mina as his own?
"Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper."
What threat does Dracula make against Jonathan Harker?
He tells Mina: "Silence! If you make a sound I shall take him and dash his brains out before your very eyes."
How does Dracula escape from the Harkers' room?
He cowered back from the crucifixes and Sacred Wafer, and when the moonlight failed behind a cloud, he dissolved into faint vapor that trailed under the door.
What does Mina cry out after the attack, and what is its biblical source?
"Unclean, unclean!"—echoing the cry required of lepers in Leviticus 13:45, expressing her sense of spiritual contamination.
What psychic power does Dracula's blood exchange give him over Mina?
The ability to summon her across any distance: "When my brain says 'Come!' to you, you shall cross land or sea to do my bidding."
What does Dracula destroy in Dr. Seward's study?
He burns the group's manuscript and throws the phonograph cylinders into the fire, where the wax helps fuel the flames.
Why does the destruction of the manuscript fail to defeat the group?
Seward reveals there is another copy of everything in the safe.
What does Quincey Morris observe from outside the house?
He sees a bat rise from Renfield's window and flap westward, indicating Dracula has left but not returned to Carfax—he has sought another lair.
What physical change does Jonathan Harker undergo during Mina's account?
His hair turns white—described as "the flesh stood darkly out against the whitening hair" as the dawn light reveals the transformation.
How does Dracula's blood-drinking scene invert the Christian Eucharist?
In Communion, wine/blood brings salvation and union with God. Dracula's blood creates enslavement and spiritual contamination—a dark sacrament that binds Mina to evil rather than freeing her.
What is the "Death's-head Moth" that Van Helsing identifies?
The Acherontia Atropos of the Sphinges—a real moth species with skull-and-crossbones markings on its back, one of the creatures Dracula sent to Renfield.
What does the chapter's final line suggest about the household?
"The sun rises today on no more miserable house in all the great round of its daily course"—a bleak contrast between the natural order of sunrise and the group's devastation.
How does Mina describe first recognizing Dracula in her bedroom?
She recognized him from others' descriptions—the waxen face, aquiline nose, parted red lips with sharp white teeth, red eyes, and the scar on his forehead where Jonathan had struck him.
What role does Renfield play in the novel's vampire mythology?
He demonstrates that a vampire must be invited to enter a dwelling. Dracula could not enter the asylum until Renfield said "Come in," establishing the rule of threshold permission.