Roger Martin Tudor

RENFIELD'S DIARY Richard Morrison Renfield is an inmate at the lunatic asylum overseen by Dr. John Seward, is a difficult character to get our heads around, simply because of his abnormal psychology. He's described as a "lunatic" and a "madman," but there's definitely method to his madness. It's never made clear how Renfield found out about Dracula, or why he's so sensitive to the vampire's movements. Nor are we told where Renfield's strange obsession with becoming immortal by absorbing and consuming other lives came from. He suffers from delusions which compel him to eat living creatures in the hope of obtaining their life-force for him. He starts by consuming flies, then develops a scheme of feeding the flies to spiders, and the spiders to birds, in order to accumulate more and more life. When denied a kitten to accommodate the birds, he eats the birds himself. Doctor John Seward diagnoses him as a "zoophagous maniac". As it turns out, his compulsion for eating living beings derives from his association with Count Dracula, whom he serves, and the resultant belief that he can extend his life by draining the life force of others, as a vampire does. Ultimately persuaded to betray Dracula to the forces led by van Helsing, he is killed as punishment. By the end of his life, though, Renfield becomes more sympathetic - he seems sincerely to like Mina when she comes to visit (who doesn't like Mina?), and he's worried that she'll be hurt when Dracula comes, so he warns her to leave (although he doesn't tell her why). Then, after Dracula starts drinking Mina's blood, Renfield tries to stop him from entering the house again. What makes Renfield change his mind? Is it purely selfish, because he wants Dracula to make him a vampire, and not Mina? Or does he really pity Mina, and feel sorry for having let Dracula into the house? In short, Renfield is something of a puzzle. Of course, that's not surprising - Renfield is a puzzle to his doctor, Jack Seward, and we only ever hear about Renfield from Dr. Seward's journal entries. How might the story be different if we were somehow able to access Renfield's journal entries, or hear his point of view from another source?

Folk whose mental equilibrium is temporarily disturbed; those who are plain crazy in latter-day asylums or modern mental hospitals; the mad, the bad and the dangerous who must be locked up for their own safety or that of others - all have a tale to tell. In "The Realisation of Mortality", a man joins his ancestors in the crypt long before the end of his allotted time; in "Wrestling with D mons", the Pandora's box of the mind is opened; in "I Left My Brains in San Francisco" the wealthy protagonist is committed to an asylum by relatives eager to lay hands upon his estate; in "They're Coming To Take Me Away" mysterious beings assail an old lady; and in "The Denizen of the Abyss" a trio of adventurers become enslaved to an evil idol on Barsoom. Voices from the past and nowadays relate their experiences of insanity or unreality or both for there is always a question as to whether they have experienced weird occurrences or are merely mad. Whether or not they are is an open question...

Folk whose mental equilibrium is temporarily disturbed; those who are plain crazy in latter-day asylums or modern mental hospitals; the mad, the bad and the dangerous who must be locked up for their own safety or that of others - all have a tale to tell. In "Angelus et Diabolus", the battle between a man's id and superego lands him in an asylum; in "The Mad Undead" a tribe of zombies are released into the local town to the consternation of its inhabitants; in "The Spectre of Jayappa Ambardar" the protagonist spends the night in a haunted Indian bungalow and meets its ghost; in "The Unkindest Cuts of All" a cruel warder leaves cut-throat razors lying around for inmates to find... Voices from the past and nowadays relate their experiences of insanity or unreality or both for there is always a question as to whether they have experienced weird occurrences or are merely mad. Whether or not they are is an open question...