Renfield

:This article is about the character in Bram Stoker's Dracula. For the card game, please see Renfield (card game).

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Renfield is a fictional character in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

Related Topics:
Fictional character - Dracula - Bram Stoker

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He is an inmate at the lunatic asylum overseen by Dr Seward, and suffers from a delusional belief system that leads him to eat living creatures in the hope of obtaining their life-force for himself; being confined to the asylum, and aware of the foolishness of taking on a full-sized hospital orderly, this mostly means flies, spiders, and the occasional bird.

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During the course of the novel, he falls under the influence of Count Dracula, and aids the Count in gaining entrance to the asylum after Seward and his fellow vampire-hunters make it their base of operations.

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When confronted by Mina Harker, the object of Dracula's obsession, however, Renfield suffers an attack of conscience and begs her to flee from his master's grasp. Enraged by this treachery, Dracula infiltrates Renfield's cell (in the form of fog) and forces him to commit suicide.

Related Topics:
Conscience - Fog - Suicide

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Film adaptations of the novel, if they include Renfield, have a tendency to expand his role, making him a more active and long-standing servant of the vampire Count and often depicting his zoophagous mania as a result of falling under Dracula's influence, rather than as a pre-existing condition that made him vulnerable to it. Tod Browning's 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi (with Dwight Fry as Renfield), for example, conflates the character with that of Jonathan Harker, making Renfield the real estate agent who is sent to Transylvania.

Related Topics:
Zoophagous - Mania - Tod Browning - 1931 - Bela Lugosi - Dwight Fry - Real estate - Transylvania

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Next to Fry's, the most famous interpretation of the character was performed by Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Related Topics:
Tom Waits - Francis Ford Coppola - 1992 - Bram Stoker's Dracula

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