nds of blood. He wants to go to London to be in the midst of the "whirl and rush of humanity" (p. 20), suggesting that he is extracting from all these bloods, the common element of humanness. Renfield seems to extract from blood, including animal blood, the power of "life". Dracula and Renfield seem to be taking from blood some basic element that crosses boundaries of all kinds, including the species barrier. Dracula, Mina and Renfield all seem to be able to communicate with each other, across long distances, and Dracula is able to communicate with wolves, rates, bats and other animal species. Vampires can thus be read as embodying the principle of the lowest common factor that enables communication across distances and barriers. The process of extracting the lowest common factor is not reductive but additive, and through addition comes renewal. Renfield follows the principle of summation in his method of zoophagy. "He desires to absorb as many lives as he can, and he has laid himself out to achieve it in a cumulative way" (pp. 70-71), says Seward. It seems that the cumulative method is a better method than simply eating the flies and spiders as they are caught. This perhaps implies a certain advantage to the mixing of one blood into another, and not drinking the blood "straight". The individual identities of the various bloods are not destroyed in the process of mixing or in the process of absorbing the common factor of "life". This is why the day after Lucy's transfusion, she feels Arthur's presence surrounding her (p. 116). Blood is not simply blood, but bears the signature of a person. That individuality cannot be erased by mere mixing of one blood with another; instead, it seems to produce a combined effect. Similarly, the mixing of Dracula's blood and Mina's enables them to communicate. Some factor in Dracula's blood enters Mina's, and allows this. This may be because in the text's categorization of blood, vampiric blood is stron...
