Jonathan Harker
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Jonathan Harker is a fictional character in the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Harker is a solicitor's clerk of Exeter, who is sent by his employer to Transylvania in order to consult a client on a property transaction. This client is a mysterious count who lives in a castle in the Carpathian Mountains who is planning to move to the environs of London where he plans to reside at Carfax Abbey. Soon after Harker's arrival at the castle he is made a prisoner by this Count Dracula, who is revealed as a vampire, and has a dangerous encounter with the seductive Brides of Dracula. Later he manages to escape, finding refuge at a convent. He has a mental break down upon arriving at the convent because of his encounters with Dracula; his fiancé, Mina Murray, comes to nurse him back to health and marries him there. In some movie versions, one of the results of his imprisonment is his hair becoming prematurely gray. His journals become an integral part the quest to find and destroy Dracula. In a note following the end of the novel, it is revealed that he has had a child with Mina, and they have named the child Quincey after their mutual friend Quincey Morris, whom is killed by Gypsies trying to get Dracula to his castle before sunset. Dracula is incapable of transforming himself between sunrise and sunset, but once sunset has occurred, he can shift shape and would have been almost impossible for the main characters to apprehend again.
[edit] Speculation
There has been speculation by critics who have analyzed the novel over whether the child is truly Jonathan's, or if he is the son of Count Dracula; some say there is a possibility it could be Morris'. This is primarily inspired by Jonathan's weakness at the time of his marriage to Mina, and the interpretation of the scene in which Mina exchanged blood with the Count as being sexually suggestive.
[edit] In film
Harker was played by Bosco Hogan in the 1977 telefilm Count Dracula. In the 1992 film, Bram Stoker's Dracula, he was portrayed by Keanu Reeves. Other portrayers include Trevor Eve, Bruno Ganz, Corin Redgrave, David Manners, Steven Weber, John Van Eyssen and Rafe Spall.
