“When Dracula preys on Mina and takes her blood, he is ripping out her agency, her ability to make choices for herself. With each feeding Mina loses more and more of her ability to make her own choices. Does this mean that in some way Dracula is gaining the agency Mina is losing? Dracula is ingesting blood, but he is also taking her essence - what makes her fully alive, what makes her human. Their minds become interconnected in the transfer, enough that he can know her thoughts and so much that she floats in and out of a harrowing trance. There was something in Mina’s spirit that Dracula wanted, craved, desired - he seems especially drawn and determined to be with her. Perhaps it was her spirit, her strength, and self-sufficiency - her ability to give her own life meaning - that drew Dracula to her. He sought Mina’s agency, perhaps because in their unicity, he could know true freedom to choose his own meaning. When Dracula takes in Mina’s essence, and forces her to gorge herself on his death, she becomes one with the damned. This is where Plotinus’ view that a person should be united with The One comes in. The One to Plotinus is totally transcendent and indivisible, beyond all human ability to categorize or understand. Dracula, though, in his imperfection, demonstrates how this unification can go awry. The ever-increasing trance that nearly overtakes Mina’s mind and body ultimately leads to Dracula’s true death at the hands of Van Helsing [sic]. When this happens, Mina is free from being cursed. But when Mina is finally free, she takes back her agency and her own meaning. She must wonder, though “Is he finally dead? Is he really gone?” You see, unicity now becomes a problem…Much like a human understanding of death as “going” somewhere, what happens to the macabre essence of Dracula? Perhaps the final terror of Dracula’s death is not that he is permanently “removed” from life, but that he continues on, both in Mina’s essence as well as in the deepest fears of all who encounter this character because of their connectedness.”
— James E. Willis, III and Viktoria A. Strunk, “They Shall Become One Flesh” in Dracula and Philosophy: Dying to Know, Nicolas Michaud and Janelle Potzsch, eds.