Sleepy sleepyness!!

There are many references to sleep and dreaming throughout Bram Stoker's Dracula. The majority of references are linked to the difficulty that characters in the book have sleeping. A lot of the characters have trouble sleeping at some point within the book and in the majority of cases it can be linked to Dracula. The main example of this is Lucy, whose sleep is often disturbed by visitations from Dracula himself. In an extract from her diary at the beginning of chapter 11 she writes: "Oh, the terrible struggle that I have had against sleep so often of late; the pain of sleeplessness, or the pain of the fear of sleep, with such unknown horrors as it has for me!". The 'unknown horrors' that she is referring to is the coming of Dracula during the night to suck her blood. She also refers to trouble sleeping in her last diary entry before her death in chapter 11. She writes: "Then there came to me the old fear of sleep, and I determined to stay awake. Perversely sleep would try to come when I did not want it...". This willingness to stay awake seems to pre-empt what is about to happen and she seems to recognise the fact that bad things seem to be happening when she is asleep.
The link between sleep and death is quite strong throughout the book. When Lucy dies in chapter 12 Dr Seward writes: "We thought her dying whilst she slept and sleeping when she died" and looking back at a reference to Dracula in Jonathan Harker's journal in chapter 4 he writes: "He was either dead or asleep I could not say".
Dracula's power over sleep is also a recurrent theme within the book as night time is portrayed as his domain. He seems to have some kind of supernatural power over people's sleep, especially his victims, and in this case Lucy: "I tried to stay awake and succeeded for a while; but when the clock struck twelve it waked me from a doze, so I must have been falling asleep..... I suppose I must then have fallen asleep. More bad dreams." It is almost as if he can make his victims fall asleep so that he can attack them and he also seems to be in control of making sure that his victims are in a suitable place where he will not be discovered. This can be seen in chapter 8 when Lucy and Mina are staying in Whitby and Lucy sleep walks to to the Abbey where she is later found by Mina "half-reclining with head lying over the back of the seat" and "there are two little red points like pin-pricks" on her throat.
The mixing of sleep and reality is a key part in the book as it helps to create irony whereby the reader understands what is happening but the characters seem blissfully unaware, therefore making the reader feel that they want to convince and warn the characters of what's going on. A good example of this can be seen in chapter 3 when Jonathan Harker meets the three vampire women: "I suppose I must have fallen asleep..." he doesn't seem to be sure if he actually saw the three women or if he dreamed it and this could link back to Dracula's 'control' over sleep as it is he who seems to induce Harker's sleep.