by Stoker, Bram
Ah, the British “pride of train ….” But with the emphasis placed on it, we see an Anglo-Saxon hubris in Mr. Harker. And thus we have the “White Man’s Burden,” the idea at the time that it was the duty of the “civilized” British to bring education to the non-whites of their colonies. No, the distant provinces of Eastern Europe were not protectorates of the Empire, but they were “ … some sort of imaginative whirlpool …” for “ … every known superstition.”
Harker presents the “indigenous people” in stereotypes. Using a stereotype is another sort of shorthand for seeming characterization on the fly. There is a down-the-snoot condescension here: The women looked pretty, except when he gets near them … Slovaks more barbarian than the rest. Harker is who he is: An Englishman. (I know, I know. I just stereotyped him!)
One more splendid transition. There is not a wasted word here, yet Harker and readers travel from 8:30 in the morning until past twilight, from Klausenberg to Bistritz.
This brief exchange is the first dialogue Stoker gives us, about 1,200 words into the story. In contemporary fiction, we frequently hear characters speak relatively early on. Novels often open with dialogue. After all, dialogue is showing for the ear. Therefore, if we wish to slow the pace or to give the impression of a previous era, one way to accomplish that is to not begin with dialogue!
Here Stoker chooses to use subtle irony. Whatever Dracula is, he is no friend to Harker. As a writer, you can do a lot with irony. For example, how many patients likely heard Hannibal Lecter say he wanted to help them?
It’s an “uh-oh” moment. This is perhaps too obvious to be foreshadowing, because Harker in his naiveté does get a disquieting feeling.
And here Stoker takes it up a notch.
Harker’s personality is further revealed. First, he assures himself that there is no need to be worried. He is not afraid, but he feels some embarrassment at the woman’s dramatic actions. Then, “business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it.” Harker is the British version of the American saying, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
In successful fiction, a character must be consistent in thought, feeling, and action in accordance with the personality that the author establishes for him. This is a key to credibility. Credibility results when story people act like real people. But, protests many a beginning writer, real people are not always consistent. Real people can do the utterly unexpected. True, but fiction, even the most seemingly casual slice-of-life fiction, is more structured, rational, and reasonable than the chaos that is much of real life.
Haughty Harker: These simple folk cannot even make the coaches run on time!
Another half-turn on the “uh-oh” knob: Harker speaks of “ghostly traditions” and not “silly native mumbo-jumbo”; he acknowledges that he does not feel “nearly as easy in my mind as usual.” The epistolary narration allows Harker to profess this when his stoic British nature could not, at this point, allow him to admit any such feeling to another person—or even to say something like it aloud to himself.
And now, our first understated but genuine note of dread. He has no reason to think he will be separated from his journal, but he has a flash that the book will remain … when he no longer does.
Understatement: This literary device allows an author or a character to downplay the importance of a subject, treating it mundanely, rather than with markedly serious thought or emotion. The use of understatement allows readers to do the serious thinking and emotionalizing!
Writers often have to deal with questions related to incorporating foreign language(s) into their stories. But how much is too much? Do you need to translate each and every word?
Stoker’s method, having Harker recognize a few words, seems to do just what it should. Harker is a stranger in a strange land, but one in which even his minimal knowledge of foreign languages can give him certain clues to what is transpiring. (Of course Harker’s rudimentary Slovak and Servian could lead him to some utterly erroneous conclusions, but Stoker doesn’t seem to do this, not wishing to make Harker the “unreliable narrator” at this point.)
Once more, Harker’s emotions are understated. He is not trembling or quaking here because he wouldn’t be. Sense of duty is part of the British character, old fellow. Besides, when Harker does become unglued, the contrast with his laidback self is all the more effective.
Here’s another advantage of the epistolary technique: How many “I did not know” or “I did not understand” statements do we get from Mr. Harker? We get exactly the same informational input that Harker does at this point, but we are free to draw conclusions beyond those he does because of what we learn elsewhere. Had this story been presented in the objective third-person point of view in which we were privy to nothing but what we might see on the “story stage,” we would be feeling more confusion than concern at this point.
“God’s seat,” all the roadside crosses, all the shrines … Perhaps it is time to discuss Mr. Stoker’s symbolism. In literature (as so often in life!) a symbol is a word or object that stands for another word or object. Most typically, a literary symbol is frequently a concrete word that represents an abstraction: The white dove is a symbol of peace.
Dracula has many crosses and shrines. Their symbolism does not require translation.
But what of “God’s Seat?”
A number of Dracula scholars postulate that this natural geographical feature becomes “The Lord’s Seat of Judgment” when Harker and Co. meet Dracula for the ultimate battle between Evil (Dracula is the undead symbol) and Good (Harker and companions).
There are symbols aplenty in Dracula, some of them borrowed directly from religion, from folklore, from drama—and from the working mind of Bram Stoker, who understood the power of symbol to enrich a story as it triggers certain not-always-conscious reactions from the readers.
To this point, Harker has judged the indigenous people as somewhat quaint, picturesque, rough hewn, but now he is spotting painfully prevalent goiters, disfiguring enlargement of the thyroid gland: He is beginning to see that which he and others of his time would regard as freakish, even monstrous. Mr. Jonathan Harker is entering the country of … monsters.
We have more of a travelogue tone here, much of it based obviously on Stoker’s research, and although he interrupts the country idyll with some low-key foreshadowing notes, he has been building up to “When it grew dark there … ”
Also, this is one of the longest paragraphs in the book. When we encounter a lengthy paragraph in contemporary fiction, the typical effect is to slow the pace and turn the mood contemplative. A typical thriller of our time, however, has paragraphs of no more than five sentences, and these are usually simple sentences of seven to ten words or compound sentences of that length. But with ultra-active verbs (“flew along,” “peered eagerly”) and with Harker flat-out telling us, “It was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected,” we become caught up in the momentum of the paragraph, reading to see what the “happening or expected” will be.
There’s been a sense of “something momentously dramatic” happening, and now Harker’s driver arrives on the scene, causing more than a little consternation amongst the onlookers.
The genius jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis spoke about the importance of “the notes you don’t play,” and Stoker has found a way to not play the notes here. None of the passengers has been able to convey to him exactly what has them so fearful, none of the peasants or others he’s encountered have been able to articulate in a way he can understand what it is that has them so frightened.
There’s a tendency among beginning writers to think everything has to be established and spelled out at once, that if a reader doesn’t have all the facts up front, he will be so frustrated and confused that he won’t enter the story realm. But relax! This is a novel. You have many pages in which to ladle out your story, with the ladle sometimes containing only a few drops and sometimes—the right times—overflowing.
Enter Dracula’s coachman—which is just the way this theatrical moment hits us. Is it any wonder that Stoker would give us so many theatrical entrances throughout the novel? Mr. Stoker was a stage manager for the theater of the most histrionic Henry Irving. He saw night after night of plays, and he knew what worked in a play—and what works in a written scene that gets performed on the stage in the reader’s mind.
Also, it is a brief description, but one which makes us think disguise. Note the red eyes.
Such casual amiability, ending in “my friend.”
Note the implicit threat here. What can be said without actually having to say it?
Now note the description of lips and teeth … and why am I asking you to note all of these things? Because not so long from now, you’ll encounter similar descriptions. But it’s not meant to be a great, shocking reveal. It’s meant to be the satisfying reveal that gives you, the reader, the feeling of, Ha, I was right! You do not always have to strive to surprise the reader. There can be those moments of congratulatory self-satisfaction when, yes, the slipper does indeed fit the dainty foot of Cinderella.
This quote, translated for our benefit, is from the poem “Lenore” by Gottfried August Burger (1748–1794). By giving us this literary allusion to “Lenore,” Stoker is once more linking his tale of the supernatural to the real world.
Something strange is happening, Harker knows, and yet he is not free to protest. By having him remark on this and explain it, Stoker avoids the reader’s asking, “So why doesn’t he just ask the coachman what the heck is he doing taking this, uh, less than direct route?”
And then we cap that moment with the low-key but mood-building moment: “I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.” A sick feeling of suspense—not shrieks and yowls and not “Oh, God! What are you doing? Help, someone help.”
By having Harker force himself to stay controlled, Stoker remains in control of the narrative.
More of the same: self-control—even though Harker says “I was minded to jump from the caleche …,” but makes no move to do so. He does not say, “My nerves were sticking up three-quarters of an inch.” He does not say, “My heart was hammering at 1,000 beats a minute between my tonsils.”
In poetry, the most emotional moments are often best presented in the least emotional language. That works for prose as well.
We hear the wind and the howling. We see the snow fall. We feel the temperature growing colder and colder. We see a faint flickering blue flame. Harker’s senses are at work, and ours are engaged. We are thus making the leap from the real world to the surreal with Harker’s “awful nightmare.” Surreal and dreamlike does not mean fuzzy, gauzy, and soft-edged. The precision of detail in surreal prose and poetry is as precise as a National Geographic map and as logical in its own way as the instructions for setting up your new computer printer.
Stoker has built to the crescendo, the climax of the chapter. And trained as we are in the ways of modern action movies (brainwashed, really), we could be yelling, “Slug the driver! Grab the lantern! Beat feet, Harker! Haul your barrister butt on out of there!” But what Harker does (does not do) is perfectly credible. Stoker has put Harker into an “awful nightmare.” And Harker feels “ … a sort of paralysis of fear.” We’ve all had that gem of a nightmare, haven’t we? We cannot move, we cannot escape, we can only permit the nightmarish horror to fall upon us.
In another few lines, seeming somewhat recovered, Harker declares, “I was afraid to speak or move.” More likely, this is what Stoker wants us to think: We can more readily accept that he is still paralyzed, but hoping he will soon be able to come out of his catalepsy, this, perhaps, hyper-realistic dream state.
Stoker concludes the chapter with the image of broken battlements, “ … a jagged line against the sky.” This is a sharply rendered picture, pulling us from the horrible dream as would the sound of fingernails on the blackboard.
And, thus, all has been set for Harker to encounter … you know who.
Chapter 2
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL CONTINUED
5 MAY.—I must have been asleep, for certainly if I had been fully awake I must have noticed the approach of such a remarkable place. In the gloom the courtyard looked of considerable size, and as several dark ways led from it under great round arches, it perhaps seemed bigger than it really is. I have not yet been able to see it by daylight.
When the caleche stopped, the driver jumped down and held out his hand to assist me to alight. Again I could not but notice his prodigious strength. His hand actually seemed like a steel vice that could have crushed mine if he had chosen. Then he took my traps, and placed them on the ground beside me as I stood close to a great door, old and studded with large iron nails, and set in a projecting doorway of massive stone. I could see even in the dim light that the stone was massively carved, but that the carving had been much worn by time and. As I stood, the driver jumped again into his seat and shook the reins. The horses started forward, and trap and all disappeared down one of the dark openings.
I stood in silence where I was, for I did not know what to do. Of bell or knocker there was no sign. Through these frowning walls and dark window openings it was not likely that my voice could penetrate. The time I waited seemed endless, and I felt doubts and fears crowding upon me. What sort of place had I come to, and among what kind of people? What sort of grim adventure was it on which I had embarked? Was this a customary incident in the life of a solicitor’s clerk sent out to explain the purchase of a London estate to a foreigner? Solicitor’s clerk! Mina would not like that. Solicitor, for just before leaving London I got word that my examination was successful, and I am now a full-blown solicitor! I began to rub my eyes and pinch myself to see if I were awake. It all seemed like a horrible nightmare to me, and I expected that I should suddenly awake, and find myself at home, with the dawn struggling in through the windows, as I had now and again felt in the morning after a day of overwork. But my flesh answered the pinching test, and my eyes were not to be deceived. I was indeed awake and among the Carpathians. All I could do now was to be patient, and to wait the coming of morning.
Just as I had come to this conclusion I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation:—
“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!” He made no motion of stepping to meet me, but stood like a statue, as though his gesture of welcome had fixed him into stone. The instant, however, that I had stepped over the threshold, he moved impulsively forward, and holding out his hand grasped mine with a strength which made me wince, an effect which was not lessened by the fact that it seemed cold as ice, more like the hand of a dead than a living man. Again he said:—
“Welcome to my house! Enter freely. Go safely, and leave something of the happiness you bring!” The strength of the handshake was so much akin to that which I had noticed in the driver, whose face I had not seen, that for a moment I doubted if it were not the same person to whom I was speaking. So to make sure, I said interrogatively:—
“Count Dracula?” He bowed in a courtly way as he replied:
“I am Dracula, and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house. Come in, the night air is chill, and you must need to eat and rest.” As he was speaking, he put the lamp on a bracket on the wall, and stepping out, took my luggage. He had carried it in b
efore I could forestall him. I protested, but he insisted.
“Nay, sir, you are my guest. It is late, and my people are not available. Let me see to your comfort myself.” He insisted on carrying my traps along the passage, and then up a great winding stair, and along another great passage, on whose stone floor our steps rang heavily. At the end of this he threw open a heavy door, and I rejoiced to see within a well-lit room in which a table was spread for supper, and on whose mighty hearth a great fire of logs, freshly replenished, flamed and flared.
The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door, which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort. Passing through this, he opened another door, and motioned me to enter. It was a welcome sight. For here was a great bedroom well lighted and warmed with another log fire, also added to but lately, for the top logs were fresh, which sent a hollow roar up the wide chimney. The Count himself left my luggage inside and withdrew, saying, before he closed the door:—
“You will need, after your journey, to refresh yourself by making your toilet. I trust you will find all you wish. When you are ready, come into the other room, where you will find your supper prepared.”
The light and warmth and the Count’s courteous welcome seemed to have dissipated all my doubts and fears. Having then reached my normal state, I discovered that I was half famished with hunger. So making a hasty toilet, I went into the other room.
I found supper already laid out. My host, who stood on one side of the great fireplace, leaning against the stonework, made a graceful wave of his hand to the table, and said:—
“I pray you, be seated and sup how you please. You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup.”
I handed to him the sealed letter which Mr. Hawkins had entrusted to me. He opened it and read it gravely. Then, with a charming smile, he handed it to me to read. One passage of it, at least, gave me a thrill of pleasure.