Dracula - Blog #1

"I was not sleepy, as the long sleep yesterday had fortified me; but I could not help experiencing that chill which comes over one at the coming of dawn, which is like, in its way, the turn of the tide. They say that people who are near death die generally at the change to the dawn or at the turn of the tide; anyone who has when tired, and tied as it were to his post, experienced this change in the atmosphere can well believe it." (29-30)

This passage grabbed my attention as I was reading Chapter 2 of Dracula. In this scene, the main character, Jonathan Harker, is alone in his room while staying at Dracula's castle. The novel so far has a very chilling and creepy mood which is created by the diction and abundant visual and auditory imagery. This passage stood out because it seemed particularly chilling and foreboding. The use of the word "chill" at the beginning expresses Harker's fear and uneasiness that he's feeling during his stay in Dracula's castle. The description of feeling a chill before dawn seems ironic because "dawn" has such a postive connotation--bringing light, warmth, and comfort--while "chill" has exactly the opposite connotation. When Harker connects this chilling sensation to death, it gives the passage an even more foreboding mood. I feel like this passage could be possibly foreshadowing a death at the break of dawn later on in the novel because the passage in general seemed a bit too deep in comparison to the more narrative way Harker writes before and after this passage.


***Total side note, but I connected this to the title of the fourth Twilight novel entitled Breaking Dawn. I have yet to read it, but the fact that the title of that book (which is about vampires) appears to be an allusion to Dracula could indicate that there's an important reason why Stephanie Meyer chose "Breaking Dawn" as the title of her novel. Something about dawn in Dracula might be important. In addition, the word "twilight" was used repeatedly throughout the beginning of Dracula (and I connected that to Meyer's novel Twilight), which makes me wonder if twilight and dawn will have some significance throughout Dracula.