Dracula - Blog #2

"No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart the morning can be. When the sun grew so high this morning that it struck the top of the great gateway opposite my window, the high spot which it touched seemed to me as if the dove from the ark had lighted there. My fear fell from me as if it had been a vaporous garment which dissolved in the warmth. I must take action of some sort whilst the courage of the day is upon me" (52).

I chose this passage partly because it was ironic and partly because it exemplifies the very literary device-filled nature of Jonathan's writing (or Stoker's...I refer to it as Jonathan's just because the novel is written in the form of his journal entries).

Throughout the novel so far, Jonathan effectively creates mood using diction, repetition of strong words and phrases, and numerous types of figurative language. This passage is full of figurative language, such as the simile (comparing fear to "vaporous garment"), biblical allusion ("dove from the ark"), and metaphor ("courage of the day"). Jonathan is attempting to describe the lightness and peace of the morning, and effectively does so by using words such as "sweet," "dear," "sun," "great," to describe his happiness. He also uses words like "lighted," "vaporous," and "dissolved" to describe morning's lightness...both in the literal sense (daylight) and in the figurative, happy sense.

This passage strikes me as ironic because the night before, Jonathan was in a horrifying situation, fearing for his life, and everything was described so darkly. Now all of a sudden, he wakes up the next morning and feels great. It shows how night and day, dark and light bring such different feelings to him. I was also finding Jonathan a bit stupid just because he thinks everything's okay because it's light out, and he's relishing in his comfort, but he's not realizing that the night is also coming and that everything bad that's been happening to him has been happening at night, and unfortunately morning's light is only a temporary comfort.