Stoker creates an air of fear and mystery when Jonathan changes over coaches by describing his new coach driver in detail but leaving his identity anonymous. The drivers description itself is rather chilling, “red eyes” “red lips” and “white sharp-looking teeth” and seems like a portrayal of an animal rather than a human. Stoker also gives the coach driver “super-natural” powers with a “grip of steal”. This implies that the driver isn’t a hundred percent normal or even human.
It's not only Jonathan who feels uneasy but the horses too. The horses “shivered and sweated” which is very unusual for them to do unless they sense a real fright. They also “strain and rear” and yet the coach driver has the extraordinary power to “sooth” them by whispering “something in their ears”. We later find out that the coach driver was Dracula.
Another important way in which Stoker creates an atmosphere of fear and horror is by his intricate description of the setting. The overall atmosphere he creates is a claustrophobic, cold and dark place. “Towered” and “closing down upon us” all creates this feeling of imprisonment. Stoker carries on this insinuation of isolation, imprisonment and claustrophobia when he describes the rocks as “frowning”. Later on when Jonathan is on his way to the count, Stoker has personified the rocks by alluding to them as being alive, with a mind of their own and capable of crushing them at any moment. Stoker also personifies the wind as it “whistled” and “moaned”. This hints that the wind is in distress or depressed. This thickens and brings down the mood and atmosphere of the night. This is also emphasised by the fact that it starts to snow and covers the land in “a white blanket”. At the same time that the wind is described as carrying “the howling of the dogs” and this adds to a sense of eeriness.
As Jonathan checks his watch it's a “few minutes before midnight”. At midnight we often associate this time with evil and unseen happenings as it is pitch black at this time. In many ghost stories novelists try to create a terrifying suspense by saying “when the clock strikes twelve”.
All throughout the novel Stoker has created a gothic text- a text with supernatural or horrifying events-in a dark and demonic setting. It begins in a “vast ruined castle” which has all the right elemental features for it to be a gothic setting. Later on in the novel we find that the castle has “locked and bolted” rooms which imply secret rooms. The castle also has “broken battlements” and is “dark”. These strengthen the atmosphere of a gothic setting. It also follows another elemental feature of omens, portents or visions. A prime example of this is when Jonathan is standing in a room and is feeling drowsy. He thinks that he “must have fallen asleep” and be “dreaming” the appearance of these “three young women” in front of him. Supporting this Stoker has set his text in what use to be an Ostrogothic country that consists of the Danube, Carinthia and Transylvania to mention a few. This is where Stoker has based his novel, Dracula, in and around where Goths originated from.
Both the elemental factors: women in distress and women threatened by a male are carried throughout the novel. To begin with it is “Miss Lucy Westenra” who is in distress and being overpowered by a man when she starts to “sleep walk” through the town of Whitby. Lucy is “half-reclining” on a bench and Dracula is “bending” over her to bite her with his “white as ivory” teeth. Later on the tables turn and Mina Harker is in distress as she starts to become almost possessed by Dracula and “undead”.
The Count himself is wholly symbolic of a supernatural or otherwise inexplicable event with his “red eyes” a grip “like the hand of a dead than a living man” and his “lizard” movement when he crawls out of his window down the wall of the castle.
During the novel each and every character experiences high, even overwrought emotion including the males who have been made out to be the strongest of men. The emotions range from “terror”, “pain” and “sorrow”. A prime example of this is when Lucy tragically dies after her prolonged pain and agony. If this isn’t enough, the characters that love her the most have to see this vision of beauty turn into the most horrific monstrous vampire in which later they have to kill by cutting off her head.
The ancient prophecy is connected to the castle and its inhabitants of how a Dracula had “beat the Turk on his own ground” and that they the “Dracula” bloods were amongst the leaders who won the “warlike days”
All of these elemental factors help to generate an atmospheric concoction of fear and horror and is unquestionably a fine example of a gothic text.
The metaphors and similes that Stoker uses conjure up powerful images. ”grip of steel” is just one of the ways in which Stoker depicts the strength of Dracula. Another simile “as cold as ice”, in the context of the novel makes you want to shiver.
Generally Stoker uses gothic descriptive words “portent”, “grief”, “ominous”, “melancholy” and “astonished” to describe many feelings and objects like when Mina is astonished when Miss Lucy Westenra has gone sleep walking. These small words have the effect of drawing the reader into his creation of an atmospheric gothic world of fear and horror.
