Jonathan Harker Quotes

It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to do?

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. As Jonathan Harker leaves his hotel to go to Castle Dracula, the hotel owner’s wife warns him against visiting the Count on that particular day. In Christian legend good triumphs over evil on that day, but according to Transylvanian superstition witches get together for occult ceremonies on this night and it is believed that evil may prevail over good. Harker doesn’t take the landlady’s warning seriously. Her warning is foreshadowing of the horrifying events to come.

It was all very ridiculous, but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. When the innkeeper cautions Jonathan to put off his meeting with Count Dracula for a few days, because of the evil things that happen on St. George’s Day, Jonathan feels uncomfortable. But he dismisses the warning as the superstition of a foreigner. And he decides that nothing will stand in the way of his job to help Dracula find a purchase a property in London.

I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd; so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were ‘Ordog’ – Satan, ‘pokol’ – hell, ‘stregoica’ – witch, ‘vrolok’ and ‘vlkoslak’ – both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either werewolf or vampire.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. As he boards the coach bound for Count Dracula’s castle, a crowd of peasants gathers and they mutter a lot of unsettling words about witches and devils and vampires at Jonathan Harker. This increases the uneasiness he already feels and is foreshadowing of evil things to come.

Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the darkness. It was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though I asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation. This state of excitement kept on for some little time.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. The tension and mystery mount as the strange coach driver transports Jonathan Harker to Castle Dracula. This passage foreshadows that "very exciting" and terrifying events are about to unfold after Harker encounters Count Dracula.

I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than ever when they howled. For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. Jonathan Harker, during his carriage ride to Castle Dracula. He becomes aware that the woods along the road have taken on a sinister character and he is spooked by the wild howling of demonic-type wolves which live there.

Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 1. Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula. The lack of light from the tall black windows shows that there is no good inside. This foreshadows the danger that Jonathan will face when he goes inside.

“Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own 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 as cold as ice – more like the hand of a dead than a living man.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan Harker arrives at Castle Dracula and receives this strange, frightening, and not exactly welcoming greeting from the Count. Right way he becomes aware of some disturbing aspects to Dracula’s behavior and person, which he finds corpse-like and "cold as ice" – suggesting that just a regular living human being.

The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Introducing the Count! Jonathan Harker’s physical description of Dracula on his first encounter with him at the castle is of a sinister, frightening character. There is also a hint of the supernatural, in the "sharp white teeth" and "astonishing vitality" of Dracula.

As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me, I could not repress a shudder. It may have been that his breath was rank, but a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan Harker, in an unsent letter to Mina, describes a nauseous feeling that sweeps over him when Count Dracula leans over to him and touches him. Jonathan’s first impressions instincts are right, this foreshadows the terrible things that will happen to people to fall prey to the Count.

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things which I dare not confess to my own soul. God keep me, if only for the sake of those dear to me!

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan Harker, to himself, as he prepares for bed on his first night in Count Dracula’s castle. He is scared of Dracula and he also fears for his fiancée Mina, whom the Count has developed an interest in. Jonathan’s western European attitudes have blinded him to the superstition of the east and made him oblivious to the supernatural elements occurring around him.

Well I know that, did I move and speak in your London, none there are who would not know me for a stranger. That is not enough for me. Here I am noble; I am boyar; the common people know me, and I am master.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. While Dracula agreed with Jonathan that he can speak English, he fears he could be easily picked out as a foreigner in London. He just wants to blend in and not appear foreign – this foreshadows that Jonathan will be detained at Castle Dracula so that the Count can learn the proper way to speak English afrom Jonathan.

I began to fear as I wrote in this book that I was getting too diffuse; but now I am glad that I went into detail from the first, for there is something so strange about this place and all in it that I cannot but feel uneasy.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan, a lawyer from London, is visiting Count Dracula in Transylvania in order to help him some property in London. While we know the Count is a vampire, Jonathan doesn’t – but he is getting very uneasy and suspicious about this strange place. Jonathan’s fear foreshadows the evil that is about to unleashed his world.

When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demoniac fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat. I drew away and his hand touched the string of beads which held the crucifix. It made an instant change in him, for the fury passed so quickly that I could hardly believe that it was ever there.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. When Jonathan cuts himself shaving, Dracula cannot resist his urge for fresh blood. He attempts to attack Jonathan and drink his blood. But Jonathan is saved by the crucifix, a holy object symbolizing good, which appears to repel the evil Dracula.

The castle is on the very edge of a terrible precipice. A stone falling from the window would fall a thousand feet without touching anything! As far as the eye can reach is a sea of green tree tops, with occasionally a deep rift where there is a chasm. Here and there are silver threads where the rivers wind in deep gorges through the forests.
But I am not in heart to describe beauty, for when I had seen the view I explored further; doors, doors, doors everywhere, and all locked and bolted. In no place save from the windows in the castle walls is there an available exit. The castle is a veritable prison, and I am a prisoner!

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 2. Jonathan Harker’s visit to Dracula’s castle has taken on a very sinister character. With a mounting sense of dread, he soon realizes that he is not a guest at the castle, as he had thought, but a prisoner. There is no available exit and all doors are bolted to him.

When I found that I was a prisoner a sort of wild feeling came over me. I rushed up and down the stairs, trying every door and peering out of every window I could find; but after a little the conviction of my helplessness overpowered all other feelings. When I look back after a few hours I think I must have been mad for the time, for I behaved much as a rat does in a trap.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 3. Jonathan is hit with the realization that Count Dracula is keeping him prisoner in the castle and there is no way out for him. For a time he was overcome by a madness, like a rat in a trap.

I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters. It will doubtless please your friends to know that you are well, and that you look forward to getting home to them. Is it not so?

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 3. Count Dracula to Jonathan Harker, whom he is holding prisoner. There is a sense of menace in the advice here that Jonathan is not to discuss anything other than business in the letters the Count is dictating to him to write.
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