Elliot Kim, et al.

Dracula - Chapter 4 Study Guide

Plot Summary:
Chapter three leaves us with Harkers unconsciousness from fear. Harker wakes up in his
own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here (Norton 44). He
wonders if he has been dreaming. His clothing was folded by somebody else. His diary is still in
his pockets, and he is fearful of the women in the castle.
Jonathan stresses the search for truth, I must know the truth (44). The door is fastened
shut; he fears the situation was not a dream.
The Count asks Jonathan to write three letters. Jonathan becomes submissive to avoid
arousing the Counts anger. The Count requests the letters to be dated accordingly, The first
should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June 29 (Norton 45). The Count has control
over Jonathan, and Jonathan begins to think that the compilation of these dates are the only ones
he has left the timeline/expiration of his life. June 29, in Jonathans mind, marks his lifes
expiration date unless he escapes before then.
Jonathan writes the letters. Minas is in shorthand. He explains his situation to her in it.
He spots gypsies in the area below his window, and throws the letters out of the barred window
along with some gold coins, hoping they will deliver his letters as needed.
The Count arrives back. He shows Jonathan the letters, and he throws away the one in
shorthand. He sends Jonathans letter to Hawkins. All of Jonathans belongings are taken from
his room. Jonathan notes in particular that his letter-writing supplies and traveling clothes have
gone missing.

The next morning, Jonathan spots townspeople in the courtyard. They are unloading
empty boxes (coffins?) into the castle. He cannot seem to flag them down.
Jonathan is trapped, and starts to make plans to save himself. Jonathan sees the Count
climb out of the window in his stolen clothing. He infers that Dracula is keeping his as prisoner
with the intention of killing him and feasting upon his blood. He also assumes that Dracula is
wearing his clothes out in public so as to establish a fake alibi for Jonathan in order to shift
public speculation after Dracula murders him.
He is a prisoner in a place without law.
Jonathan is sleepily watching out his window when ethereal specks of dust appear in the
moonlight and begin hypnotizing him. They begin to take the form of three vampire women, but
he runs away to a lamp where there is no moonlight.
Jonathan wakes up the next morning. No man knows till he has suffered from the night
how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye 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
whist the courage of the day is upon me. (Norton 49). The mornings are are great, very bright,
and he finds himself without fear. .
Jonathan climbs out the window and gos to the Counts room. He didnt find anything
except for dusty furniture and treasure at first. He continued to go deeper through the passage
into a sanctuary of Draculas where he finds the Count in a coffin. He runs away and falls asleep.

June 29th rolls around. Dracula tells Jonathan he must leave the next day. Jonathan
petitions to leave immediately, but upon opening the castle doors, he is met by the sight of
wolves running wild in the courtyard. Again, Dracula locks Jonathan within his castle.
The morning next comes around, Jonathan attempts to unlock the door, but the door will
not move. Jonathan, resolved to escape the castle before Dracula kills him, sneaks back into the
Counts room to look for a key, but cannot find one. Jonathan finds the Count in his coffin again.
The Count looks younger. His white hair is brown and his cheeks are rosier. However, Draculas
lips are covered in blood. While looking at Draculas sleeping body, Jonathan is suddenly
overcome with repulsion. He feels that he cannot assist such a bloodsucking, villainous man to
infiltrate London and prey on innocent civilians. Resolved to nip the issue in the bud, Jonathan
grabs a shovel and tries to bash Dracula's face in. At the last second, Dracula shifts slightly,
avoiding the full force of the strike. Dracula's coffin slams itself closed. Startled, Jonathan runs
back to his room.
Jonathan plans to flee from the castle and over the wall. He writes a farewell note to
Mina, and decides to find the quickest train home even if it means death. The chapter closes.

Important Quotes:
If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. (Norton 44). Bram
stoker is pushing the duality of dream vs reality. Jonathan further questions which events are
happening to him and which events are just dreams.
As I look around this room, although it has been to me full of fear, it is now a sort of
sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who were --who are-waiting to suck my blood. (Norton 44). Harker finds that his room is one of the only safe spaces
within the entire castle for him. The woman in the castle present a large danger to his well being.

Bram Stoker is presenting fears of the new woman and the cultural fallout of the Victorian family
that were very much prevalent in the Victorian times and the move towards Modernism.
I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for I must know the truth.
(Norton 44). Jonathan is in search for truth. Objective proof of the situation he finds himself
within. The search for objective truths was a popular idea with the rise of science, darwinism,
and the fall of religion as a stable belief system.
A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. These
Szgany are gipsies; I have notes of them in my book. They are peculiar to this part of the world,
though allied to the ordinary gypsies all the world over. There are thousands of them in Hungary
and Transylvania, who are almost outside all law. They attack themselves as a rule to some great
noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. They are fearless and without religion, save
superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue. (Norton 45). Here,
Harker again demonstrates his Eurocentric gaze. He views the gypsies as exotic and other, a
sort of ungoverned people who do not abide by the rules of logic and science that define the
West.
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart
and eye 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 whist the courage of the day is upon
me. (Norton 49). This description of the morning and Jonathans strength he finds in the light
re-enforces the motif he Darkness vs Light. Harker is finds power and hope in the light from the
sun. This highlights a change in harkers character as well. He finds himself finding strength to

fight against the Count and to fight for his survival. The light is opposite from where he is; a sign
that he must leave the castle.
The only thing I found was a great heap of gold in one corner-- gold of all kinds,
Roman, and British, and Austrian, and Hungarian, and Greek and Turkish money, covered with a
film of dust, as though it had lain long in the ground. (Norton 50). Jonathan has found part of
Draculas treasure within his quarters in the castle. The money is from different currencies from
throughout Europe. The Treasure looks as if it has never been touched. Later in the chapter
Jonathan plots to steal some of the gold to help his escape.
Close at hand came the howling of many wolves. It was almost as if the sound sprang up
at the raising of his hand, just as the music of a great orchestra seems to leap under the baton of
the conductor. After a pause of a moment, he proceeded, in his stately way, to the door, drew
back the ponderous bolts, unhooked the heavy chains, and began to draw it open. (Norton 52).
Dracula seems to conjure the wolves at will, further evidencing his non-human abilities. He is
portrayed as an master artist of the supernatural, and his stately description further emphasizes
his authoritarian status.
There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half renewed, for the white
hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey; the cheeks were fuller, and the white skin
seem ruby-red underneath; the mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh
blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran over the chin and neck. Even the
deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were
bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood; he lay like a
filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion. (Norton 53). The Vampire retains his youth by
sucking the blood of the living. They prey on common folk to feed them. The Count holding his

youth and his strength from the blood of the living. The animalistic description of dracula further
Otherizes him from being considered human. He is compared to a leech.
I am alone in the castle with those awful women. Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is
nought in common. They are devils of the Pit! (Norton 55). Jonathan is afraid of the woman in
the castle. He shows fear of their power and non-traditional behavior. The Victorian males fears
of the new woman are very present within Harker. He compares the woman in the castle to Mina,
who he is engaged with, and cannot find similarities.

Allusions, Visual Imagery, Setting Etc.:

Unwound Watch
-

With the unwound watch at the beginning of the chapter, when Jonathan wakes up in his
guestroom bed after having what seemed to be a nightmare scenario with Draculas three
mysterious female guests, foreshadows the growing diaspora in Harkers changing sleeping
patterns found later in the chapter, which starts to signify the growing duplicitous relationship
between being awake and being asleep; how it seems as if Harkers nightmare scenarios are
coming to life while awake, as if he were living in a dream, where the supernatural is real.
Letters

The three dates. June 12, June 19, and June 29, set up a timeframe in Harkers mind that he will
perish on the 29th. This shows the extent in which Harker has grown suspicious, anxious, and
skeptical of his surroundings; that he no longer trusts Dracula or the castle that he resides in. This
is surely going to foreshadow the amount of mental degradation that Dracula will have caused
this man through the duration of his stay as a guest. The specificity of these dates also show the
intricate way in which Dracula himself thinks ahead, because these are relatively arbitrary dates,
but psychologically, they aid in reassuring the people back in London that Harker is safe and

enjoying the Counts hostility for the longest period of time as possible without conjuring too
much of concern or suspicion on their part.
Window
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The window is supposed to act as a sort of red flag, giving Harker the sense of complete
isolationism, as he can see the expanse in front of him, but he cannot do anything to escape; he is
completely powerless. This is shown when he tries to talk to two group of gypsies, one with an
important, personalized letter toward London, which is intercepted, read, and destroyed by
Dracula, and fails to communicate anything to them. Then, he witnesses the gruesome death of a
wailing mother banging at Draculas door and being subsequently torn apart by a pack of wolves.
Tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled around and gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of
way. I watched them with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me I was being
hypnotised, then the dust materializes into the three brides of Dracula. (Gutenberg 41)

This little scene is the beginning of the intense living nightmares starting to become a reality, as
with the swirling dust, it evokes an almost dreamlike state, which is shown with the nebulous
flow of the dust. It is soothing to him, which is a sort of indication that he is being swayed
towards Draculas way of thinking, where he starts to accept his new nocturnal lifestyle,
combined with supernatural of the three brides of Dracula materializing. He is afraid of their
initial presence, but the pretense of the dust and hypnotism shows the effect that Dracula has
on his victims to lure them into his way of thinking.
Heap of gold in the corner of the room

The heap of gold in the corner of Draculas room, with a good amount of dust covering the pile,
is shown to be no less than three hundred years old and from a variety of different countries. This
shows the long life that Dracula has lived, to be able to collect the amount of cold in his

collection from Greece, Turkey, and Britain. And the larger, but much more subtle feature, is that
they are covered in dust. By being covered in dust, Stoker is attempting to convey the fact that
Dracula does not have explicit need for money, as it is implied that he could simply use his
powers of persuasion to get what he desires. The money is just seen as a backup that he has not
had to use in a long period.
Old chapel used as a graveyard
-

The old chapel being converted into a graveyard and subsequently Draculas sleeping place is
a jab, or commentary, at the Victorian eras sensibilities towards religion, as Stoker is showing
that Dracula is the direct antithesis of organized religion, especially Christianity, given the
chapel. And it being converted into a graveyard goes further, showing that Christianity is about
to find its way out of Europe sooner or later with the growth of Darwinism, and subsequently,
Individualism, which Dracula wholly embodies, at least in the first few chapters, where he uses
Harker for his own selfish reasons by keeping him locked in his room and using the forced letter
to help his own cause instead of truly providing Harker with genuine communication with the
outside world.
Shovel

The shovel is a small bit of irony in the chapter, because it is a tool made to dig and bury the
deceased into graves, but in this case, Harker is using a shovel in an attempt to bury, aka kill,
Dracula as he sleeps in his coffin. However, when Harker brings the shovel down, Dracula
reacts, moving his head so that the head of the shovel only creates a gash on his forehead instead
of a large dent. This shows that Dracula cannot be killed, at least by conventional means, because
Dracula is not a conventional person. And this would then hint and foreshadows that there has to

be someone of exceptional skill and knowledge to be able to destroy the vampire lord, maybe the
one named Van Helsing.
Character Analysis
Harker: he is a strict businessman, in my opinion he is a stiff character, meaning he isn't
very emotional and is stagnant. He is highly intelligent but i feel like he is almost robotic. Being
said, he demonstrates his intelligence by being aware of his surroundings and deducting. When
the chapter starts, he awakes in his bedroom, not realizing how he ended up there and realized it
must have been the count since his clothes were folded and laid out in a way harker would not
have done himself. He realizes that dracula isnt aware of the journal he has been keeping
because he is still in possession of it, and dracula would be very displeased if he knew what
harker had been writing about. The way that he determines his timeline is also very smart, when
he gets dracula to reveal what dates to put on the letters he is writing to his friends/ family. When
he sees gypsies in the courtyard, he attempts to bribe them to send out distress letters with no
avail. When he realized that dracula is winning the chess match that they are playing, he decides
to take the risk of exploring draculas room to either find a key or to kill him. He only assumes
this risk because he understands that he is damned either way and wants to give a fighting chance
of survival. He discovers dracula as a younger man, and then realizes that if dracula would be
allowed into London, it would be a disaster for innocent people who he would prey on, so he
tries to kill him to prevent it; which shows tremendous courage on his part. Again, to no avail.
Dracula: Chapter 4 is the first time Harker sees Dracula leaving through his window in
the suit he arrived at the castle in. He also discovers Dracula laying in his coffin, alive but
showing no signs of life. Draculas red lips while he is sleeping could signify that he had just
finished feeding. He informs Harker that he is to leave the next day, however Dracula uses his

control over the wolves to intimidate Harker into staying. This could very likely be because
Dracula is lonely and othered and desires the company, though at this point we arent fully sure
what his intentions with Harker are.

Discussion Questions
-

What motifs are prevalent in this chapter and how might they relate to ongoing themes within the

novel?
What might the wolves symbolize?
Compare the significance of moonlight (natural light) against artificial or secondary forms of

light in the novel.

Draculas personal room is empty apart from dusty sofa and gold coins. What does this say about

his personality?
In what ways could Jonathans imprisonment in Draculas castle be a metaphorical representation
of his mental state? What evidence do you find to support your claim?