Dracula Metaphors and Similes Quotes

“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 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.

What manner of man is this, or what manner of creature is it in the semblance of a man? I feel the dread of this horrible place overpowering me; I am in fear – in awful fear – and there is no escape for me; I am encompassed about with terrors that I dare not think of.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 3. Jonathan Harker wonders what kind of creature Dracula is after seeing him scaling the sheer castle wall like a lizard and "his cloak spreading out around him like great wings." He knows this powerful creature is no human.

Somewhere high overhead, probably on the tower, I heard the voice of the Count calling in his harsh, metallic whisper. His call seemed to be answered from far and wide by the howling of wolves. Before many minutes had passed a pack of them poured, like a pent-up dam when liberated, through the wide entrance into the courtyard.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 4. Jonathan describes how Dracula summons the wolves by letting out a noice from atop the tower. The howling pack pour into the courtyard, where they devour a woman.

The waves rose in growing fury, each over-topping its fellow, till in a very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and devouring monster.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 7. As Dracula’s ship makes its way to the English shores, a newspaper reports how "one of the greatest and suddenest storms on record" batters Whitby. The Count with fifty boxes of earth from Transylvania are washed ashore. The strange storm is symbolic of the approaching evil as represented by Dracula, to threaten the good people of England.

Masses of sea-fog came drifting inland. White, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 7. The storm of the century hits Whitby and during it a mysterious Russian ship called the Demeter is washed up at Whitby carrying Dracula. None of the crew members on the ship survive. The storm represents the coming of Dracula and his evil to the shores of England.

My friend John, when the corn is grown, even before it has ripened, while the milk of its mother earth is in him, and the sunshine has not yet begun to paint him with his gold, the husbandman he pull the ear and rub him between his rough hands, and blow away the green chaff, and say to you, "Look! He’s good corn, he will make a good crop when the time comes."…The good husbandman tell you so then because he knows, but not till then. But you do not find the good husbandman dig up his planted corn to see if he grow. That is for the children who play at husbandry, and not for those who take it as of the work of their life. See you now, friend John? I have sown my corn, and Nature has her work to do in making it sprout, if he sprout at all, there’s some promise, and I wait till the ear begins to swell.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 10. The corn metaphor represents Van Helsing’s assumption that Lucy is being attacked by a vampire. He is wary of making any rash moves and is suggesting to Dr. Seward that they be patient and let nature sort itself out.

The thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 16. In one of the most disconcerting scenes in the novel, Arthur Holmwood drives a stake through the undead vampire Lucy’s heart before she is beheaded and her mouth filled with garlic. Arthur was Lucy’s fiancé while she lived and the four men present agree that he is the right person for the job. There is a heavy sexual symbolism to this scene, with the stake representing a phallic symbol. Bodily fluids flow in the form of blood from Lucy’s heart. The beautiful and innocent Lucy Westenra was the evil Dracula’s first victim in England. The vampire hunters carry out their ritual on Lucy to save her soul.

The mist grew thicker and thicker…till it seemed as if it became concentrated into a sort of pillar of cloud in the room, through the top of which I could see the light of the gas shining like a red eye…the fire was in the red eye, which at the thought got a new fascination for me, till, as I looked, the fire divided, and seemed to shine on me through the fog like two red eyes…The last conscious effort which imagination made was to show me a livid white face bending over me out of the mist.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 19. Mina recounts what she believes to be a dream she had when a creature with two red eyes and livid white face materialized in her room. This is believed to be Dracula’s first attack on Mina and foreshadows one of the most horrific events yet to come, when Dracula will force Mina to drink his blood.

With his left hand he held both Mrs Harker’s hands, keeping them away with her arms at full tension. His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white nightdress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 21. In one of the most horrific scenes in the novel, Mina’s friend Dr. John Seward describes how he and Van Helsing break into Mina’s bedroom one night. Mina is kneeling on the edge of her bed while a tall figure, dressed in black, is bending over her. Mina has been bitten on the neck by Dracula and he is holding her head to a wound in his own chest, forcing her to drink the blood pouring from it. The final simile using the kitten and the child underlines Dracula’s power to take something pure and taint and distort it. The attack on Mina is viewed as a form of rape.

As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face, and the hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap into it. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion; the great nostrils of the white aquiline nose opened wide and quivered at the edge; and the white sharp teeth, behind the full lips of the blood-dripping mouth, champed together like those of a wild beast.

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 21. When Dr. Seward, Van Helsing and the others rush to the Harker home to save Mina from Dracula, they discover they are too late. Like a scene straight out of hell, Seward describes the wild beast appearance of the Count after he had satiated himself on the blood of Mina.

You think to baffle me, you – with your pale faces all in a row, like sheep in a butcher’s. You shall be sorry yet, each one of you! You think you have left me without a place to rest; but I have more. My revenge is just begun!

– Bram Stoker

Dracula, Chapter 23. Count Dracula snarls at Van Helsing and his crew of vampire hunters that he is far from finished and his evil reign has only begun. They have just purified 49 of his 50 earth-filled coffins but one, and they must find his final one.
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