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Towards the end of Chapter 14, Seward remains confused about Van Helsing's thought process, not understanding why Lucy passed away nor how her death is linked with a series of other events. Stoker uses a striking combination of imagery and simile to describe Seward's intellectual position:
At present I am going in my mind from point to point as a mad man, and not a sane one, follows an idea. I feel like a novice blundering through a bog in a mist, jumping from one tussock to another in the mere blind effort to move on without knowing where I am going.
Dr. Seward, an intellectual though he is, finds himself in the same position as the reader - he is similarly in the dark, unable to discern connections between events. Van Helsing prompts him to open his mind to the supernatural (the "unscientific" or "impossible"), an effort which will clear this fog of mystery from his mind and allow him to view the truth. This intellectual fog that Seward (and other characters) are immersed in parallels the literal fog that often rolls in as a premonition of evil—the result of Dracula's dark influence over nature.












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