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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—Nature in the Graveyard:
At the beginning of Chapter 16, Stoker uses striking natural imagery to set the mood for the gruesome work that Dr. Seward, Van Helsing, Quincey, and Arthur must carry out in their efforts to lay Lucy to rest:
Never did tombs look so ghastly white; never did cypress, or yew, or juniper so seem the embodiment of funeral gloom; never did tree or grass wave or rustle so ominously; never did bough creak so mysteriously; and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night.
In this passage, as in the passages where Jonathan Harker describes the landscape of Transylvania, natural forces collude with the men's pre-existing fears to make every movement, every noise an omen of terrible things to come. Noises and images that would by day be welcoming—or at the very least a neutral presence—become menacing. Each natural element, from the trees to the grass to the dogs, takes on a supernatural identity and purpose derived from the nighttime. In gothic literature, the reader learns to take cues from the behavior of the natural world; in this scene, every natural image becomes a "woeful presage," foreshadowing the terrible evils that the protagonists will soon encounter.
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