Mood and Its Developement

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Mood is the feeling the reader gets from reading a piece of literature. If it is properly made it can be felt through the main character or the text. Many literary devices can aid the development of mood in a passage. In “Denn Die Todten Reiten Schnell,” Stroker uses techniques of diction, types of imagery, and elements of narrative stance to create a dominant impression of fear.
The author selects techniques of diction such as connotation, repetition, and onomatopoeia, to establish the fear is the overall excerpt. He manipulates connotation to enhance the mood. As the character is driven about the midnight landscape by the mysterious coachman, he notices the “frowning rocks” hanging over the road, a “ghostly flicker” of blue light which he cannot explain and off in the distance the “long agonized wailing” of dogs. The word “frowning” allows us to see that this is no happy setting, even the rock that cannot feel is frowning and not smiling. The author uses the word ghostly to describe the flicker of light. Light usually portrays a saving or some sign of hope. By using ghostly as a descriptive word, he makes it seem supernatural or like it’s faintly there. If he wanted this to be a sign of hope he could have worded it a flickering light, but he did not causing the character to feel fright and no hope. The utilization of repetition by Stoker applies reinforcement to the atmosphere. Throughout the excerpt the narrator continues intensifying the effects by also repeating phrases such as “another and another.” By repeating these words the reader is being reminded of the alien emotions and surroundings of such a strange place. The use of intensifying repetition strengthens the negative connotation words following directly before or afte...

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...entative involved participant to contribute to the mood. He is attentive to his surroundings claiming that his “eyes deceiv[e] [him] straining through the darkness” as he “finds himself face to face with such horrors.” The main character establishes a fearful confused tone in order to magnify the ambiance. The main character, still on his journey to Dracula’s castle, chooses to describe his feelings as “strangely” meaning the ordinary is no longer sensed.
Words surround us each day and can describe so many aspects of our life. Many people say a picture is worth a thousand words, but no one bothers to say how much a word is worth. If they used words like Bram Stoker does, they’d be able to let people sense and feel what they are sensing and feeling. If a picture could describe a moment with so much depth then why can memories only be told through words and feelings.

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