From what we read in Harker's journal, it is clear that the young lawyer is a very logical, organized sort of man. Clearly, Stoker is setting up his protagonist as a very rational individual; in this way, the horror of the melodrama which will occur later will be encountered by a man who will try to combat it with common sense and logic. As a result, the terror of Stoker's narrative will become heightened and will seem more believable and less excessively hysterical. Had Stoker chosen a nervous, emotional type of man for his hero, his gothic melodrama would have become, or could have become, laughable and ludicrous. This is not the case, however; because of the carefully calculated way in which Stoker indicates and unravels the mystery of Count Dracula, he achieves a mastery over his subject matter that mitigates the raw horror and, instead, intensifies each chapter's sense of anxiety and portentous dread.
One of the first devices that Stoker uses to let us know that Harker is sensible and rational (in addition to the fact that he is a lawyer) is by having Harker recall in his journal that he spent quite a bit of time prior to his journey in the British Museum; there, he read as much as he could about the provinces through which he would be traveling (provinces originally occupied by Attila and the Huns); Harker tried his best to locate the exact locality of Castle Dracula, but unfortunately, he was not able to pinpoint the location precisely, because the castle is located in one of the "wildest and least known portions of Europe." Yet even this ominously mysterious fact does not worry Harker unduly; because he is able to use his smattering of German, he is enjoying his adventuresome trip — thus far — and his notes become more minutely descriptive and confessional as he continues; the purpose for recording as much as he can, he says, is so that he can later refresh his memory when he is telling his fiancée, Mina, about the journey.
One of the first clues in Harker's journal that suggests to us something about the terror that will soon commence concerns Harker's reaction to Transylvania itself. He notes that "every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians"; he also records, again matter-of-factly, the minor annoyance of his having had "all sorts of queer dreams" recently; in addition, he heard a "dog howling all night under [his] window." He wonders, rather naively, if perhaps it was the excessive paprika in the chicken casserole which he ate for dinner that could have been responsible for his bad dreams.
