Response 1 (Michael Reyes)

The Castle of Otranto is a magnificent read. You truly feel the prelude of Gothic            itself, but at the same time a parody of Gothic before it ever even existed. You can catch   many different themes within The Castle of Otranto. Themes such as entrapment, the        unknown, the paranormal, bestiality of humanity, the taboo of a father-in-law trying to   get it on with his daughter-in-law, and so on. But, what I’m really wondering is if writers  such as Lovecraft read this book in his grandfather’s study(which Lovecraft was known for at a young age), which impulsed him to become inspired into what he would later become. You also learn that compared to other later works of Gothic literature, this is not scary; but  also shows someone who is immersed in such a genre, that the Pre-Gothicness is seemingly visible(for later authors go beyond this common ground that the class currently    learns of what Gothic is so far). But, you also learn that in this early Pre-Gothic literature, emotions of human characters are explored upon and you seemingly(if your    passionate enough about reading) feel pity and worried for such characters. And in later works of the Gothic, such emotions are more and more put as irrelevant(although not shown head on), but later authors will tend to show the emotions of human characters or    protagonists, but while putting more attention to the horror and exploring more in depth the deeper meaning of it all or if one may say; the meaninglessness of it all. In conclusion,     the book is a necessity if one is to understand the origin of Gothic and to explore the  prelude of the darkness that is to come.