I never had any clue on the concepts of gothic culture, and after reading “The Castle of Otontro” my view hasent changed. The book itself is random with its acts, of trying to appear scary, but in reallity its trying too hard. Even when it came to the death of prince Conrad I found it rediculos as the manner of how he died, as something as you would see in a cartoon. Maybe at the time durring this books era was precived as scary as the thinking of that time was that anything they did not understand was deamed to be dark. The thing they did do good was capture the castle life they was going for. The ye old talk, the sevents, the head of the castle the children, the sense with each passing secound there is a very real chance that you are going to be killed either by someone you know, or by some molevolent force, and the constant Shaksphere refferences gives the story that gives it more creativity. The characthers themselfs are good as they each have their own stake in the story, something to add. However because of the type of diolouge they use makes it very difficult to keep track of whos talking. The idea of gothic culture is something that is dark, depressing, and depending on what you are reading has a level of shock that comes along with the passages. But this book does not have much of this. Only two murders, and some instances of ghosts, hints of incest, and the mention of a curse on the whole family. After everything is said, and done this story is still an odd one.
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I kind of felt the same way at first when I registered for this class. I knew gothic literature had something to do with dark, gloomy and weird concepts but not so much of the scary side. Reading “The Castle of Otranto” as the 18th century version made me think some of the events that happened within the book were actually scary. But if you were to read it in today’s century the story wouldn’t seem much scary. I feel that as the course continues I may become a little more interested & hopefully a fan of gothic literature.
I would like to disagree with the point that you stated about the Gothic included in this book. Seems as if you did not grasp the author’s intention overall. But, because, it is the first written Gothic story, it might be difficult to find everything involved with this culture right away. You might have perceived an idea distinct from what was portrayed in this book, but with what you had mentioned; the ghosts, murders, some incest, dark setting, medieval speech/language, etc., this brings about that environment that makes you believe it is Gothic. It provides the reader with the mindset to believe in the authors vision. I sense a bit of disappointment in the way you had perceived the Gothic culture from this reading, and I hope other works of literature based in this genre change your perspective.