The Gothic Horror

The Gothic Horror

  • Submitted By: frais
  • Date Submitted: 03/15/2009 11:05 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1473
  • Page: 6
  • Views: 1

The gothic horror embodies an appreciation of the joys for extreme emotion. It plays on peoples emotions using atmosphere, the ruins of remote, ancient castles. The medevil castles were usually associated with a dark and terrifying period, a place in which torture was enflicted and a place were mysterious, supernatural rituals took place. The castle was usually surrounded by night with only the light of the lightning and the sounds of thunder for company. The characters were stereotypical. Many of the characters came from the supernatural world for example magicians, monsters, ghosts and sometimes even the devil himself, but at the very start of all gothic horror the villian was usually a man, a powerful man most likely to be a king someone imune to law. He would probably be unattractive, people associate ugly with evil they have less compassion for people with no beauty, whereas they would show complete compassion for the beautiful damsel in distress and her handsome saviour who would usually be poor, as the people could relate to him more, relate to his hardships. People would also be enfralled in the romance that would spark between the damsel and her saviour. Romance played a big part in gothic horror. Even though it was gothic horror people always liked to see a happy ending. So around these characters a plot for a story would form, although on the outside the plots were very simple, king trys to rape girl, boy saves her, king tries to kill boy. If you look further in the more complicated it gets, secrets are revealed, madness overtakes there is always such suspension.

The gothic horror was believed to have been first introduced by the author Horace Walpole in 1764 with his book 'The castle of Otranto'. The castle of otranto in our day is known as a very typical gothic horror it has the ancient, remote castle, the king etc... His declared aim was to combine elements of the medievil romance which he believed too fanciful and the modern novel which he...

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