The Castle of Otranto

Use this activity to engage all types of learners, while requiring that they refer to and incorporate details from the text over the course of the activity.

“Otranto Dream Journal”

In this activity, students will demonstrate their understanding of the role dreams play in driving plot and conveying theme in The Castle of Otranto by creating a dream journal entry.

In The Castle of Otranto, several characters have prophetic dreams. These dreams drive the novel’s plot and help convey its themes. In this activity, you will choose one dream and create a dream journal entry that demonstrates your understanding of the dream’s significance to the plot and theme.

Choose a Dream and Consider Its Significance

• Choose a prophetic dream that Manfred or Frederic had.
• Make notes about the content of the dream—its images, its action, and its meaning to the character that has the dream.
• Consider how this dream drives the character’s subsequent actions and which of the novel’s themes the dream supports.

Create a Dream Journal Entry

• From the perspective of the character who has the dream, create a dated entry in a dream journal.
• The entry should describe the dream, illustrate its significant images, and offer the character’s thoughts about what the dream means and what the character will do next as a result of having had this dream.
• Use both text and illustrations to demonstrate your understanding of the dream’s impact on the novel’s plot and theme, but stay “in character” and remember that you are writing from the perspective of either Manfred or Frederic.

Share and Review

• Share your work with a partner.
• Evaluate your partner’s work with this quick checklist:

o Are all the significant images from the dream illustrated in this entry?

o Does the entry stay consistently in Manfred’s or Frederic’s point of view?

o Does the entry successfully convey the ways the dream impacts the novel’s plot and supports its theme?

• If your answer to any of the questions is “no,” offer your partner feedback about how to improve their work.

Teaching Suggestion: If students want examples of what illustrated dream diaries look like, they might search for some online before beginning their work. It is likely that the part of the activity they will struggle with the most is how to convey the theme in the required format. For instance, Manfred’s dream indicates that power is not legitimately invested in his lineage and that this will cause his downfall, but students might struggle to convey this without breaking character. You might suggest that in a case like this, “Manfred” might ask himself questions, exhibit transparent denial, or offer a critique of the idea the dream seems to be conveying. The intent of the “Share and Review” portion of the activity is to offer students a chance to receive peer-review feedback and make any needed revisions before submitting the assignment for instructor evaluation.

Differentiation Suggestion: Students with visual impairments may not be able to complete this assignment as written; these students might simply be allowed to submit the assignment without illustrations. Students with aphantasia will likely need visual references in order to complete the illustrations; they should be allowed to consult online images while they are working on the diary entry. Students who struggle with written expression may worry that they are not able to write in Manfred’s or Frederic’s voice, but you can reassure them that the emphasis of this assignment is on showing understanding of the dream motif’s impact on plot and theme, not on recreating a specific character’s voice—they need only write from the character’s perspective to be successful.