Vathek is the second book that I read in my Gothic class. As you have read in my earlier post, I really enjoyed reading The Castle of Otranto. When I read Vathek I did not enjoy it as much in the begining. The first few pages of the story were very descriptive. A lot of the characters in the story were real people at one point in history, so there was an explanation of who they were. Reading the history of the characters, the history of the religion, and reading the story was not very interesting, and it took me forever to get through the book. Even though the book is only 100 pages, it took me a full day to finish it. The way the book was written was very dense and hard for me to understand. However, once I got through the book I realized that the story was very interesting. If anyone has read Dante’s Inferno, than they might like this book. Even though the characters in this book are alive, they are destined for Hell and the reader sees the different actions and influences that made the characters considered evil. The end of the book takes place in the "hell" that was created. I really enjoyed reading that part because it was interesting to read the different ideas about hell. Dante had one idea about what Hell was like, and he wrote a whole book about it. In Vathek, Hell was described very differently from Dante's version. The set up Beckford's hell was not what someone would expect. In Vathek the hell was described as some large palace that looked beautiful inside of it. Reading about the different hells made me think about what Hell may really look like. It's also interesting to read about the different reasons why people were sent to hell. In Vathek it was pretty obvious why most of the characters were sent to hell. In Dante’s Inferno the reasons why people were sent to hell can be very debatable. I could go on comparing the two hells, and talking about them, however, there was so much more that happened in the book that was exciting.

This book, like The Castle of Otranto had the supernatural involved in the story. However, in Vathek the supernatural is what caused the characters to be evil. I was upset by this fact. I enjoyed how in The Castle of Otranto the ghosts were not evil, but they were just there in the castle, haunting people. I like to think that the magical people were either for good or just scare others, not for evil. The ideas of how the supernatural’s act in this book made me also think of the idea of having free will power. The characters did not have to do what they did. Vathek, the main character, knew that what he was doing was wrong, yet he still did it anyway. The reason why Vathek did what the magical person said was because he wanted to receive more knowledge. This brings up the idea of taking the easy way out of things. Vathek decided to be lazy, and just do what the magical monster said instead of trying to learn knowledge on his own. You can still see this laziness in today's society. When people don't know something, like a word, instead of looking in a dictionary, they just look on line. People find the easiest ways to gain the most knowledge, but they don't realize that half of the knowledge comes from the way you learn it.

There are three more stories with in Vathek but I have only read one of them. They are called episodes, and they are at the end of the book. These episodes are the stories of the four people that Vathek meets in hell. Before the characters' hearts are turned to fire, the four characters, plus Vathek and his lover, are telling the stories of why they are in the hell. The story that I read was the story of Alasi and Firouz. I am not going to go into the story because it is similar to Vathek, but I will say that it was interesting to read. The stories are so interesting because the reader can see the different stages of the characters become evil. When the stories began, the characters were good people, and liked by everyone. However, after they met their evil counterpart, the characters began to become evil themselves. The best part of watching the characters become evil, was noticing how much persuasion someone can have over someone else. It is interesting to realize that people don't do things for themselves, but they do it to make someone else happy.

If anyone has read Vathek, I would like to know what they thought of it. I would also like to know what else people were interested in when they read the story!