“The Helmet! The Helmet,” is what the volley of voices shouted in the beginning of The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. In this moment, Manfred’s only hope to extend his family line and to procure an heir to maintain his family’s name in the Castle of Otranto was eliminated faster than anyone would have thought to imagine while reading this gothic novel. The thought of a huge helmet crushing someone may be funny to some who is reading this tale, however, it is Manfred’s fear that is expressed deeply in the moments directly after discovering his sons body crushed beneath this helmet. It is Manfred’s fear that his only option to gain an heir is now void and this eventually conjures this idea to get married to Isabella, who was set to marry Manfred’s, now, dead son Conrad. This fear is a good example of terror as a sublime.

In Edmund Burkes “A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful,” he defines sublime in the context of terror. He states “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” This excerpt means that fear is in fact the emotion that robs the mind of its power of acting and reasoning. Manfred’s fear of not having an heir is terrorizing him to the point where he would do anything to ensure that his future is secure, even if it means leaving his wife and marrying his son’s fiancé. Moreover, it is the same fear that has lead to his undoing. The prophecy that “the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it” is also something that increased Manfred’s fear. The thought that his son’s death was the beginning of the end of his family’s line instilled fears that clouded his judgment and robbed Manfred of appropriate reasoning.