Chapter 1

The plot:
This chapter is the presentation of the general situation of the story.
Mr Hiram Otis, an American minister, buys an old castle in England, the Canterville Chase, even if the previous owner told him that the castle was haunted.
Here, we discover the story of the Canterville ghost, Sir Simon.. He feels guilty because he killed his wife, Lady Eleanor.
He died, and reappears before the death of any family member. Now, he haunts the manor and terrifies people.
At the end of the chapter, the atmosphere is tense because at night, after the presentation of the family, they see a mysterious blood stain on the floor; the housekeeper, Mrs Umney, says that the stain mustn’t be touched, because the ghost left it there.
But Washington, the son of Mr Otis, cleans it with an American detergent and, some time after, a fearful peal of thunder makes them all start to their feet. Mrs. Umney faints. It starts to rain. Fear is omnipresent in the house.

Characters:
In chapter 1 there is the presentation of each character and of the setting.
The story is set in the Canterville Chase, an old English castle.
The characters can be divided in three classes:
• Main
• Secondary
• Appeareances
Only Mr. Otis belongs to the first group, because he is the one that appears in the whole text;
The second group is composed by Mr. Otis’wife, Mrs Lucretia Tappan, Lord Canterville, who was the owner of the chase, and Washington Otis, the son of

 Mr. Otis.
In the last block of people there are the housekeeper, Mrs Umney, and the rest of the American family, two twins and a girl, Virginia, who is fifteen.

Comments:
One of the main themes of this book is the fact that there are two diferent cultures presented in this first chapter: the English one and the American one. The English culture is mainly based on the traditional and the credences of people and so it can be considered, in that period, an ancient culture. The American culture, instead, is a modern culture and is based on new technologies, industry and in this country there is no space for the ghosts or other supernatural things of the tradition. Between these two cultures there is the clash between tradition and progresss. We can see this aspect when Mr. Hiram Otis wants to buy the castle even if it is haunted because he does not believe in ghosts or, even if he does, he simply does not care.

Quotations:
• Mr. Otis says: "What a monstrous climate! I guess the old country is so overpopulated that they have not enough decent weather for eveybody";  he said this as soon as his son erased the stain, a flash lighting appeared and a clap of thunder vibrated near the chase. As it can be seen he does not associate the strange phenomena to a supernatural element because he is a pragmatical man and immediately thinks of rational explanation: it is the changeable wheather of England.
• the houskeeper says to the Otis family: "It is the blood of lady Eleanore de Canterville, who was murder on that..." This quotation is the core of the book because it anticipates the story of the Canterville Ghost.

By Alessio, Marco, Pauline, Quentin