Don’t summarize the plot. A paper should have a single argument So: job is to think about one of the works we’ve read up to this point, and to come up with an argument about interpreting it. you shouldn’t feel any obligation to “cover” a whole book, to interpret the whole thing. It’s much better to focus on a small aspect: that can be a theme that runs throughout the whole book — say, the function of blushing in The Monk, or metaphors for violence in The Castle of Otranto, or something like that — or it can be a chapter, a scene, even a single page of one of the books.

Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto; Vathek;, The Monk (Oxford), ISBN: 9780199535682,
Jekyll & Hyde,
Dorian Gray,
The Yellow wallpaper.