H p lovecraft research paper

Isaac Calcagne Mrs. Hurley Honors American Literature November 22, 2016 H.P. Lovecraft: The Lord of Horror The theme of horror in stories is popular, it is the art of creating fear within people. The writer, H.P. Lovecraft did not just write horror stories, he revolutionized them. H.P. Lovecraft wrote stories aiming at the emotions of people and he believed “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (H.P. Lovecraft). By writing using the core fears of human nature, Lovecraft was able to create more than just horror stories, but horror masterpieces. Lovecraft created unique stories using his own experiences in life. His childhood was dark and depressing, his father died when he was 3 and as a result Lovecraft lived with “night terrors” in which he would see demonic figures and creatures in his dreams. The terrible tragedies of Lovecraft’s childhood are what enabled him to create unique worlds of horror. In adulthood he lived in poverty and wrote stories to try to provide for himself which resulted in constant depression and nihilistic views on life. He had devised dark philosophies in his time of depression and he wrote stories involving many of his philosophical viewpoints. Through his stories “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Dunwich Horror”, Lovecraft questions the unknown meaning of life through his characters and themes.

H.P. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 20, 1890. Lovecraft lived out his childhood in Providence with his family, however when he was 2 his life began to decline when "in April 1893, Lovecraft's father suffered a stroke, apparently brought on by

overwork and financial worries... Lovecraft's father had to be institutionalized" (Schoell). His father’s stroke would be the start of a depressing chain of events. Lovecraft’s father eventually died by the time Lovecraft was 3 and due to the absence of his father, his family became depressed which caused Lovecraft to experience “nightmares in which he was visited by strange creatures that he referred to as ‘night-gaunts’ (Schoell). The creatures Lovecraft’s nightmares terrified him immensely and they later became the basis for many of his most frightening stories.

One example of the creatures of his dreams is shown in Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” in which he writes about an invisible monster that goes around a town and murders many families.

The brutal horror shown in this novel is part of Lovecraft’s style of horror that came from his childhood nightmares. When Lovecraft reached adulthood, he began to reflect on philosophy and create his stories. In adulthood Lovecraft wrote stories for magazines in which he received little pay for submission. Many of Lovecraft’s friends and colleagues suggested he should commercialize his works to make more money but Lovecraft “stubbornly clung to his insistence that "real" writers did not worry about commercial matters” but the a major truth was that “ Lovecraft was embarrassed by his lack of success and ambition and made excuses for it any way he could" (Schoell). Lovecraft did not believe that he should not search for better ways to make money off his stories and as a result of his mindset, he financially struggled in his adulthood.

Lovecraft’s financial struggle led him to become depressed and he often experienced a huge lack of selfidence. Through wistful emotions, Lovecraft derived nihilistic philosophies that are seen in some of his most popular stories such as “The Call of Cthulhu” which promotes the idea that humanity is extremely insignificant in the universe.

Lovecraft wrote many great stories in his lifetime, however not many can be compared to “The Call of Cthulhu” which revolutionized horror stories. The story opens with a young man ,the narrator the story, whose uncle had recently died suddenly with no explanation. The man visits his uncle’s home and “stumbles upon a curious collection of notes and artifacts among his uncle's possessions” in which he learns of “the existence of cults devoted to the alien ‘Cthulhu’ in Greenland, Louisiana, and China” (Harris). The young man is at first shocked and slightly curious as to whether what he was reading was true. The notes provide information that before humanity were greater beings known as “old gods” and that one day they would reclaim the earth, wiping humanity from all of existence. The narrator then stumbles upon a newspaper clipping about a sailor having ties to the previous notes, so “the young man travels to Australia and then to Norway, hoping to locate a sailor whom he suspects has actually seen the alien. The sailor, although dead, has left a diary which describes the monster and his habitat" (Harris). After the narrator finds out that the sailor had died and that only his accounts of his journey remain in his diary, he decides to plunge into the diary. The diary has claims to Cthulhu existing and the sailor claims that he saw the being himself. The story of the sailor provides more evidence to the existence of Cthulhu and his account oddly ends similar to the narrator's uncle's, in death, mysterious and unexplainable. The story concludes with "the mysterious nature of his uncle's death, coupled with the equally disturbing details of the sailor's demise” and it ultimately “[convinces] the young man that, in all likelihood, he too would meet an untimely end, for he has learned too much" (Harris). The narrator of the story reaches the end of his uncle's notes only to realize that he himself has obtained too much knowledge about Cthulhu and that it will inevitably end in his death, as shown in his own uncle and the sailor. This conclusion creates the

major scare of the novel because the reader now knows too much about Cthulhu as well.

Lovecraft used many great elements of his horror style to make this story one of his most frightening. The structure of the story, instead of being in a chronological order, has “isolated events and revelations which slowly form into a pattern. This indirect, quasi-journalistic approach also enables Lovecraft to mix real historical events, places, characters, and references with the fictional ones, and to insert newspaper clippings and interviews into the text along with straight narrative” (Keith, Barth). Lovecraft uses historical events, places, and people in the fiction of the story to add an effect of realism. The aspect of realism applies a greater scale of horror that makes the story more believable and surreal. The story of the sailor appears believable which makes the ancient stories of “Cthulhu and the old gods” seem legitimate.

Lovecraft also includes the locations Greenland, Louisiana, and China to create a relation between the fictional cults and the real world. Lovecraft uses the elements to realism to set up the major scare of the story. Lovecraft’s major scare is “the nameless, ancestral horror lurking beneath the earth, or ready to invade us from the stars; the dethroned but still potent gods of old.

The symbol is a very common one and is not bound to any particular complex. It therefore strikes and horrifies more readers than would any theme having a single subconscious origin" (Penzoldt). Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" is terrifying to people because it inserts the ideals of the existence of ancient gods who could wipe our existence at any moment. These ideals represent the philosophy of Lovecraft; humanity is so small and insignificant. Lovecraft uses his story to not only scare others but to insert his own philosophy on life. Lovecraft’s story “presents a powerful metaphorical construct of the modern world and the extremely precarious place of human beings in it" (Keith, Barth). Lovecraft's major philosophy in "The Call of Cthulhu" is that

humanity is insignificant in all of existence and the question for humanity's placement on Earth will forever remain unanswered. “The Call of Cthulhu” no only demonstrated Lovecraft’s philosophy on the significance of humans, but that “to achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, he believed that one must forget the existence of such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such attributes of humanity” (Cannon) "The Call of Cthulhu" demonstrates Lovecraft's philosophy that in order to reach an external level beyond the understanding of life, one must set aside of all that humans perceive to be real.

Ultimately, the story is“Lovecraft’s first important tale to reflect this philosophy” (Cannon).

Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” is his best example of the combination of philosophy and the elements of horror to create a true masterpiece in horror fiction.

One of Lovecraft’s best skills in writing was his ability to pinpoint the fears of mankind.

Lovecraft is greatly able to do so in his story “The Dunwich Horror”. It is opened with the land of Dunwich, Massachusetts which is described as “a landscape of old and decaying houses, with residents who are silent and furtive. The hills in the region are too rounded and uniform, and many of them are crowned with tall stone pillars" (Gale). Dunwich is an unusual place that contains many abnormalities. These irregularities set stage for strange characters and events to fit into the setting. The main character, Wilbur, is born in Dunwich to “his mother, Lavinia Whateley [who] has no husband and does not reveal the name of the father but chooses to keep and raise the child. Lavinia is one of the ‘decadent Whateleys,’ a somewhat deformed, unattractive albino, living with her father, a reputed wizard. Wilbur is a dark, goatish infant."

(Gale) The father of Wilbur is strangely absent which leaves a unknown gap in the story. The family also appears to be of alien descent and Wilbur is specifically described as a goat. It is then

that strange events begin take place in Dunwich. They begin when "Old Whateley begins to buy cattle, but the size of his herd never seems to increase; there always seems to be about the same number of sickly, anemic cattle, with sores and what appear to be incisions” and the other strange phenomenon is that “Wilbur seems to be growing at a phenomenal rate, and by seven months he is walking...when Wilbur is ten [he] appears to be an adult" (Gale) Old Whateley’s actions leave the question as to what he is truly doing with the cattle and why Wilbur grows at such a rapid rate. It is then long after Old Whateley has passed away and Wilbur is nearing adulthood when he “travels to Miskatonic University to consult the dreaded ​Necronomicon​, a sorcerer's bible.The librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, becomes concerned when he sees that Wilbur is translating an incantation to raise an ancient demon, Yog-Sothoth. Wilbur wants to borrow the book, but Armitage will not let him... few weeks later, there is a break-in at the library... they see that the watchdog has ripped most of the clothes off Wilbur, and his body is only vaguely human. Within minutes, the body disappears" (Gale) Without any explanation, Wilbur goes in search of the “​Necronomicon​” which is an ancient book that can allegedly revive the “old gods”, as seen in “The Call of Cthulhu”, to return to earth. When Wilbur is stopped from getting the book by the owners of the library in which it was in, he returns however under some magic spell causing him to be invisible. The story ends off without any direct conclusion other than that "in Dunwich, huge, bizarre footprints are found with an accompanying stench. Huge paths of destruction include cattle and finally, farmhouses and their inhabitants" (Gale) The only final information provided is that Dunwich is suddenly terrorized by an unseen beast that only leaves extraordinary footprints.​“The Dunwich Horror” is one of Lovecraft’s “most tightly constructed stories, largely as a result of his use of linking elements that give subtle clues and anticipate

developments" (Muhleman). Lovecraft writes giving clues in the story to further develop ideas about what is happening that isn't being directly provided. ​ He does this throughout the whole story based on his philosophy that “​the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Lovecraft). Lovecraft leaves many of the parts of the story without explanation because he believes that it will ultimately scare people using this philosophy. Lovecraft’s “belief was an important force behind the idea that he gradually developed over many years that the earth was once inhabited by a race of beings from another world or dimension who, while having lost their hold on earth, are waiting to enter again" (Muhleman) The major theme is that it is unknown as to whether these gods exist or not and Lovecraft uses this uncertainty to create horror and fear. The fact that the beast in the end is invisible shows a demonstration of the power of these “old gods” and that they are the horrors fears of the nightmares of people. Lovecraft used the beasts from his own nightmares to create the world of the “old gods” and they are so terrifying as a result. Lovecraft’s other method of establishing fear is through his opening in the story. Lovecraft “devotes the first five pages to convincing the reader that the township of Dunwich, located in Northern Arkham County, is a particularly desolate, foreboding, and degenerate area. Only after thoroughly establishing this realistic environment and eerie atmosphere does he introduce the diabolical and perverse Whateley family, the subjects of the narrative." (Keith, Barth) Lovecraft initially establishes a fictional yet realistic and believable setting. Afterwards he adds the Whateley family to the novel who are fictional and horrific. By doing this, Lovecraft is able to make the environment that the fictional characters are in seem surreal. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” is a classic in horror stories, however Lovecraft “criticized his own story for having a "double climax," but there is

nothing inherently wrong with two, so long as one is a logical outgrowth of the other, as happens here" (Schweitzer). Lovecraft was often too critical on himself when he wrote stories. Schweitzer believes that aside from Lovecraft having a clumsy opening in the story, the use of two climaxes helps the story piece together properly and that there is perfectly fine that Lovecraft had done so.

Aside from having some clumsy structuring to his story, Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” is one of his best demonstrations of his philosophy on fear and the horrors of life.

H.P. Lovecraft revolutionized horror stories, making some of the most surreal and horrifying stories to exist. In “The Call of Cthulhu” Lovecraft was able to use his philosophies to create a world never before imagined. This world known as “Cthulhu mythos” has been the inspiration of many horror writers and there are some people who actually believe in the “old gods” and some worship Lovecraft's fictional book the “​Necronomicon​” from his story “The Dunwich Horror”. Lovecraft’s “The Dunwich Horror” exemplifies his talent of pinpointing what humans truly fear by presenting a horror story in an indirect way to create mystery frequent questioning. This story was written based off Lovecraft's famous belief of mankind’s ultimate fear, the unknown. Lovecraft forever changed horror writing in history and he influenced many who have created stories today.

Works Cited Cannon, Peter. The Dunwich Horror and Others. ​Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy Literature​, New England, Salem Press, 1996. ​EBSCO eBook Collection​.

Harris, Laurie Lanzen. “Overview: “The Call of Cthulhu”.” ​Characters in 20th-Century Literature​, Gale, 1990. ​Literature Resource Center​, Accessed 13 Nov. 2016.

“H.P. Lovecraft Quotes.” ​Goodreads​.

Muhleman, James V. The Dunwich Horror. ​Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition​, Ipswich, Salem Press, 2004. ​EBSCO eBook Collection​.

Neilson, Keith, and Melissa E. Barth. H.P. Lovecraft. ​Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition​, Ipswich, Salem Press, 2001. ​EBSCO eBook Collection​.

“Overview: ‘The Dunwich Horror.’” ​Gale Online Encyclopedia​, Gale, 2016. ​Literature Resource Center​, Accessed 13 Nov. 2016.

Penzoldt, Peter. “The Pure Tale of Horror.” ​Short Story Criticism​, edited by Janet Witalec, vol.

52, Gale, 2002. ​Literature Resource Center​, Accessed 13 Nov. 2016. Originally published in ​The Supernatural in Fiction​, p. 146.

Schoell, William. ​H.P. Lovecraft: Master of Weird Fiction.​ Greensboro, North Carolina, Morgan Reynolds, 2004. ​EBSCO eBook Collection​.

Schweitzer, Darrell. “Untitled.” ​Short Story Criticism​, edited by Janet Witalec, vol. 52, Gale, 2002. ​Literature Resource Center​, Accessed 21 Nov. 2016. Originally published in ​The Dream Quest of H. P. Lovecraft​, p. 5.