The Call of Cthulhu
There are some horrors we can't even imagine...
The Facts
Text: The Call of Cthulhu Author: HP Lovecraft
Genre: Horror, Cosmic Horror Year: 1929
Available: Free Here
Content Warning: Lovecraft was racist and that definitely impacted how he wrote about certain groups of people. If you decide to click the link and read the story please read critically and keep his racism in mind when reading his outdated/racist language toward certain groups.
The Fiction
This week's short story is longer than the other's covered on this blog, but its a horror classic that couldn't be overlooked this October. There are classic Halloween monsters: Frankenstein's Creature, vampires, werewolves, mummy's, and of course the dead either in the form of zombies or ghosts, as we've already covered this October. But what about the stranger monsters? The one so horrible we can't even really conceive of them? The ones so old and powerful they aren't even monsters more like gods...old dead gods who wont stay dead forever.
That's cosmic horror, and if we're talking about cosmic horror then we need to talk about H.P Lovecraft. Lovecraft, in many ways like Edgar Allen Poe, is known for pioneering a distinct brand of horror short stories. He is so known for his style that subsequent fiction and horror inspired by him is literally called 'Lovecraftian'. This feels like a good point to mention that Lovecraft was also, horrifically, racist. I think his influence on the horror genre and on cosmic horror is important, and that's why I'm talking about his work this October, but its also important to know and keep in mind his racism when reading his work to understand how and why he describes certain characters in certain ways and to always read critically.
Keeping that in mind, this week's story is perhaps Lovecraft's most famous, one you've almost certain heard of: The Call of Cthulhu. As stated this week's story is long, and is actually divided into three chapters. The first chapter 'The Horror in Clay' establishes our narrator Francis Wayland Thurston who has written the account we are reading. (This is an epistolary, or found footage story). Thurston in the first chapter writes about the death of his uncle, Professor Angell, a famous archeologist. When going through his uncle's things he finds a box containing a collection of notes and a horrifying statue of a monster. The notes found with the statue outline the Professor's encounter with a young sculptor who came to him for help after a series of strange dreams. The sculptor made the statue based on the repeated odd dreams he was having of the creature and the strange city it was in. Our narrator Thurston doesn't believe the sculptor and thinks he is making his dreams up, but notes his Uncle was clearly invested as he began collecting the sculptors dreams, and the dreams of his acquaintances. The Professor found that people, especially artists and poets, were having the same dreams of this monster and this city in the same period of weeks. Press clippings from the month of this phenomena note increases in panic and mania all over the world.
The second chapter 'The Tale of Inspector Legrasse' explains why the professor was so interested in this sculptor's dreams. We learn it was not the first time he had seen a strange statue like this, but that years before a similar rendering was brought to an Archeological conference by a Louisiana cop, Inspector Legrasse. Legrasse had hoped that one of the archeologists could help identify the statue, but to their amazement none of the world's foremost archeologists recognized the work. Legrasse tells them all the story of how he found the statue in the hands of a cult in Louisiana. He describes the raid that took the cult down, the human sacrifices, and the way the cult were worshipping the statue. Only one Professor has heard of anything like this and tells a story of meeting an isolated Inuit tribe of devil-worshippers who had a similar statue.
Legrasse explains that the survivors of the cult raid in New Orleans told the police that they worshipped The Old Ones, cosmic beings who came from the stars millennia ago and populated the earth before humanity. They died, but death is not permanent for these beings. They lay in their tombs at R'lyeh, watched over by their priest, Cthulhu, and reaching out to humanity through dreams. The Old Ones long to wake and plunge the world back under their control into a time of madness and mania and fear.
Thurston goes to visit the sculptor himself, and after meeting him changes his opinion slightly, believing that the sculptor at least thinks he is telling the truth, but believing he must have heard and internalized the tale of the Cthulhu and the cult somewhere. He also begins to suspect that his Uncle's death was not an accident but was committed at the hands of this cult because of his research into them.
Finally chapter three, 'Madness From The Sea', lays out Thurston's final discovery surrounding the cult and Cthulhu. Meeting a colleague in Sydney he quite by accident spots a newspaper article about a fisherman rescued at sea who was the only survivor of his crew and was found cradling a horrific statue. Thurston tracks down this man, Johansen, whose wife tells him he has passed, but gives Thurston a manuscript he had written about his encounter at sea. The manuscript tells of Johansen's crew encountering pirates at sea after feeling an earthquake, they fight the pirates and continue on only to discover an island that shouldn't be there, risen from the sea by the earthquake.
The island is R'lyeh the city of Cthulhu. The eight members of the crew explore the strange city with geometry that doesn't make sense and green ooze seeping from the buildings. They find the tomb of Cthulhu and open it. They release the priest and are horrified by its appearance. They run, and only two members of the crew, one of whom is Johansen, make it to the boat. The two survivors get the boat started but Cthulhu begins to chase them over the water. Johansen turns the boat around and rams it into Cthulhu exploding it...but then the creature begins to reform. Johansen flees, and manages to stay alive until being rescued, but his other crewmate goes mad at the sight Cthulhu and dies. The ship that finds them looks for the island city of R'lyeh but doesn't find it. Thurston assumes it has sunk under the waves again taking Cthulhu with it.
Thurston now believes in Cthulhu and the cult worshipping it and the Old Ones. He fears he knows too much and will soon be killed like his Uncle and Johansen. He only feels despair knowing what lurks under the waters of the world and knowing that one day the Old Ones will wake and the city wont sink back down. Knowing that one day it is inevitable for us to face them and lose.
The Feeling
As mentioned this is an epistolary story, what makes it cool is the way that it is an epistolary story for our narrator as well. What I mean by this is that we are told at the beginning of the story that this account was among the papers of Francis Wayland Thurston and we read the notes he left behind. What's cool is that the story is of him essentially doing the same thing, first reading notes and articles left behind by his Uncle, and then the manuscript left behind by Johansen. This story is not told from the perspective of Johansen or any of the fishing crew that actually encounters Cthulhu, nor is told from the perspective of the sculptor having the dreams of R'lyeh, or any of the cultists. Instead we get the perspective of someone investigating the cult of Cthulhu, going through notes, and talking to witnesses.
Strangely I think this works really well in setting the tone of this story. This isn't a story about encountering evil first hand (or it would be from Johansen's point of view) but it is a story about an ordinary person uncovering and learning about the evil in the world. The horror in this story isn't Thurston encountering Cthulhu but in his sinking realization that it exists and there is absolutely nothing he or anyone else can do to rid it from the world.
There are some great aesthetics in this story, such as the way R'lyeh is described as a twisted geometric city where the angles are all somehow wrong and change if you look away. And also the buildings ooze green. The description of Cthulhu as a strange squid, dragon, man hybrid works really well too, and its become an iconic monster type in its own right.
There are lot of elements in this story that just work to create an intriguing mystery. The period of time where multiple people had the same dream, the descriptions of pockets of the cults of Cthulhu around the world, and the whole concept of the Old Ones.
Part of cosmic horror is that it is about a horror so massive and so terrible you can't really conceive of it. The Old Ones are that horror. Notably we never see the Old Ones, we see Cthulhu at the end, but Cthulhu is only a priest, he serves these sleeping gods. We never see the real thing, and can only imagine they are a million times worse then Cthulhu. The Old Ones are so powerful death is a concept that doesn't apply to them. They are so Old they can patiently wait for millennium to be risen out R'lyeh. We can't conceive of these creatures really, only fear the impression they leave on the world dead and in people's dreams, and even that is enough to send men mad.
The terror of cosmic horror is that there is no silver bullet, or stake to kill this monster. One day these monsters will rise from the water and stay and humanity will become their prey. Until then all we can do is fear.
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