Thesis Proposal

Eric DerManouelian
Block: A
4/15/08

H.P Lovecraft: Thesis Proposal

In my American Author Essay I’m going to explore the idea that Lovecraft had accidently added symbolism in his dark twisted tales, reflecting on what he thought of his own life and what he thought of others. This is not a sturdy thesis yet, not until I read a biography of my author to aid my argument, however I have a strong hunch that Lovecraft did put pieces of his own life and his own ideals into his works. In Lovecraft’s pieces, he always seems to mention the ocean, in one way or another, usually to show something evil lurking within it, usually something overlooked now a days with all of modern monsters coming from the ocean such as Cloverfield and Godzilla, however H.P was the first person to use water to home his monsters. As soon as I realized all of H.P Lovecraft’s main characters were afraid of the ocean I looked up the psychology and symbolism of what water meant in dreams (because his most famous monster, Cthulhu, controls them) Freud believed that water stood for sexuality, or relationship with the opposite sex. In the story “He” the main character has a horrible life and has a chance to escape it, back to London, his paradise, yet he doesn’t because he’s afraid of the monsters he’ll come across if he goes into the ocean, the character grows old, poor and dies, this story I feel will be a crucial part of my essay seeing as how this book is the least fictional out of all of his stories and I feel one of the most self reflective and depressing.
The other piece of symbolism I would like to explore is the monsters that H.P put into these stories, are the ancient texts he uses, and if these are actual beliefs of him, the main quote I would focus on is:

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."

This text is extremely important, it’s in almost every popular work of his and this is what is constantly spray painted onto his grave. I personally think this is more or less reflecting on how unappreciated he felt in the world, being one of the worlds darkest writers, too morbid for his time. I need to read more about this topic of how unappreciated he felt because I’m not quite sure how popular he was, I only know he felt unappreciated when he moved to New York and was forced to move back to Rhode Island

Symbolism of HP Lovecraft

Lovecraft is an odd person to talk about symbolism. Whether there is something behind these stories I believe there is. I don't believe however the symbolism is on purpose or that it's just to remind himself of things that have happened in his life, hating America, being under appreciated, only being published in 2 magazines and dying poor would do that to someone. I personally think that the story of Celephais and Whisperer in the Dark are the two stories Lovecraft really put himself into. Celephais I believe was himself telling how he just wanted to escape to the lands in his stories these tombs, maybe he was suicidal even seeing as how everyone who leaves New England dies at the end of his books. As far as whisperer in the Dark it might have been a cry for help, HP realizing his own insanity or perhaps exerting his anger and desire to kill any purity within his heart.

The whisperer in Darkness (68 pages)

This story blew me away that someone in the early 1900's could publish something like this. The story takes place in a man's mind who's being tapped by an evil entity (most likely Cthulhu). The messages are dark and we find out the man is a scholar attending college who's writing these satanic dark messages all over the walls and mutters them in his sleep. The satanic messages end up being Cthulu telling the man to kill the parasite inside of him. The parasite is Yuggoth the one being that can stop Cthulu. The man is basically pregnant with the alien jesus. The man (Henry Wentworth Akely) ignores the messages and gets medical help, by the end of the story Cthulu drives the man insane and into a mental hospital where he just lays there shaking repeating the message given to him by the entity of evil.

Memorable Line: Ia! Shub Niggurath! The Goat with a Thousand Young!...Ia! Sub Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!

Style: Completely original...don't know what to compare it to, incredible writing

The Colour Out of Space (30 pages)

Here we are, yet again the whole explorer theme with HP lovecraft. Two men explore a cave and a blinding light eats them up. Neither of them can explain the color but it's bright and marvelous yet something about it tells them that it's "the devil's mouth".

Memorable line; "Can't git away...draws ye....ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use" pg.30

Style: The story just makes me think of the Atomic bomb blast and the blinding light brighter then the sun.

The Call of Cthulhu (29pages)

Call of Cthulhu is a cult classic...and I mean that literally. This story revolves around news paper articles that form around a cult that worship the God of dreams Cthulu who is said to be the one that will destroy the world or to start a chain of events that will. Cthulu is a Giant green Squid with bat wings trapped under rubble of a temple after a century old fight with Dagon. Cthulhu is said to control dreams, thus controling the motives of people and at the end of the story the cult summons the bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus (imps that appear to build Cthulhu a new home and to do their dirty work.

Memorable Line: ...-this test of my own sanity, wherein is pieced together that which I hope may never pieced together again. I looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me

Style: the whole, news article style reminds me of Bram Stoker's Dracula how that was a cult novel and that was all entries in a notebook

Exterior Notes: (I love this story )

He (11 pages)

He is not a science fiction or fantasy story at all, which is the first time HP has went this route. It's about how much a man wanted to go to America to escape England but in the end he found the grass is always greener on the other side. That the El Dorado he was looking for was in Britain all along. This story tells about how obscure the idea of going to America was when the man lived in London.

Memorable Line: "Can you...Dare you...Go far?"(pg.7)

Style: Reminds me a bit of the tale of two cities mixed with the moral "It can always be worse"

The Hound (9 pages)

Boring story, dog gets abducted by ancient aliens and gets turned into a monster thousands of years later someone finds the dog and takes it as a pet. The dog is now out on the streets and kills it's owner

Memorable Line: In a squalid thieves' den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace, and those around had heard all night above the usual calmour of drunken voices a faint, deep, insistent note as of a gigantic hound. (Pg.7)

Style: The Omen meets A bad Steven King Novel

Herbert West- ReAnimator (30 pages)

Herbert West is a carbon copy of Frankenstein but more insane. Herbert is a Canadian professor who bluntly comes off as a gay necrophiliac whose obsession is to make an army of dead. For a full night Herbert's experiment works and he reeks havoc with power he has no control over. He describes his creations in great detail from their cold but meaty skin to the yellow glisten in their eyes. During the course of the night he's murdered all his servants and turned them into undead, but Herbert doesn't have control and gets eaten as soon as the zombie like creatures form legions and the narrator is Herbert's best friend who at the end of the story clues us into that he might' have been the one who was really behind this study

Memorable line: "They imply that I am a madman or a murderer-probably I am mad. But I might not be mad if those accursed tomb legions had not been so silent" (Pg.30)

Style: Again, Frankenstein Rip off...probably because the films started to come out in 1931.

Exterior Notes: Maybe his stories are so long because he doesn't have the ability to write long stories without being too dragged out, this story had a great premise but was like pulling teeth to get through

The Outsider (7 pages)

Summary: The outsider is a tale of a Baron who hasn't yet explored all of his castle. He wanders around in the dead of night to find a room and finds himself at a golden archway in the cellar and a giant pyramid that lays beyond it. As soon as he touches the golden arch Demons and ghouls awake, knocking the Baron over...he has awaken the lost souls of an entire millennia.

Memorable Line: Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock; black, ruined and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made no noise. But more ghastly and terrible stillwas the slowness of my progress; for clumb as I might the darkness overheard grew no thinner, and a new chull as of haunted and venerable would assailed me. (Pg. 2+3 )

Style: I don't really know how to express the style, I can say it felt more or less of a prologue of a larger piece of work. Lovecraft makes the reader eager to read more, but disappoints by ending the story abruptly.

Exterior Notes: (Did he plan to expand on this body of work? )

The Picture in the House (9 pages)

This story is about a man who gets caught in the rain on a bike trail. In search of shelter he goes off trail and finds a house. He went inside thinking whoever lives there would understand. Inside he finds a Portrait of a man who a harsh and hard to understand who speaks in a Shakespearean style with a southern accent. During the conversation lightning strikes and the only clue you have to what happened to the man is that "his mind has been saved from oblivion" most likely himself becoming a portrait...forever trapped but forever alive to talk with the portrait.

Memorable Line: "A moment later came house of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind." (pg.9)

Style: Dark ending reminds me of "The Cask of Amontillado" written by Edgar Allen Poe

Exterior Notes: H.P is a great writer with shocking endings when it's not someone waking up in a hospital, any time he doesn't end it that way I get chills just by the thoughts that enter your mind by the vauge endings of what might've happened to the main characters. He makes you care about characters that you don't even know their names half the time.

Nyarlathotep (3 pages)

Nyarlathotep is a warning to all who read it from an anonymous man. The warning is of the God of destruction Nyarlathotep, something so powerful, who looks human but has the ability to possess and animate figures such as stone statues with its soul using strange tools only used to "spill the blood of civilizations". In the story the man entails the destruction of his village when Nyarlathotep places its soul into gargoyles that ravage and destroy an entire civilization within mere seconds.

Memorable Line: "Nyarlathotep, swarthy slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger." (pg.2)

Style: This almost reminds me of a bible reading. The entire feel of this story seems like the bible readings of the end of the world and the theme of ultimate evil coming from pure evil in form of a human much like the anti-christ depicted in the bible.

Exterior Notes: This might have been where H.P lovecraft really opened up the idea that his stories are all part of one world...maybe I should make a map or something of all the gods and titans listed in this book, all their origins and routes of travel are listed in each story.

Celephais (7 pages)

This story is hard to follow and explain. It's about a man Named Kuranes who's a sailor in London who dreams about a city named Celephais. This city shares a name with the God who guards the city. Kuranes is a bit on the eccentric side, he believes the only way to get to Celephais and not be attacked by the monster is to achieve perpetual youth. There is a second reason why he needs to achieve perpetual youth and that is the journey to get to Celephais takes a lifetime, therefore one would need to be immortal to get there. To do so he spends all his money on sleeping drugs one day a group of knights take him away to Celephais, though it's assumed it's just him dying because he's poor and drugged off of the sleeping pills, Celephais being Kuranes search for happiness and death being the answer.

Memorable Line: "In a dream Kuranes saw the city in the valley, and the sea-coast beyond, and the snowy peak overlooking the sea and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of the harbour toward the distant recame by his name of Kuranes, for when awake he was called by different millions of London , so there were not many to speak to him and remind him who he had been." (pg.1)

Writing Style : The beginning story's writing style reminds me of Pans Labyrinth when the main character makes an imaginary world to escape the war, both characters wake up to a new world of being royalty when just before they die.

Exterior Notes

New info on The Late Arthur Jermyn

While some speculated the mumified Arthur Jermyn. Others speculate that the white ape was the child of Arthur and the Goddess thus giving commentary on mixed marriages.

This story never got published under it's full name until 1990, popular names for this story are "The White Ape" and "The Late Jermyn" where as the full name of the story is "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family"

The Late Arthur Jerymn (10 pages) 2/19

This third story is entitled "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family". This is where H.P really shows that he was raised in times of racism. This story takes place in 1852 where Arthur is kidnapped by a goddesses dark skinned servants and taken away. The entire story retells the scene of how beastly these servants were. At the closure of the story is says that in 1913 Arthur Jermyn came back, but not from a plane but in a package from Africa, and inside it was a mummified white ape, with less hair then any ape before it. Showing that spending time in Africa made Arthur De-evolve into an ape like creature.

Most Memorable Line: "Members of the Royal Anthropological Institute burned the thing and threw the locker into a well, and some of them do not admit that Arthur Jermyn ever existed." (Page 10)

Style Shown: A nonfiction environment thrown into a sudden static of fantasy then slammed into a world of it's own completely different and original, almost impossible to describe.

(Exterior Notes: H.P's style changed dramatically, this time it's a goddess not a god, the main character doesn't wake up in a hospital, no curiosity just a raid of "savages". )

The Statement of Rudolph Carter (6pages) 2/19

The second story was entitled "The Statement of Rudolph Carter". Again the theme of curiosity killed the cat is shown. Rudolph Carter and an archeologist who's examining a temple in foreign swamps along side with his assistant Warren, a complete nervous wreck who keeps bothering Rudolph all throughout the book to turn back and leave the crumbled ruins. All of a sudden Rudolph blanks out, lands in a hospital staring at the moon and thinks to himself "Waren is dead"

Most Memorable Line: "Beat it! For God's sake, put back the slab and beat it, Carter!" (all throughout the story)

The Style Shown: The Raven (The repeated lines)

(exterior notes: Again, curiosity has put a character into harm and again the main character wakes up in a hospital )

Dagon (6 pages) 2/19

The first story was entitled "Dagon", a retelling of a convoy's exhibition through the eyes of a now suicidal morphine addict who's name isn't given within the story. When the convoy finds hieroglyphs no one seems familiar with, they venture onward only to awake the beast of the deep. The Narrator recalls long tentacles and a large scaly body before he blacks out. The nurse in a San Francisco hospital tells him "You've been attacked by the fish god Dagon".

Most Memorable Line: "Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lose, and of Satan's hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness" (pg.3)

The style shown is an off mix of 1000 Leagues Under the Sea, mixed with Dante's Inferno and mixed with The Pit and the Pendulum

( exterior note: The God's seem to be tangible and leaving creatures, each story might unfold a new god for some purpose. )

AA proposal (WA #6)

H.P Lovecraft: Maddness to Method

For my American Author Project I would like to read and study Howard Phillips Lovecraft the occult short story horror novelist and the sole creator of the Comicism (like L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics). I’m drawn to this author because I want to broaden my imaginations pallet and feel his odd about aliens being gods and monsters trapped in a thousand year sleep is the next step. The second reason I feel drawn to Lovecraft is because He grew up in the same state I grew up in, Rhode Island, where both of us had the same sensation of being the big fish in the smallest pond in America because his famous quote is “I am Providence”, which may seem a bit cocky but if you ever went or lived in Rhode Island you’d understand that a tadpole here is a Shark there.
I could easily write ten pages on Lovecraft because within his writings are a lot of hidden messages and metaphors. He’s often questioned and still a hot topic on whether he himself was racist or if he just wanted to make a historical connection in his Cthulu series where he has dark skinned aliens with curly tentacles who are slaves to their god Cthulu. Cthulu himself represents god and oppression caused by church and religion he shows this by giving Cthulu the ability to control dreams and portrays this god as a beast with hundreds of tentacles of which absolute evil resonates. Yog Sothoth on the other hand represents truth shown as an entity of bubbles and slime who is said to possess the power to travel through time and space and oversee the universe yet he’s trapped outside the universe never being able to interfere only oversee events. These gods could easily show a meaning of polytheism beliefs that are lost once From that fact alone I could easily pull the argument either way and I could easily almost whimsically blow through that paper talking about the times H.P grew up in and why he might’ve had these thoughts or ideas. My basic plan so far for my paper is to write an introductory to H.P Lovecraft and a brief overview of the three books I’ve read (which would be compilations since his stories are so short). For the following Paragraphs I’ll talk about the issues he brings up in his stories and then pretty much hold a one sided argument that H.P meant to put these metaphors in his stories because he believed in them, or if he just wanted to give some sort of commentary or real world connection between his fantasy worlds and ours.
For the biography I have to read I’ll end up reading two biographies, I’ve seen two in particular that looked equally biased from opposite ends of a spectrum one being “H.P Lovecraft is the greatest writer ever” and the other one might as well had been “R.I.P Lovecraft: stay dead”. I’m doing this not because I feel like giving myself extra work but to take the black and the white from his life because I’m sure each book will hide good/bad things about his life, as I’m sure anyone’s life biography is biased but with both opposite ends of this spectrum I can make a grey out of it and decide for myself what’s myth and what’s legend. I suppose my overall project will be more of an analysis of both H.P Lovecraft the author and Howard Phillips, a man who lived in the dawn of the 20th century. That isn’t to say that the two can’t or aren’t the same person but from what I’ve read a different entity. From reading H.P Lovecraft you can’t help to get the sensation that even now it’s ahead of it’s time, and these books of his were written one hundred years ago, yet his public status was quite sane and intellectual, meaning he probably wasn’t insane but maybe he was trying to be odd or maybe he just kept it to himself, details will probably unfold as I read his biography. In conclusion I’d like to read H.P Lovecraft’s work for my American author project because he meets all the criteria, is an interesting author in history and I feel I could challenge myself with these obscure readings.