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"