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