Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part V

The Call of the Cthulhu is truly effective as a piece of gothic horror as it makes ‘us feel the size of the universe we hang suspended in, and suggests shadowy forces that could destroy us all if they so much as grunted in their sleep.’[1] There is nowhere to hide from the creatures Lovecraft dreams up. Lovecraft gets this through in his writing by making constant references to the enormity of the universe. It has been said that

Novels and stories of horror which deal with ‘outside evil’ are often harder to take seriously; they are apt to be no more than boys adventure yarns in disguise, and in the end the nasty invaders from outer space are repelled.[2]

 

However this is far from the case in Lovecraft’s works, especially here. Cthulhu is far too large to be truly banished, and while he may be resting on the sea bed right now, he will never go away, and that thought is unsettling and likely to trouble the reader long after they have finished reading. This sentiment is echoed by the narrator in the chilling climax, ‘Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men’ (p. 169). We are aware that what Lovecraft writes is fiction, but there is no evidence that disproves the existence of cosmic creatures beyond our wildest imagination, as unlikely as it seems. Although in the near century since Lovecraft was writing science has discovered and explained many things, we are still a long way away from knowing every species that lives in our oceans, let alone any that may dwell in the cosmos.

The focus of the narrative is the gradual discovery of evidence of ‘Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky.’ (p. 153) Evans claims ‘much horror literature is predicated upon feelings of insecurity brought about by cultural change’ and by the idea that our ‘cultural forms are… under assault by forces beyond our control’[3], and this is especially true here. (100)

 

This story in particular relates to Cthulhu, who early on is described from a statuette as being ‘a pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it so shockingly frightful.’(p. 141). Lovecraft builds suspense throughout by only giving us glimpses of what Cthulhu looks like. When a young man has dreams containing visions of Cthulhu, he is unable to make complete sense of them, but described it as ‘a gigantic thing “miles high” which walked or lumbered about.’ (p. 144) It is difficult for the human mind to comprehend something that high moving around, and that is part of the horror of Lovecraft’s tales. We don’t know quite what they are, or where they come from, but we do know that there is no way of escaping them if they were real, which is terrifying. In Call of The Cthulhu, one particular line sums up Lovecraft’s talent for inspiring horror in his audience when referring to the creature in the title; ‘It was nightmare itself, and to see it was to die. But it made men dream so they knew enough to keep away’ (p. 151). The word nightmare is evocative as nightmares are something that we have all experienced, and the theme of sleep is continued when claiming it makes men keep away by sending messages in their dreams. The fact that Cthulhu itself warns men to stay away almost shows that it has a perverse pity for humans. Martin Smith claims that a psychology patient of his, ‘prompted by the desire to find out, he over-reaches dies as a consequence of his discovery while other innocent people suffer and are killed throughout the course of his demise.’[4] This is extremely relevant here. All of these events are driven by our narrators’ desire for knowledge regardless of the effect that it has on anyone else, causing the reader to fear for other characters.

 

Lovecraft was also ‘struck by ‘the horror of wrong geometry’’[5] something that is used throughout Call of the Cthulhu. There is a slow build throughout the story as much like with Cthulhu itself; we are given hints at what is to come through the dreams of various characters. One in particular ‘talked of his dreams in strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone – whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong’ (p. 158). Lovecraft, who ‘would open the door…but only a crack’[6] hasn’t described the city in any great detail, because the character in his tale can’t. This recalls the technique used by Poe in The Black Cat[7], holding back information so the reader is forced to imagine the most terrifying scenario possible, but Lovecraft has taken it one step further. By not describing the city because it is impossible to do so, it becomes even scarier for the reader, as it makes it also impossible for them to visualise it, and as Lovecraft himself said ‘the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’[8] (p. 2). Despite building up a fear of geometry throughout the tale, its pay off at the end is anticlimactic. Upon fleeing from Cthulhu, one sailor ‘was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn’t have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse’ (p. 167). This particular incident is not mentioned again but for that one sentence. The narrative continues at high speed as Cthulhu chases those that have disturbed his slumber and the reader is left with no time to dwell upon such a horrific accident. Placed earlier in the story and under different circumstances, the implication of such an event would place a much stronger fear in the reader.

The writings of Lovecraft can be summed up in one sentence; ‘H.P. Lovecraft made his horrors convincing simply by pretending they were too horrible to describe.’[9] However doing this would be a great disservice to the man. He has a way with words that allows him to burn strong images into the reader’s brain, despite telling them little. Both Dagon and The Call of The Cthulhu are part of a folklore created by Lovecraft that remains popular to this day. Critics have dismissed him, claiming ‘a good horror writer is a good character writer. This flies in the face of Lovecraft, who never created a single engaging character.’[10] It has already become apparent that Poe’s characters are not amongst the greatest in literature, and this is certainly true of Lovecraft too. Strong characterisation has helped writers create fear in contemporary literature, but that is no reason to dismiss Lovecraft or Poe.

Due to the timeless fear of things we don’t understand, a lot of Lovecraft’s work is ‘prescient – he created a text to which a sub-text would be added years later by events in the real world.’[11] Modern terrorism and historical events since Lovecraft finished writing such as the space race can be applied retrospectively to his work and work as a sub-text. Terrorism is a culture that we don’t really comprehend, much like the cults who worship Cthulhu, and the space race was cosmic exploration, something that Lovecraft was very afraid of, as evidenced by the fact that his ‘Great Ones’ came from the stars. Lovecraft’s writings embody universal fears that are unlikely to ever go away. As man explores more of the universe, his stories instil a more terrifying feeling. Advanced telescopes mean we can see far out into space now. How long will it be before we stumble upon something from Lovecraft’s literary nightmares?

[1] Stephen King, Danse Macabre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), p. 80

[2] Ibid.

[3] Timothy H. Evans, ‘A Last Defense against the Dark: Folklore, Horror, and the Uses of Tradition in the Works of H. P. Lovecraft’. Journal of Folklore Research, 42, 1 (2005), p. 100

 

[4] Martin Smith, ‘Making a monster? Nineteenth-century British horror novels and their relevance to the counselling process’. Psychodynamic Counselling, 6, 3 (2000), p. 322

[5] Jack Morgan, The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film (USA: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), p. 194

[6] Stephen King, Danse Macabre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), p. 135

[7] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 223-230

[8] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 2

[9] John Edward Ames, ‘The art of terror: Tap into readers’ fears with 5 techniques for an emotionally rich story’. Writer, 123, 5 (2010), p.23

[10] G.W. Thomas ‘Scare the heck out of your readers—and other horror-writing tips.’ Writer, 121, 4 (2008), p. 15

[11] Don Herron , ‘Stephen King: The Good, The Bad, And The Academic’, in Bloom’s Modern Critical Views: Stephen King Updated Edition, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 34

 

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part IV

Poe’s stories focus on realistic fears all humans have. HP Lovecraft said ‘Poe…worked with an analytical knowledge of terror’s true sources which doubled the force of his narratives’[1]. This is shown in the previous two stories. We are all vulnerable to disease, and the older we get the more some of us will worry about losing our sanity due to our advancing age. Poe’s frequent use of the uncanny in his literature helps to exaggerate these fears and elevate their reality within the mind of the reader. Poe largely neglects his characters; instead he ‘excels in incidents and broad narrative effects,’[2] this is the strength of his work. The reader can easily place themselves in the story in the narrators place. This allows them to almost experience the fears first hand. Poe’s stories have infiltrated pop culture, the television show The Simpsons[3] adapted his poem The Raven as part of a Halloween special, and they have also referenced his other works in various episodes. A film is to be released this year entitled The Raven[4] but featuring Poe himself as a character forced to help the police when a serial killer starts copying his work. Poe’s techniques have made his literature timeless. The grounded fears he uses to inspire terror are however, in contrast to a big admirer of Poe’s work; HP Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is a divisive figure in the literary world. The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction[5] omits all mention of an American writer who shaped the world of gothic and horror as we know it today. In stark contrast to this, Stephen King claims that Lovecraft ‘Opened the way for me, as he had done for others before me.’[6]

Lovecraft’s fiction is most widely known for his Cthulhu mythos. The mythos is a collection of stories concerning monsters of unimaginable size, described by some scholars (but never Lovecraft himself) as ‘Elder Gods’. The mere sight of these creatures is enough to drive anyone who beholds them to madness. However this mythology is a product of the media, one that S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz describe as an ‘anti-mythology’ in the H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. They go on to state that

the careful readers of his mythology will realise that it is no mythology at all, but a cycle of events intended to be perceived by only the more primitive or impressionable characters as real in the context of fiction[7]

 

Lovecraft’s fiction consisted mostly of short stories published in pulp magazines. These stories explore the human condition, with five key themes central to his work: madness, isolation, unfathomable horror, human insignificance, and the question of whether we can fully accept the story being told to us by a narrator who has first-hand experience of one or more of the previous four themes. Through an exploration of two of his most famous works, it will become apparent how Lovecraft effectively creates fear.

Madness rears its ugly head throughout the works of Lovecraft. The unfortunate narrator of each of his tales usually has experienced an inexplicable horror that has stolen away his sanity, leaving him to pen a cautionary tale warning the reader not to follow in his footsteps. The first-hand recollection that we are given as a reader makes the story more personal. Instead of hearing a narrative from a third person perspective where the audience is distanced from the action, the first person style makes it appear as though the protagonist is writing a letter directly to the reader. This direct address immediately forges a connection between reader and protagonist. The first person narrative used by Lovecraft gives his protagonist a direct passage to the reader, forcing them to empathise with the protagonist as they are seeing the narrative from his perspective.

The question of just how much of what we read can be believed recurs frequently with Lovecraft. His tales are so extravagant, to the point that his narrators have gone insane. This raises some doubt as to whether the protagonists have experienced these events first hand, or whether the stories are merely a product of their madness. In Dagon[8] potential seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of our protagonist are placed immediately, with him writing ‘I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more’ (p. 1). It is quickly revealed to the reader that our unfortunate narrator has been on medication to help him cope with the horror he is about to reveal to us, and he has exhausted his supply. This instantly tells the reader that we are not dealing with someone in a healthy mental condition, subtly raising doubt about what we are about to be told, a technique also used by Lovecraft in The Music of Erich Zann[9] . Lovecraft then proceeds to tell the story of what happened from the viewpoint of the narrator. This structure is extremely common in Lovecraft; an introduction from our narrator hinting at what is to come, the story itself, and finally it is revealed how these events have negatively impacted the protagonists’ life.

Dagon follows the aforementioned structure. Once the story has been told, the writing style continues to be a stream of consciousness, with the writer hearing the sounds he heard on his terrible journey across the ocean, and ending on ‘The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!’ (p. 6) This chilling conclusion is extremely effective. We can assume the reader is horrified by the fact that the creature our narrator saw out in the middle of the ocean has made it to Lovecraft’s fictional American town of Arkham, however as this is the last sentence of the story, we are never quite sure what happens to our narrator. The narrator has experienced Burke’s sublime[10], he is unable to complete the story due to the fear he is experiencing. It is implied that he is to be killed in some terrible way by Dagon, but it is possible he managed to throw himself out of his window as planned. There is also the third possibility that his insanity got the better of him and he was unable to write anymore. However as he has stopped writing, rendered helpless by his emotions, drawing on Burke’s theory of the sublime, we will never know.

However, on further reflection, given what we have been told, and the fact that although based within a fictional town, the story takes place in contemporary America, doubts are raised about the authenticity of our narrators story. The withdrawal from heavy use of valium, coupled with the narrators’ previous allusions to having visions of the creature, presents the theory that he has imagined the creature at his door. His screams of ‘The window!’ could either mean that the creature has appeared at his window, or that he is trying to reach the window in order to plummet to his death. Whilst the creature is described as being ‘gigantic’ (p. 5) if he can see the creature at the window, the likelihood of him not noticing the creature until it was so close is slim. This enigmatic ending however only adds to the strength of the story.

Another point of note is that of course, if Dagon had appeared before him, our narrator would probably stop writing immediately. Rather than using this as an argument for his narrator’s insanity, I feel this is simply a literary method used to give his stories a powerful conclusion. As has been said of Lovecraft, he ‘would open the door…but only a crack,’[11] and this is a perfect example. The tale of Dagon raises more questions than it answers, leaving a terrifying image in the readers mind.

Isolation is also a prevalent theme within all of Lovecraft’s writings. Using this to create fear is a popular feature of horror since it began, dating to well before Lovecraft was writing, such as in Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796)[12], where Ambrosio is left alone for six days until he dies at the conclusion of the novel. The use of this technique continues to this day. This taps into the human fear of being alone, something that affects us all on a base level. When isolated we are left helpless, with no one to help us should we fall ill or encounter danger. In Dagon our narrator finds himself isolated, and this could contribute to the narrators’ possible madness. At the beginning of the story, our narrator finds himself stranded out at sea, and after several days he ‘began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue.’ (p. 1) The narrator is made to feel insignificant by the expanse of the sea around him, relating to another theme of Lovecraft’s that is prominent in The Call of The Cthulhu. In The Call of The Cthulhu[13], Lovecraft writes, ‘We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.’ (p. 139) and this works as a metaphor for the narrator in Dagon. He has travelled the oceans further than he has meant to, and found himself adrift and despairing at his situation.

The horror that features in Lovecraft’s stories focus on horrors that are unfathomable to the human mind. Lovecraft consciously avoids too much description of what his characters witness, often stating that the narrator is unable to describe what he has seen or heard. This applies even when his stories are relatively grounded in reality. Lovecraft’s visions were ahead of their time. Today we have Godzilla (1954)[14] and the recently released Cloverfield (2008)[15] depicting giant monsters, yet even these pieces of cinema don’t come close to capturing the scale of horror Lovecraft tells of.

[1] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 20

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p. 23

[3] The Simpsons (1990) Season 2, Episode 3, Treehouse of Horror. TV. FOX. 25^th October.

[4] The Raven (2012) Film. Directed by JAMES MCTEIGUE, USA: Intrepid Pictures

[5] Jerrold E. Hogle (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

[6] H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon, The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (London: Gollancz, 2008), sleeve.

[7] S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2001), p. 51

[8] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 1-6

[9] H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon, The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (London: Gollancz, 2008), p. 58-64

[10] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[11] Stephen King, Danse Macabre (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), p. 135

[12] Matthew Lewis, The Monk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

[13] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 139-69

[14] Godzilla (1954) Film. Directed by Ishirô Honda, Japan: Toho Film Co. Ltd.

[15] Cloverfield (2008) Film. Directed by MATT REEVES, USA: Paramount Pictures

Poe, Lovecraft, and The Movies: Part 1

Fear is one of mankind’s strongest emotions. It is a natural instinct that allows us to protect ourselves from threats. As centuries have passed, fear has become something we no longer feel on an everyday basis, leading academics to reason that when we watch a horror film, or read a horror novel ‘we are hunting for the sensation of fear because we lack it in life’[1]. The world of entertainment has stepped in to provide us with a safe environment within which we can experience fear. Audiences continue to seek out this thrill, and although historically the horror genre is looked down upon and seen by many as being trash, with one critic going as far as to claim ‘ghost stories, or other horrible recitals of the same kind, are decidedly injurious under all circumstances’[2]. Despite this horror continues to make money and draw in a large audience. Being scared causes us to regress. Our senses heighten and we return to a primitive fight or flight mentality. Furthermore ‘there is something about fear that returns us to a state of childhood’[3]. Life is simpler as a child, and returning to that state through fear ironically takes us back to a time where instead of being scared by ‘social fears’[4] we are transported back to a time where we fear ‘monsters and the dark’[5]. Two things that are no longer unknown to us and that we can comfortably overcome.

It is suggested that ‘we must judge a weird tale not by the author’s intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point,’[6] and this statement exemplifies why someone would read or watch something from within the horror genre; to experience fear. The works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft are both popular in horror literature. The Masque of The Red Death[7] and The Black Cat[8] are two famous works by Poe with different subject matter that create fear in very different ways. The former deals with the timeless social fear of disease and epidemic, whereas the latter looks at madness and how irrational behaviour brought about by the illness can have a devastating effect. In contrast, Dagon[9] and The Call of The Cthulhu[10] share similar subject matter, yet their methods of creating fear are slightly different. The works of these two writers have inspired many over the years, including film makers. The Masque of The Red Death[11] is a 1964 work based on Poe’s short story of the same name, whereas The Mist (2007)[12] is a film not based on any particular story of Lovecraft’s, yet his influence is clear throughout. By studying these works of Edgar Allan Poe and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, as well as the cinematic adaptations of their work, I will explore how fear has been created in the past, and how and why this has changed over time in accordance with new social cultural and historical contexts.

It would be naïve to suggest that what fills cinema audiences with dread today is the same thing that would terrify the theatre audiences and readers two centuries ago. The social and historical context that an audience is part of plays a huge part in constructing their fears and desires. This has been shown most effectively in cinema, as in the sixties horror focused on invasion and mind control, reflecting fears brought about by the cold war. In the 1970s America was horrified by killer Ed Gein and his collection of skeletal furnishings[13]. Suddenly the danger wasn’t across the ocean, but in your own neighbourhood. Hollywood latched onto this and filled the cinemas with films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)[14] and Halloween (1978)[15]. The different eras of horror cinema all come back to one thing though, no matter what form it takes, ‘we relish fear of the stranger – the mysterious murderer, the monster running untamed.’[16]. If the root of our fears can change that much in the space of ten years, how different would they have been several decades ago?

Sigmund Freud and Edmund Burke both published work on fear, looking into The Uncanny[17] and The Sublime[18] respectively. Freud defined the uncanny as ‘something that is familiar and old fashioned in the mind and which has become alienated from it through process of repression’[19]. The Uncanny is something familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time, and this is what causes fear. It is a technique used frequently in gothic literature and horror movies, and the same can be said of the sublime, which Burke described as similar to horror, but ‘the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.’[20] anything that can ‘excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.’[21]. The sublime is a fear that renders the person experiencing it frozen, unable to do anything but feel the terror running through them. Both of these techniques were discussed with a reference to literature, and they are visible in the writing of both Poe and Lovecraft. Since the theories were written they have also been applied to film, and any occurrences of these theories that arise in The Masque of The Red Death and The Mist will be discussed.

[1] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 50

[2] Rendle, W. (1833) ‘On The Moral Education of Youth’ The Imperial Magazine, May, p. 219

[3] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 51

[4] G.W. Thomas ‘Scare the heck out of your readers—and other horror-writing tips.’ Writer, 121, 4 (2008), p. 15

[5] Ibid.

[6] H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror In Literature. [Ebook] Amazon Media, Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Supernatural-Horror-in-Literature-ebook/dp/B005IZD612/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334933516&sr=1-3 [20/04/2012], p.4

[7] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 223-230

[8] Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (London: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 269-73

[9] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 1-6

[10] H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of The Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories(London: Penguin Classics, 2002), p. 139-69

[11] The Masque Of The Red Death (1964) Film. Directed by ROGER CORMAN. USA: Alta Vista Productions.

[12] The Mist (2007) Film. Directed by FRANK DARABONT. USA: Dimension Films.

[13] BBC NEWS (2007) Ed Gein – The Orignal American Psycho [WWW] BBC News. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-lancashire/plain/A21605636 [27/04/2012]

[14] The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) Film. Directed by TOBE HOOPER, USA: Vortex

[15] Halloween (1978) Film. Direct by JOHN CARPENTER, USA: Compass International Pictures

[16] Kate Williams, ‘Monsters Ink’. New Statesman, 141, 5088 (2012), p. 50

[17] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p.363-4

[18] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[19] Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny in Art and Literature, (London: Penguin Classics, 2003), p.363-4

[20] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]

[21] Edmund Burke (1757), Of The Sublime. [WWW] Bartleby. Available from: http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html [27/4/2012]