REGARDING "THE CALL OF CTHILHU"

H. P. Lovecraft is a controversial author of the short story “The Call of Cthulhu”. He is regarded for creating the Cthulhu Mythos with this story and others in which we hear tales of cults, elder monsters, and gods from before the dawn of time. H. P. Lovecraft uses the horror lens to make stories that comment on religion, knowledge, and the human intellect. “The Call of Cthulhu” by H. P. Lovecraft is a horror text because of the uses of the common horror elements of the perversion of the normal and the good, the use of the unknown to create fear, and the monster.

“The Call of Cthulhu” is a story told in the first person by an unnamed narrator whose uncle recently passed away. These family members both worked as researchers, and as the nephew goes through some of his uncle's findings his curiosity is piqued when he learns about a so-called “Cthulhu Cult”. As he looks into this cult, he finds others who have died strange deaths like his uncle did. It seemed that the more people learned about this cult, and the object of their worship, the Cthulhu, the more they drift slowly into insanity. These revelations only make the narrator more determined to solve the strange mystery of the cult. His search takes him down many paths that lead to all manners of terrible horrors. The final and most dramatic discovery is the findings of a foreign specialist who found an ancient city that was previously submerged in the ocean. Impossible geometric architecture is described as this group of archaeologists venture deep into this age-old city, until they stumble upon a foreboding monolith. The architecture of the city is found incomprehensible, save the importance of this massive slab of stone that seems to be a door. Once they open it, a giant squid-like creature so completely terrifying emerges, that several of the men in the party die instantly on the spot. The creature kills more as they attempt to run back to the ship, and only the lead adventurer who wrote the account and one other man survive on the ship as they see the creature enter the water in pursuit. This account ends with the other man dying on the ship after fits of laughter and losing his mind. The writer is able to write the account and navigate back to a shore, however soon also perishes.. As the narrator accounts all of his findings, he is sure that with all he has learned, the same fate will fall upon him soon, thus concluding the story.

“The Call of Cthulhu” is a horror story that strikes dread and fear into the heart of the reader using perversion of natural and good things. One such thing that gets twisted is religion. Religion often brings hope and comfort, however, this story uses the flip side of that in the Cthulhu cult which has striking similarities to Christianity. For instance, one promise of Christianity is that the Church will last for all of time until Jesus is to return, as He promises by saying “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). Likewise, in H. P. Lovecraft’s story, it is written “This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.” The similarities here are undeniable. This is an example of something people see as a good and a sign of hope, and turning it into something to dread making it all the more terrifying, which is why it is so common in horror stories.

H. P. Lovecraft by perverting Christianity may be making a statement about his own beliefs. Lovecraft was known for being an atheist, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the science fiction author who proudly declared himself as an atheist and a materialist, a staunch supporter of Thomas Henry Huxley's materialism and a fervent foe of any sort of religious claim” (Reis, National Coalition of Independent Scholars). With this background in mind, perhaps Lovecraft is talking about what these Religious promises look like to him. Perhaps he sees Christianity as no better than a cult waiting for their powerful savior to save them from this earth, only to be greeted with a “saving” that is horrible and worse than what we might be expecting.

Another horror trope that is used is the unknown. Throughout the story the author is seeking unknown things, but sees that the more people know, the more calamity befalls them. In this story, the unknown itself is the horror, or maybe more accurately, the known. The knowledge of things not for the mind often is the much more terrifying reality in this story. “Wilcox could not understand the repeated promises of silence which he was offered in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious body” (Lovecraft). This Wilcox character in the story quickly goes insane as he learns more from joining this cult, and eventually dies. In horror usually we see people afraid of the unknown, but once they learn they have a chance at understanding and helping themselves, however in this story, the more people learn the more terrors invade their lives. This forbidden knowledge is a very effective spin on this trope that makes the story much more terrifying because the reader themself feels as if something will befall if they continue reading. A feeling only the horror genre can provide.

The use of a monster is perhaps the most common and tell tale element of a horror story. As stated in “Horror, the Film Reader”, “Horror stories, in a significant number of cases, are dramas of proving the existence of the monster and disclosing (most often gradually) the origin, identity, purposes and powers of the monster.”(Carroll). In “Call of Cthulhu” the monster is the great Cthulhu, which is a god older than the stars and of cosmic scale and origins. This is a drama of the first person narrator recounting his findings of the Cthulhu, where he explores the origin, identity, purposes, and powers of the monster. This element of horror clearly defined by Noel Carroll makes this undeniably a horror story.

Lovecraft in the modern day is often a subject of the debate around separating art from the artist as his moral views are questionable at best and scrutinized by today’s standards. When one looks more into his personal life, it becomes obvious that Lovecraft was boldly racist, “It’s not clear where Lovecraft’s racism and xenophobia originated, though his upbringing may naturally have had a lot to do with it.” (Romano). In his life, Lovecraft was outspokenly racist and many of his works reflect that. Also reflected, is his fear of the cosmos of which was known so little at the time. In “The Call of Cthulhu” more of the latter is played on, but in other stories there can be racist connotations. This is evidence of a twisted mind that sees the world in a different way that is without hope. Perhaps having such a mind made it easier to write to the fears of people and create stories of horror from a mind already filled with hate and fear.

H. P. Lovecraft’s horror masterpiece “The Call of Cthulhu” is an exciting and terrifying work of cosmic horror. This story includes a perversion of religion in the form of a cult which makes a familiar thing frightening, it uses knowledge as a tool to instill fear as the characters in the story are dying as they learn things, which makes the reader also wary, and a monster of cosmic proportions that there is no hope of standing up to. All these elements are classic horror tropes in a more modern horror story from the mind of a brazenly strange person that would leave any reader on the edge of their seat.

Works Cited

Jancovich, Mark. “Horror, the Film Reader.” Proquest.com, 2024, ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utarl/detail.action?docID=180062. Accessed 21 Nov. 2024.

Many Authors. Catholic Bible : Rsv, Reader’s Edition, Genuine Leather, Black. Oxford University Press, 2006.

Reis, Brian. “Structurally Cosmic Apostasy: The Atheist Occult World of H.P. Lovecraft.” LUX, vol. 3, no. 1, 13 Nov. 2013, pp. 1–16, https://doi.org/10.5642/lux.201303.14.

Romano, Aja. “Lovecraftian Horror — and the Racism at Its Core — Explained.” Vox, 18 Aug. 2020, www.vox.com/culture/21363945/hp-lovecraft-racism-examples-explained-what-is-lovecraftian-weird-fiction.