Book review: The Call of Cthulhu and The Shadow over Innsmouth by H. P. Lovecraft

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The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu is a feast for the imagination. With each new page, Lovecraft brilliantly moves from the reality to horror. The line separating the real world from the fantasy world is blurred in a very subtle way. The mystery that drives the action is like a Russian matryoshka. It arouses excitement and then creates the illusion of cognition. Soon after, it turns out that the cognition given by the author is residual, it contains new unknowns. Lovecraft paints a vision of a dystopian reality that will unfold in all its glory when we merge our scattered knowledge. The only escape seems to be the soothing and safe darkness of the new Middle Ages.

Inspector Legrasse's story adds to the action the ominous rumbling of dams, mysterious disappearances of women and children, bestial howls, insane screams. All this to see with the eyes of the imagination a mighty creature, a polyp with a shapeless body and shining eyes. The whole concept of the Great Old Ones is coherent, and there is no hope that mortals will outsmart the mechanism that existed aeons ago, that perhaps all this might not happen.

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Some premise were already seen around the world on the same day. In one hemisphere – the frightening dreams that haunted the artists and a mysterious sculpture made in a dream by one of them, in the other hemisphere - members of the sect go to the sea.

People beyond good and evil. From the beginning, the author creates a kind of a third way, a new dimension - he also mentions strange angles of buildings in the city of R'lyeh, and finally non-Euclidean geometry. All this is completed by the Great Old Ones who died before man appeared on Earth. The only being beyond good and evil that comes to mind is a state in which man has not yet known good and evil. In Christian civilization, this is the state prior to Adam and Eve eating an apple from the tree of life in Garden of Eden. It seems to me that the author is drawing his own vision of humanity, perhaps going back to the barbarian times, in which man – due to ignorance – was not in the shackles of science and stereotypical thinking. I think this is a reference to the first section in the book – according to Lovecraft, from the beginning of the existence and development of science, man worsens his situation, heading for madness or escape into the new Middle Ages.

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Despite all this dystopian background, the only survivor – Johansen – faces the monster while rushing in a boat for a head-on clash. Allegory of the fight against evil? Johansen crushes Cthulhu into prime factors, but the latter mysteriously reconnects with broken particles. He is closed again in the city of R'lyeh. The rule of the Great Old Ones seems to be postponed again.
At the end of the novel, the main character says an incredibly pessimistic sentence that is the result of cognition, the result of having knowledge. He had seen the greatest horror in the universe, and now even the blue of the spring sky weighs heavily on him. All he can do is make sure that no one else reads the writings of the Great Old Ones, Cthulhu and the city of R'lyeh…

The Shadow over Innsmouth

Another Lovecraft story takes the reader to Innsmouth – a deserted town where strange things happen. The inhabitants of the surrounding towns stay away from this place. The exception is the main character of the story, who, intrigued by the history and specific jewelery from those regions, decides to form his own opinion on this town during a short stay.
As you stroll through Innsmouth, almost organoleptically you can feel the fishy stench in the thick and spoiled air. As if it was supposed to be an atmosphere - an aura for all the disgusting things that you can feel under the skin. The temples in the town had long since been adapted to the new religion. The Esoteric Order of Dagon had to successfully "convince" the inhabitants.

It is easy to connect the dots. The author installs here an outline of a sect that celebrates the most important holidays on April 30 – on this day in some countries the night of dead/evil spirits was celebrated – and on October 31, i.e. Halloween. Another dose of darkness to the story being created.

Innsmouth is an icon of a valueless society ruled by pure decadence. The author spares no words about the city, describing it as silent, exuding alienness and death. However, even in such a city lives the witness of its fall, almost a hundred-year-old Zadok Allen, whom the main character of the story describes as a half-mad drunk. This one, however, turns out to be a treasure trove of knowledge. He exposes the facts that, under the oath taken by the Order of Dagon, he has promised not to reveal. The mysterious rites performed on the night of April 30 and October 31 turn out to be rites where the inhabitants gave their children to sea monsters in exchange for a good catch.

Another boost for the story was the information that these sea creatures are related to people – due to the fact that everything that lives once came out of the water and you only need to figure it out a bit, and it will return to the water. The experiment of crossbreeding a human with these monsters has begun. The profit for people was to be the immortality of the body. Several dozen years of life on earth, a gradual transformation into a fish-like creature and eternal life in the depths of the seas and oceans…

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The private investigation of the main character of the story leads him to the conclusion that the questionable branch of the family tree is most likely related to the above-mentioned cross between his ancestors and these sea creatures. He begins to feel the first ailments of transformation. He can't close his eyes, he has trouble moving. The mind begins to leave him, the previous terror has been replaced by delight at the vision of eternal life. He is no longer able to see the cons. He accepts his transformation despite having passed out recently at the sight of the Innsmouth natives. Either it is a carefully camouflaged concept of playing with evil and its consequences, or an overt determinism embedded in the story by the Author. Who knows…

Photos:
[1] — Waldkunst, Pixabay
[2] — 12222786, Pixabay



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Hi romualdd,

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