H.P. Lovecraft

     This blog was created for the 2018 spring class for Lit of Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy course at Ringling College of Art and Design. In this blog I will talk about the books we read and what they mean to me personally. If you have come across this blog and have not read the book I am talking about this week, I will warn you now that I will spoil it.

     Everyone Knows H.P. Lovecraft as the man who created Monstrous Gods like Sheogorath and Cthulhu, and I personally feel this as a disappointment. Not that I dislike the man's work, on the contrary. But I feel bad that he is known more for the monsters he created than the things those monsters are meant to represent. As I said in my last post, western horror culture focuses on the natural world, Lovecraft is no different, but he describes the real world using the unknown, monsters he creates to represent our feelings, ideals, and issues. The idea of doing this is rather strange, but very effective when one wants to describe the world in its full, ugly truth. 

     A good example is from "Unnamable". Lovecraft talks of a willow tree whose roots wrap around a blank grave slate. He then inquires to his friend what must be under the grave that nourishes the tree, and as most people would, his friend scoffs at his notion. The Inquiry itself seems simple enough, but I feel like there is a deeper meaning in the connection of the objects in this story. There can be many beautiful and mysterious things under the ground of the graveyard, just because we cannot see them does not mean they do not exist. And yet the willow tree still nourishes off of these unknown properties, it roots itself firmly in to that which is invisible to it in order to continue growing. I feel that is much the same of how humanity grows. We firmly believe in things we cannot see or understand, such as religion, in order to grow culturally, not acknowledging that there are unseen consequences to doing this. But we ignore them. We ignore them simply because they are unseen, and do not accept that just because it is unseen does not mean it does not exist. Which brings me to the third object in the story, the looming building, casting its shadow over the tree. The way Lovecraft describes the building is definitely that of fear and inevitability. The building represents, in my opinion, the visible issues humanity needs to deal with, but faces away from out of fear of the vastness of them. The combination of the two objects, both the grave and building, brings in to the story the unnamable shapeshifting monster who, considering what I have already stated, I believe to represent the unavoidable catastrophe that is to come if we continue to ignore our issues, both visible and invisible. Appropriate of Lovecraft, the message is just as macabre as the monsters he creates to represent them.