Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft

Although Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is generally regarded as one of the world's finest writers of horror and science fiction, his work has received little critical attention by mainstream critics. This study takes Lovecraft out of the shadows of literature by shedding light upon his work through a structural analysis of fifteen of his stories. This analysis shows that Lovecraft's fiction, while it may appear fantastic, expresses early twentieth century naturalism in a cosmic context. Part One subjects four of Lovecraft's best known stories to a detailed structural analysis using the theories of Roland Barthes and Gerard Genette to isolate Lovecraft's major themes and narrative techniques. Part Two defines the horror genre as Lovecraft saw it and explores his unique combination of science fiction and the weird tale, which has created a new kind of folktale based upon scientific mythology. Finally, Part Three explores Lovecraft's vision of truth, and how he employs fantasy as a means of understanding reality. The dissertation concludes with an evaluation of Lovecraft in relation to the canon of twentieth century American literature, and explains how his writing runs counter to the type of work privliged by modern critics. The structuralist approach demonstrates that much of what are mistakenly perceived to be flaws in Lovecraft's work are really essential components of his overall theme and meaning.

Although Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890Lovecraft ( -1937 is generally recognized as one of the world,s finest writers of horror and science fiction, his work has received little critical attention outside of the genres to which it has conveniently been categorized. While some excellent critical work has been accomplished in Lovecraft studies, it has, for the most part, been written by dedicated amateurs and fans rather than by mainstream scholars and critics who tend to avoid the genre-type work of Lovecraft and his peers (Cannon,24). As a result, the study of Lovecraft has been forced into the shadows of literary criticism, where it has become more closely associated with science fiction and horror than with the study of more privileged kinds of literature.
There are, in fact, many who would say that Lovecraft should remain in the shadows, that his work is strictly hack writing designed for the pulp magazines of his time.
Critics such as Edmund Wilson  Lovecraft deviates from his peers by using fantastic devices to express realistic themes. This technique allows him to expand the universe beyond the limits found in traditional fiction in order to show man's relationship to the infinite cosmos. His combination of science fiction with horror has created the concept of "cosmic horror," a far more depressing and pessimistic view than naturalism.
Lovecraft, who believed in man's fundamental triviality, expressed this philosophy through fantasy and science fiction, the most logical and effective devices with which to depict human cosmic insignificance.
In taking Lovecraft out of the shadows, I will use structuralist critical theory as my underlying method to shed light on the major themes and narrative devices of his work. Yet, unlike traditional structuralist studies, mine will use an eclectic approach designed to illuminate the meaning of the fiction rather than produce an essay on structuralist technique. This approach will use a number I realize that these methods were never intended to be used for the purposes of explication to which I will put them. A "pure" structuralist would never approve of my interpretive technique; however, I feel that these various techniques "complement one another in addressing the fictional text from different angles" (Scholes,Semiotics 87) and that they can be an effective form of textual analysis. I will freely adapt these methods as needed in analyzing each particular story to achieve my goal of can be evaluated as a writer of fiction, rather than merely a producer of "weird tales." The application of mainstream critical theory to these selected stories will demonstrate that Lovecraft was, indeed, a realist, and that his stories present a distinct and relevant view of the universe, a view that takes naturalism to the farthest limits of the cosmos.

PART ONE
Interpreting the Shadows As I have stated in the introduction, Part One of this work will examine several Lovecraft stories in great detail using a structuralist methodology. I have chosen to analyze the stories using this theory for several reasons.
First, structuralists have always been attracted to popular literature. Early structuralist critics such as Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss examined myths and folktales; later structuralists studied detective stories (Todorov, Poetics 42-52) as well as science fiction (Scholes) and the literature of the fantastic (Todorov), stories which, I feel, represent the mythology of the twentieth century.
Popular fiction represents the thoughts and ideas of the culture which produces it, and structuralism defines itself in part as cultural analysis that "seeks t o explore the relationship between the system of literature and the culture of which it is a part" (Scholes,Structuralism 11) .
Secondly, Lovecraft's stories make good material for a structuralist reading because they are short, narrative Pieces with a definite plot structure. Traditional formalist techniques concentrate more on theme than method, while structuralists such as Gerard Genette and Seymour Chatman have developed a science of narratology.
Thisapproach to how a story works, in addition to what it actually says, seems most appropriate in examining an author who primarily wrote for the pulp magazines of his time.
The first of my methods, the theory of Gerard Genette, distinguishes between narrative and discourse. The narrative, or "story," includes the basic sequence of events that occurs in the text, while the discourse refers to the manner in which the author tells the story. This method involves the examination of narrative voice, time reference and frequency, and the pace of the actual events in the story. The critic looks at narrative voice in order to determine who narrates the story and through whose point of view the events are seen. This structuralist study goes beyond mere "point of view" to determine how and why a narrative may subtly shift from one focus character to another. The critic examines time reference and frequency to isolate the present of the narra tive from the past, as shown in flashbacks, and from the future, as shown in foreshadowings and predictions. Finally, the critic looks at the speed with which the discourse moves through the sequence of events in the story.
The second critical method is that of Roland Barthes as outlined in ~ In this work, Barthes examines a text by breaking it down into a series of "codes" common to all literature. Barthes claims that in order to comprehend anything, be it a work of literature, a piece of music, or an advertisement on television, the human mind must interpret it through fixed codes of understanding.
Language itself represents such a code; unless one understands the "code" of English, for example, discourse in the language becomes meaningless. According to Barthes, there are six basic codes of understanding in any artistic work. These are the proairetic code (or code of action), the hermeneutic code (or code of enigmas), the cultural code, the connotative code, the symbolic code, and the textual code. An additional code, the psychoanalytical code, can be thought of as a specialized form of the symbolic code.
The first two codes, the action code and the hermeneutic code, work together to define the narrative elements that distinguish the story from the discourse, and complement the theories of Gerard Genette. The action code traces the actual physical movement of the action in the narrative, while the hermeneutic code reveals the series of questions or puzzles that the author uses to create suspense in the text. The reader desires the answers to these puzzles, yet the author withholds them until the last possible moment. This code is especially important in popular fiction--indeed, the detective story finds its sole raison d'etre in the code of enigmas.
The next three codes, the cultural, connotative, and symbolic codes, work together to create character, enhance meaning, and determine theme in a literary work. The cultural code can be used to examine the literary work's explicit and implicit references to the culture in which it was written. According to Barthes, no literary work can be entirely divorced from the culture that produced it.
Understanding this code may expose themes and meanings deemed important by that particular culture. The connotative code schematizes the dominant connotations of the text's language in regard to character and setting.
This code often develops characters in traditional stories, and, in Lovecraft's work contributes greatly to the overall mood of terror that the author tried to produce. Finally, the sY,mbolic code assumes that meaning occurs through symbolic binary oppositions which create theme through their conflict. The psychoanalytical code, for example, is a specialized symbolic code based on Freud's theories.
Barthes' textual code, or metalinguistic code, shows the use of a metalanguage when "one speaks about what one is going to say" ("Valdemar" 139). · one can loosely define this textual code as existing whenever a written work speaks about itself, or of the writing of the text itself, or of writing and/or communicating in general. The textual code often exposes themes dealing with writing and communication.
Barthes uses his codes to interpret specific literary works {S/Z, "Valdemar") by dividing the text into random units which he terms "lexias" ( S/Z 13) and picking the codes out of each fragmented section. For purposes of my analysis, however, I will not fragment the text, but will demonstrate how the various codes weave their way through the work as a whole. 12 I intend to use the perspectives of Genette coupled with Barthes' hermeneutic and action codes to show how Lovecraft has structured his stories to create and maintain suspense while keeping the story moving towards its conclusion. Using Barthes' connotative code I will show how Lovecraft created terror through language and mood.
And by employing Barthes' cultural, symbolic, and textual codes I will examine Lovecraft's major themes of cosmic horror, and the destructive nature of truth--particularly artistic truth. I will also use the textual code to shed some insight into the nature of horror and the weird tale as perceived by its acknowledged master, H.P. Lovecraft.
It is my hope that applying a specific literary theory to the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft will demonstrate that his stories are much more complex than first appearances might indicate, and that a detailed textual analysis can prove fruitful. I believe that such theoretical approach will help to bring Lovecraft out of the shadows of literature and to the attention of mainstream literary critics. the story where "Lovecraft puts everything together •.•• In no other story would Lovecraft combine so many of his favorite themes and concepts" (6). The comprehensiveness of this story, coupled with Joshi's observation that it is " ••. considerably more subtle and carefully worked out and is one of [Lovecraft's] greatest stories" (Weird Tale 223) makes "The Shadow over Innsmouth" an excellent point in which to begin "interpreting the shadows." Therefore, I will use this story as brief introduction to Lovecraft's major themes and ideas; the detailed structural analyses that complete Part One will develop these ideas further and examine how they are revealed within the individual texts.
While some critics (most notably L. Sprague decamp) have seen Lovecraft in general and "The Shadow over Innsmouth" in particular as little more than "a good, rousing yarn" (354), a critical reading of the tale reveals its allegorical nature and a number of complex themes. As the narrator of "Shadow" says in a "textual code" of his own: "The insane yarn I was hearing interested me profoundly, for I fancied there was contained within it a sort of crude allegory." (DH 334) As Gatto has demonstrated, this statement is a textual reference to the story itself, although, in reality, the allegory "is far from crude" (76).
"The Shadow over Innsmouth" enumerates several major Lovecraft themes that will reappear as we examine other stories in greater detail. As an overview to Lovecraft's fiction, I will speak briefly about each of these themes and their significance in other works.

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First and foremost, one cannot overlook the prevailing influence of the "Cthulhu Mythes" (or what has come to be known as simply as "The Mythes" or "the myth-cycle") on both "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and on Lovecraft's fiction in general. This Mythes concept postulates the existence of a pantheon of alien beings who came to earth during prehistory and still inhabit isolated pockets of the world.
These aliens appear or are alluded to throughout the myth cycle.
According to Lawrence Lynn, the Cthulhu creatures can fundamentally be divided into two groups: those who come The Mythes is probably the most misunderstood concept in the Lovecraft canon for several reasons. First, a host of authors ranging from extremely talented to hopelessly ha ve eagerly taken the mythos and adapted it into inept O~n creations, thereby blurring the lines between their " ft 's inventions and their own. Secondly, as Richard Lovecra L. Tierney bas asserted, the "Cthulhu Mythos" is actually a creation of August Derleth, rather than Lovecraft. Derleth, in his attempts to make the mythos stories fit the traditional pattern of good and evil, probably did more to set back Lovecraft studies than even Lovecraft's harshest critics could do. The third major theme, and a corollary to the theme of heredity in the case of "The Shadow over Innsmouth", involves the quest for truth by a protagonist and the resulting destruction that discovery of that truth brings. This theme appears in virtually every major story and, 1 g with the mythos and the theme of man's insignificance a on in the universe (which will be discussed next), is a distinctive Lovecraft trademark.
In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" the narrator discovers that he, too, has the "Innsmouth look" and is in fact a product of a degenerate race. Although the nature of the search may vary from genealogy in "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and Charles Dexter Ward to scientific curiosity in "The Reanimator" and To read Lovecraft is to enter into the shadows, to explore the forbidden worlds of the "dreaded Necronomican" and to discover that man is little more than a microbe in a cosmic Petri dish. Lovecraft brings us into these shadows and shows us things we may not wish to see, for hidden away in his fantastic, impossible worlds there lurks a realistic, scientific view of the universe in which we live. ' It is a cold, unforgiving view of a cosmos guided ' strictly by natural laws 1 with no hope of a deity or of salvation. In Lovecraft's world, even man himself is a mistake, a byproduct of alien genetic engineering gone wrong. It is not the happy-ending fantasy world of Tolkein's Hobbits or the Mars men of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but rather the naturalism of a Hemingway taken to the N-th degree.

"Pickman's Model":
Lovecraft's Model of Terror Since "Pickman's Model" is one of Lovecraft's most famous and most widely reprinted stories, and, with its theme of underground horror is representative of his technique and style, I will begin my analysis with a stucturalist reading of this tale based upon the theories of Genette and Barthes, adapted to my own uses. This analysis will create a "model" of Lovecraft by isolating certain themes and techniques which reoccur throughout his fiction.
Most short stories do not begin at the beginning, but begin somewhere toward the end, then fill in the beginning with flashbacks, or analepses in structuralist terminology, which Genette defines as "any evocation after the fact of an event that took place earlier than the point in the story where we are at any given moment" (Narrative 40).
Strictly speaking, the "story" of "Pickman's Model" begins at some undetermined time in the past when the narrator "got into the habit of calling on Pickman quite often" (DH 14). The discourse, however, begins with the narrator explaining to Eliot why he is afraid of the We have seen, may be analepses, events from the clues, as past that take on significance in the future. Other clues will not be related to the past. "Pickman ' s Model" contains a number of prolepses that foreshadow the tale's outcome. For example, the narrator's fear of the subway forshadows his horrible experience in Pickman's underground studio (DH 12). He goes on to talk of the "inside information" he had when he dropped him, "and that's why I don't want to think where he's gone." The narrator speaks of Pickman's artistic ability to capture realism (13), and foreshadows the ending with the line "If I had ever seen what Pickman saw--but no.A ..• Gad, I wouldn't be alive if ·I'd seen what that man--if he was a man--saw!" The foregrounding of the analepses and prolepses as part of the discourse helps the critic see how an author creates suspense by beginning his plot at a crucial point, then sprinkling clues throughout the narrative which anticipate the ending. A look at the hermeneutic code offers a slightly different viewpoint on how an author creates suspense by presenting a series of puzzles and . that intrigue the reader, yet keep him wondering enigmas about the story's outcome.
Some enigmas are explained l ·n the text, as they are essential to an early understanding of the story. the very end.
Others are not resolved until "Pickman's Model," like many successful horror stories, begins with an enigma in the very first line: "You needn't think I'm crazy, Eliot--plenty of others have Pr eJ"udices than this." The reader, of course, queerer wonders why the narrator is considered crazy, and what he is afraid of. The answer to the enigma, a partial one, is given in the third sentence--that he is afraid of the subway. But this only leads to the next question, why?
The answer to this enigma, of course, comes at the very conclusion of the story; meanwhile, the reader's interest has been sustained by the desire to learn the answer to this puzzle.
Other enigmas follow: why the ·narrator has become nervous; why he has dro~ped Pickman; and what has become of Pickman, Lovecraft carefully sustains the suspense by teasing the reader, leading him on to find the answers.
The narrator has "inside information" but he is not about to Play his hand too quickly. "I'm coming to that," he explains, as if to assure the reader that he will provide answers, but in his own time and by his own method.
The action code details the action of the story--how the Plot actually moves from beginning to end. In this t it resembles Genette's distinction between story respec ' I will go one step further, however, and and discourse. .
The action, in addition to moving from light to darkness, also moves from above ground to below ground.
The subterranean world of which Pickman is a part also represents artistic truth, since the farther one goes underground, the closer one gets to truth. Pickman, who goes one level lower than the narrator, confronts truth directly in the form of the grotesque monster, while the narrator only sees this truth second hand--first through Pickman's paintings, and then in the photograph itself. n arrator's fear of subways--or anything underground, The ... for that matter--is based upon his fear of confronting this truth again, especially in a direct form.
He has learned the true nature of the universe, has accepted this truth and even attempts to convey it to Eliot (and to the reader of the story), yet he is unwilling to experience it again.
Not only was this truth painful, grotesque, and If he were some drunken madman, his tale would hold no credibility. His utter se · . r1ousness and sobriety at this ending is reflected t onlY by his ordering coffee, but by his shorter no sentences as he moves from long, descriptive passages filled with adjectives and adverbs to a stark, simple noun-verb prose . The truth, when it appears, is told . ply' "It was the model he was using -and its background s1m · was merely the wall of the cellar studio in minute detail.
But by God, Eliot, it was a photograph from life" (25).
Applying the cultural code to the tale reveals Lovecraft's concern with an age-old problem--what society will accept as artistic.
Lovecraft  Lovecraft's realism goes beyond a mere desire to shock d. ' isgust, or even frighten, however. Since his represent truth--the frightening possibility that sonsters is 1 t ·on could produce such monstrosities--it evo u 1 only fitting that they be depicted in realistic terms. To the narrator, these beings are "unnatural," yet they are products of nature, not supernatural creatures. They Lovecraft's scientific horror creates evil that is not only realistic, but can be explained in Darwinian terms.
If one is to accept the truths that science offers, then one must also accept the possibility of such monstrosities lurking somewhere in the universe, Lovecraft, in fact, explains his method and philosophy of realistic horror through Pickman, "a thorough, painstaking and almost scientific realist" (21), an idea which we will explore in the textual code. In addition to speaking about artistic technique in the weird tale, Lovecraft also addresses the idea of the tale as literature. horror In this respect, the textual d a nd the cultural code work hand in hand. co e Pickman is 35 not accepted as a "true" artist because of the subject matter he has chosen to work with. Yet, the narrator insists, Pickman has discovered artistic truth and has been able to convey this truth to others. The artist, in this case, has conveyed truth more accurately than the scientist: "Reid, you know, had just taken up comparative pathology, and was full of pompous 'inside stuff' about the biological or evolutionary significance of this or that mental symptom" (14). The scientist is "repelled'' by Pickman, because Pickman is an insider to a truth that Reid cannot--or will not--comprehend.
In "Pickman's Model,'' horror is a window to truth. ... it is the concept of outside evil that is larger, more awesome. They believed all sorts of things" (14). It is no accident that Pickman's studio is located in the most ancient part of Boston, a part of the city that is "overflowing with wonder and terror and escapes from the commonplace" (16).
Horror, itself, is ancient in Lovecraft's work. According to Lovecraft's mythes, monsters existed before the earth itself, and inhabited the earth before mankind had evolved from the apes. Remnants of these evils still inhabit the l ·n ancient, underground caverns beyond the realm of earth,

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As Pickman says, the abode of these creatures "isn't far from the elevated as distance goes, but it's 80 verY t ·es away as the soul goes" (17).
cen ur1 The monsters are depicted as a primitive, ancient force that has been part of the human psyche since our prehistoric ancestors dwelled predates Christian devils and in caves. Lovecraft's evil demons, and is an ancient part of the very cosmos. These horrors are not the "tame ghosts of a salt marsh and a shallow cove" that we are accustomed to, but are the "the ghosts of beings highly organ~zed enough to have looked on hell and known the meaning of what they saw" (15).
Lovecraft also uses the opposition between the natural and the unnatural to portray his horrors. As we have seen by looking at the story through the connotative code, the beings are depicted as unnatural, subhuman monsters that, in their own way, are a by-product of the natural process of evolution. This "reverse evolution" that Reid refers to (17) might be an unnatural process; however, it is scientifically plausible and can be accounted for according to the laws of nature. This, as we have seen, makes the horror more real--and more frightening.
The codes of modern/ancient coupled with natural/unnatural, in effect, create a new type of horror, a horror that broke with the gothic conventions of ghosts, werewolves and vampires. Lovecraft's horror is not the t of the earth, but was created by science, nature produc . and the cosmos. This horror is, as King says, "larger, e a wesome" than the traditional thing that goes bump in mor the night. Lovecraft was to develop this new type of horror more fully in his Mythos stories, which not only place terror in a cosmic context, but actually create a new mythology of fear that gives horror a scientific basis for existence. The story opens with a generalization that is not only puzzling, but a ; ticulates one of the· major themes of the " story, namely mankind's . eternal search for truth and the destructive powers of truth once it is found: The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents. 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.
The sciences, each straining in its own direction have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the cult may be the work of sadistic madmen in the Cthulhu 1 · "Only two of the prisoners were found sane Legrasse's ta e. enough to be hanged, and the rest were committed to various institutions" ( 140). Even as professor Angell died from knowing too much, so did Thurston. If one takes this idea one step further, the reader himself will be the next victim, since the reader is also privilege to this forbidden knowledge!  Since they are not terribly important as individuals, it is not necessary for Lovecraft to depict them in great detail.
Examining "The Call of Cthulhu" from the perspective of symbolic code brings us to one of Lovecraft's major themes: the insignificance of man in the universe: ... Our human race is only a rival incident in the history of creation. It is of no more importance in the annals of eternity and infinity than is the child's snow-man in the annals of terrestrial tribes and nations."

(SL I 24)
In all of his stories, mankind is shown as a tiny, inferior species at the total mercy of the cosmos and of other sentient and god-like creatures living within the universe.
If mankind as a whole is insignificant, then how much more insignificant is the individual man? The individual character, to Lovecraft, was a vehicle for his plot and theme rather than a person to be studied and psychoanalyzed. It mattered little which character was involved--the important fact was the nature of the cosmos, and the horror of the insignificance it attributed to man.
"The Call of Cthulhu'' is a classic example of Lovecraft's theme of man's insignificance in the universe.
The Cthulhu legend, which is told to Legrasse as a myth or folk legend, tells of beings from the stars who lived on the earth before the age of man. These beings still lived in some sort of suspended animation, waiting to be awakened when "the stars were right." In his Cthulhu stories, ( . 11 espec1a y in his short novel At the Mountains of Hadnessl Lovecraft depicts these creatures as indifferent rather than evil. They are the product of evolution and ther than the supernatural. As such, they regard nature ra d m uch as man might regard the fly.
In a scenario 11 ankin this, it is not appropriate to dwell on character such as 46 1 ent since the individual character is purposefully deve opm ' As h a s unimportant in the cosmic scheme of things. In this as in other stories, Lovecraft explores the _ theme of truth and knowledge, and the destructive potential of "knowing too much." John Gatto has theorized that Interestingly enough, in "The Call of Cthulhu" as in "Pickman's Model," the artist, not the scientist, is 47 depicted as the key to truth.
"It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came" (DH 131), while "the sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little .... " To Lovecraft, knowledge and enlightenment lie in the artistic truth of the imagination.
Unlike the methodical logic of the scientist, this knowledge "like all dread glimpses of truth" results from "an accidental piecing together of separate things," and this requires artistic imagination.
To Lovecraft, the insignificance of man in the cosmos was, perhaps, the greatest truth, a truth he had learned from the piecing together of separate things. Yet this truth was unpleasant and caused Lovecraft much grief: I have been forced to confess that mankind as a whole has no goal or purpose whatsoever, but is a mere superfluous speck in the unfathomable vortices of infinity and eternity. Accordingly, I have hardly been able to experience anything which one could call real happiness; or to take as vital an interest in human affairs as one can who still retains the hallucination of a "great purpose" in the general plan of terrestrial life.
(SL I 86) The Lovecraft's theory that imagination was the key to truth, even if that truth might be painful was, perhaps, a recognition on his part of the difficult life that an imaginative person leads in a society based on realism.
This, of course, was particularly true in his writing, which was not commercially salable at the time: Romanticism calls on emotion, realism on pure reason; both ignore imagination, which groups isolated impressions into gorgeous patterns and finds strange relations and associations among the objects of visible and invisible Nature.
Phantasy exists to fulfill the demands of the imagination; but since imagination is so much widely diffused than are emotion and analytical reason, it follows that such a literary type must be relatively rare, and decidedly restricted in its appeal.
(!DOD 11) The power of imagination and its capacity to discover truth is symbolized in dreams, not only in the Dunsanian dream stories ("The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", "The Silver Key" and "Through the Gates of the Silver Key''), but also in "The Call of Cthulhu" where the dreams of the artists and the poets depict an unpleasant and forbidden truth 'khat is unavailable to the more logical scientists.
Yet the articulation of this truth, through the ''call" of Cthulhu, is powerful enough to bring the ancient entity back to life. Although the language of this call is unintelligible to most men, as is fantasy itself, the "textualization" of the message is enough to turn dreams into reality, as Cthulhu awakes from its sleep. This idea parallels Lovecraft's attempt to make fantasy realistic by giving it a scientific premise rather than a supernatural one. vera add1t1onal teasers, as the reader learns is an ancestor of "the only survivor of that the narrator 52 the abhorred line." This ancestor, we find, was not only a but was apparently "shaken by some horror greater aurderer, tha t of conscience or the law." than While this ancient riddle might be fascinating as history, Lovecraft uses the next paragraph to transport it to the narrative present as it effects the protagonist of the story directly. The narrator first explains the dread and hatred that the local natives have for his new home that he had specially built above the ruined foundation that had once belonged to his ancestor. This might easily be attributed to local superstition were it not for the last sentence of the second paragraph: "And this week workmen have blown up Exham Priory, and are busy obliterating the traces of its foundations." This "abstract," which begins with workmen finishing their labors of construction and ends with them completi~g the ir labors of destruction, forms a tight and mysterious cycle that contains the entire story of Delapore and his ancestor. The remainder of the tale, in effect, answers the questions that these initial paragraphs propose.
By using a first person narrative voice, however,

Lovecraft, erases the major question that horror fiction
Poses, namely the fate of the narrator. As we have seen, Lovecraft solved this problem in "The Call of Cthulhu" by h . aving the narrator speak from the grave through his diary.
In "The Rats in the Walls," the narrator obviously does t tell his tale. Lovecraft circumvents this live 0 tial dilution of suspense by magnifying the horror po ten that the narrator has experienced. Delapore "let no 53 deter" him in the restoration of his home, and took expense obvious pride in his accomplishment. What horror, then, could have caused him to destroy the place and have all traces of its existence erased? As the third paragraph suggests, the horror represents the truth that the narrator learns about himself and his ancestry.
Lovecraft uses a number of prolepses, or foreshadowing devices, to plant clues about the solution of the story's enigmas. The knowledge that Delapore's ancestor was a murderer offers the possibility that the narrator himself may commit murder, making his tale a confession type story similar to Poe's "The Black Cat" or "The Tell-Tale Heart." This, of course, winds up being the case, with the narrator, in effect, confessing to a crime much worse than mere murder, as we learn th a t he, too, suffers from a type of reverse evolution that forces him to regress to a rat-like cannibal at the story's climax.
The rumors about his ancestors and the myths and legends about both them and the rats are additional foreshadowing devices, which the narrator initially shrugs off as mere superstition, Then the rats actually appear, •aking the legends more concrete.
The narrator's cat becomes a foreshadowing device of •orts as . t f.
' 1 irst becomes aware of the rats in the walls.
in a clever reversal, becomes almost an objective The cat, in the story since it can sense evil that is narrator beyond the realm of human understanding. Throughout the t he cat remains the symbol of good while the rats story, symbolize evil. And, at the story's conclusion when Delapore himself becomes a cannibalistic rat-man, the cat, still symbolizing good, turns upon its own master. The cat, then, gives credibility to Delapore's supernatural explanation, even when Delapore himself is exposed as an insane, no longer reliable narrator.
While the idea of the cat detecting evil could easily become a stereotype, Lovecraft manages to avoid the cliche through clever narrative devices. First, he candidly exposes the stereotype: "I realize how trite this sounds-like the inevitable dog in the ghost story, which always growls before his master sees the sheeted figure ... " (33).
This statement assures the reader that Lovecraft is full y aware of the weird tale tradition arid is using the device

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The first actual scene does not occur until the end of page 33, after nearl y eight pages of summary-type narrative. And even this scene is almost a combination of summary and scene with no direct dialogue, but merely indirect speech between Delapore and his servant, and then Capt. Norrys.
As the story continues, however, summaries and pauses begin to separate scenes (38-43) as Delapore and others travel below ground to explore the ancient ruins. Again, even the scenes are 1 a most summaries in their structure, lfith no direct dialogue, except for the man who "croaked h •ckneyed 'My God!'" on page 41. Finally, on page the ~ 5 L ovecraft provides a real scene as Delapore 44-4 ' r s" his secret and regresses into the reversed "discove 1 t ·onarY form of his ancestor.
In this scene, we hear evo u i the first actual dialogue of the story, as Delapore begins his ranting, which soon becomes unintelligible.
It is 57 interesting to note that Delapore goes on to say that these "what they say I said," yet the accuracy of the ravings are transcription coupled with the fact that this is the first actual dialogue of the story prove otherwise--that he, subconsciously at least, remembers everything.
The overall structure of "The Rats in the Walls'' works to telescope time: after beginning with vast summaries detailing many years, the story slowly closes in upon itself, condensing time into smaller and smaller units which climax with a scene set in realistic time. This telescopic focus of time parallels the way we look at the Delapore family, which begins with ~ history of the family as a whole and then focuses upon a single terrible event in the narrator's life. While the time frame narrows and becomes more focused, the suspense heightens as the narrative closes in upon the narrator, trapping him within its fictional walls. that the family is plagued with a history of discover 59 "myths, ballads, and crude superstitions," some of gruesome . h 1 ·nvolved epidemics of rats. Once the narrator has whlC let ed the restoration of the family house, a new plague comp of rats begins, and he begins a physical search for truth that leads him below ground and into ancient catacombs of Roman origin, and, then, to regions even deeper and more ancient. Delapore is plagued with dreams that depict the truth through the imagination, yet he dismisses them as mere dreams until he discovers the ultimate horror beneath I I his house--that his ancestors have interbred with the rats to create a new and degenerate race. As the tale ends, Delapore reverts to the ways of his primitive ancestors as he is found "crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys ... " As in "Pickman's Model," darkness reveals a terrible truth based upon the concept of reverse evolution .
In this story, as in Pickman, the human race has degenerated rather than improved, and this reverse evolution can be traced in successive layers of darkness beneath the earth.
"The Rats in the Walls" also introduces the idea of the "bad place" to horror fiction. Exham Priory, we are told, has been evil since the dawn of time, when terrible Druid ' t 1 ri ua s were said to occur there. This idea of the "b ad Place" was expanded by Lovecraft to include a number of tales set in the "bad" places of Arkham and Dunwich, and common theme in horror fiction. The fact that has become a · more popular than ever is demonstrated by the given each year for those works which evidence within the genres of fantasy and horror. and is excellence In Part Two I will examine H.P. Lovecraft's contribution to horror fiction through a study of six of his works, each of which will highlight a specific aspect of his unique vision of the weird tale as literature. As in Part One, I will begin with a story that will establish 63 certain fundamental principles--in this case, "Dagon," an early tale that exhibits many of the ideas and techniques that Lovecraft developed with more proficiency in his later and better-know stories.
I will then look at cosmic horror, a subgenre that Lovecraft was the first to define, the horror tale as mythology, the power of language in producjHg terror, and the relationship between irony and horror. While I will continue to use structuralist theory as my underlying principle, the analyses will be less detailed and technical than those in Part One, since my focus will be to elucidate Lovecraft's ideas about horror and literature.

5.
"Dagon": The Fundamentals of Terror . es to circumvent this problem, and even in a first of dev1c narrative, the protagonist's survival is never person assured. In "Dagon" the first sentence initiates suspense by questioning the narrator's survival as it makes the story 8 potential suicide note of sorts: "I am writing this under appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more" (D 14). Thus, while the protagonist may indeed survive to write the tale, he probably will not live long thereafter. The certainty of the "happy" ending is immediately eliminated.

I
Of course the fact that the protagonist is contemplating suicide calls into que~tion his reliability as a narrator. He admits that he has been under "mental strain" and is hopelessly addicted to morphine. While many of Lovecraft's later protagonists tell incredible tales, Lovecraft is careful to make them credible narrators. As we have seen in "The Call of Cthulhu," which closely resembles "Dagon" in plot structure, the narrator's accounts are verified by newspapers, professors, and other reliable sources. One of Dagon's major flaws lies in Lovecraft's failure to make this narrator reliable.
In the very first paragraph, the narrator attempts to legitimize himself: "Do not think from my slavery to llorph' ine that I am a weakling or a degenerate" (14). But th" 18 self-testimonial is not, in itself, enough.
ft's chance to make his narrator truly reliable Lovecra 1 ter with mention of the "celebrated ethnologist" co11es a ' h "ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God" and t e (lg). He later perfected his technique of lending 66 credibility to his narrator's unbelievable tales by better referencing them to known facts.
In In fact, part of the mood of terror may come f rom this inability to capture the horror in words--C lour out of Space," as we will see, the premise in "The o stems from the "unnamable" color. of terror I will develop in further detail in my analysis of "The this idea 1 " unnamab e · H.P. Lovecraft believed in the necessity of creating a mood or atmosphere of terror in order for the weird tale to be successful.
"Atmosphere is the one essential in this field, because atmosphere is the only medium whereby anything as elusive and intangible as a mood can be even approximately recreated" (SL III 427). While Lovecraft certainly creates an atmosphere of terror and dread through narrative devices that produce and heighten suspense, his connotative use of language and images replaces the traditional character development of most authors. Thus, the object of horror or terror becomes, in many ways, the main character of the story, even though it is seldom seen and understood in its entirety.
In "Dagon," Lovecraft uses hu ma~ senses to develop the connotative code of terror and repulsion. The sensation that the narrator receives through sight, sound, smell and touch all combine to create an overall mood of horror and fear. The major connotative codes of sight are vastness and blackness, which commence with the narrator's being set free upon the "heaving vastness of unbroken blue'' (15).
First he drifts in the vast ocean, and then wakes up to discover h1 "mself t " rapped in a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous far as I could see ... " This island is then undulations as "barren immensity", "black" and "inky." described as a These connotations, taken together, reproduce an infinite black universe into which man has suddenly found himself. Indeed, as early twentieth century science began its exploration of space and the stars, the limits of the universe suddenly expanded to become a "barren immensity." The narrator's fear stems from his smallness amid the infinite blackness around him, an instinctive fear, perhaps, of man's insignificance in the universe, a theme that Lovecraft explores in virtually every story he has written. The universe, with its infinite size and blackness,' defies man's understanding of it and exists as an independent force outside of his control.
The major connotative code of sound is silence--the absence of sound. This silence not only reinforces the idea of the vastness of the universe, but symbolically reminds man of his own mortality.
Silence, of course, 70 represents death. The protagonist attempts to overcome death through narrative. The first person narrative speaks even after death, giving a certain textual immortality that may be the only way man can leave his mark on the universe.
Ironically, even though the narrator does not expect his tale to be taken seriously, it remains his only defense against the ultimate silence of death.
In fact, when the narrator first encounters the monster, his only defense is to sing, to break the silence ttempt to preserve his own life and sanity: "I in an a I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was believe bl e to sing" (18). His song, perhaps a form of art or The connotative codes of smell and touch also work to remind man of his immortality. These connotations, revolving around slime, ooze, and decay, depict the frailt y of the living organism and its susceptibility to even nature's smallest members--bacteria and micro-organisms.
Lovecraft's evils are invariably depicted in terms of decay and Putrification: either they are decaying themselves, or 11 .ke thrive on decay. fungus-' In "Dagon," the smell and f rotting fish is "maddening," and the fish creature touch o . gi·ned as "crawling and floundering on its slimy bed." is ima The connotations of slime and ooze coupled with the references to fish-like creatures also refer to the The action code of "Dagon" mirrors evolution as the · t like our piscine ancestors, crawls from water protagon1s , onto mud and then to higher ground. Dagon undergoes a similar evolution, signifying the emergence of a new and more powerful life form than man. And even as the protagonist returns to civilization, so will the Fish-God follow him and devour him, as its race is capable of devouring mankind as a whole.
While "Dagon" is an early story, it demonstrates many ' of the techniques and themes that Lovecraft was to later develop and improve upon.
The notions of forbidden knowledge, mythology, parallel evolution, and the power of narrative are evident even in this early sto r y . Perhaps Lovecraft recognized his future themes in "Dagon" and that is why it remained one of his personal favorite stories. Even the folklore is consistent on this point: "There were no widespread tales 1 . g chains, cold currents of air, extinguished of ratt in r faces at the window.
Extremists sometimes said }ightS' O was 'unlucky', but that is as far as even they the house went" (MM 237) • These two poles remain at odds throughout the tale, and, at times, Lovecraft leads us down the road of traditional supernaturalism, misdirecting us from his real objective, the science of the supernatural: We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly superstitious, but scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy, (251) The narrator decides to treat the subject with "profound seriousness," as he begins his investigations into both history and science: To say that we actually believed in vampires or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rather must it be said that we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain unfamiliar and unclassified modifications of vital force and attenuated matter. The narrative, of course, commences after the fact., when a land surveyor appears to map the area prior to its flooding to create a reservoir for drinking water, and ends with the terrible suggestion that the entity may very well reappear in the water once the reservoir is completed.
"The Colour Out of Space" has been called "H.P. 81 Lovecraft's Book of Job" (Gatto 53), yet the true terror runs far deeper than this. The real horror of the story is embodied in the strange unnaturalness of the alien life form itself; this strangeness is symbolized by its color, l ·s different from any known color and "almost which 1 t describe," iapossib e o (DH 59) Even when placed under a the color can not be categorized under our spectroscope, present system of knowledge.
Burleson has observed the deconstructive possibilities of this idea as concerns textuality: To suggest, as the text does, that there may occur a color, a visible impression, not belonging to this system, is to suggest subversion of the system and, allegorically, subversion of systems generally. What is at work here is the undoing of categorical thinking, the . unraveling of any system claiming final mastery, exhaustive cataloguing, total solution, immutable results, settled 'reading' of reality. Lovecraft's alien substance (if it even has a substance) does not obey the laws of nature as we know them, but is a product of laws that work contrary to those in the known universe.
Since the colour cannot be analyzed by modern spectroscopy, it must be composed of elements different from those of the Periodic Chart that we are familiar with. Every star, every galaxy, and every nebula in the known universe can be measured with a spectroscope and related to the Periodic Chart of the elements; yet this alien is different from anything that can be know or imagined.
Since the beginning of civilization, the human species has strived to f ind order in a mysterious universe, and, for th e most part, has been successful. Where mysteries The true function of phantasy is to give the This hideous reversal is upsetting and disturbing on several levels. Fir~t, and most obvious, the story alludes and "forbidden" literature, an idea that I to blasphemy 1 as we examine the textual codes of the story. will deve op dly the story establishes the conflict between sec on ' traditional mythology and the tale of terror. The town has a history of horror that culminates in the Whateley twins, but, like Cthulhu, the horror predates mankind. The town, then, can be seen as a symbol of the weird tale, which has evol v ed from ancient 93 legends of ghosts and vampires to modern and more realistic terrors of the space age.
On a cultural level, Lovecraft's tale provides some insight into myth and folklore, and places horror in a sociological perspective by examining cultural taboos. s· lnce myth and folklore often help express and define a culture's taboos, the textual and cultural codes of "The Dunwich Horror" work t h h' hl' h h' h oget er to ig ig t t is t eme.
In "The Dunwich Horror", Lovecraft explores the idea of the "forbidden," both in culture and in literature. t he very beginning of the tale, the town is portrayed Fro JD 94 f bl . dden--should one take the "wrong fork" in the road as or d C ounter the inhabitants of that village, "one feels an en ho w confronted by forbidden things .•• " (156). Unlike soJDe the forbidden knowledge that Lovecraft alludes to in many of his stories, these earthy and concrete taboos are symbolized by the inhabitants of the village, who are "repellently decadent, having gone far along that path of retrogression" to have "come to form a race by themselves" (157). This notion (which also appears in "The Shadow over Innsmouth" and other tales) alludes to incest and inbreeding that have, through a perverse form of reverse evolution, created an inferior race of beings that are, perhaps, not completely human.
According to Levi-Strauss, "The incest prohibition is ... the basis of human society; in. a sense, it is the society" (19). The town . of Dunwich, through its isolation, inbreeding, and ignorance of cultural norms, has divorced itself from society and entered the world of the forbidden.
Using the idea of the forbidden as a basis, we may analyze its implications using the "semantic rectangle" of In addition to the textual/cultural code of myth and legend, "The Dunwich Horror" also contains a textual code that speaks to the process of reading, of decoding a text. Donald Burleson has examined the motif of cryptanalysis as " . our inability to 'read' the universe" and as "an allegory for such things as the text hide[ing] beneath its own surface workings" (130). He goes on to ask the question of As we will see in the next chapter, this mythology is often best expressed by that which is not said, rather than that which is made explicit.
9. "The Unnamable": The Power of Language "The Unnamable," written in 1923, is one of several Lovecraft tales that refer to "nameless" things. As Joshi has noted by comparing passages from "The Unnamable" with those from "Supernatural Horror in Literature," the short story is "a scarcely veiled metaphor for Lovecraft's repeated assertion that since art is a 'treatment of life' (SL II, 144) and fear enters (occasionally) into our lives, the weird tale must be art" (Decline 117). Indeed, Lovecraft's defense of the weird tale through a textual code is commonplace in his fiction, as we have already seen in "Pickman's Model" and in others.
Lovecraft not only defends horror fiction, but, in many ways redefines it by moving it away from its Gothic traditions and into the modern age. As we have seen in This dispute is not really a debate over the reality l ity of supernatural phenomenon, a fact that Carter or unrea acknowledges: "I knew that Joel Manton actually half clung V old-wives' superstitions which sophisticated people to man. had long outgrown .... " It is, instead, a discussion about whether such phenomenon can be described and named.
The idea of naming is the foundation for modern linguistics and for structuralism and semiotics, which recognizes the intimacy between language and thought. As Ferdinand de Saussure has said: "In language, one can neither isolate sound from thought nor thought from sound" (157). According to this theory, to name an object, one must be able to think of or imagine it, and to comprehend it in some way. imagine and fully comprehend-hence the impossibility of mortals be1· ng able to "name" God.
A d · f ' ccor 1ng to Lovecra t s View, th ere are things in the universe that are 1 " that 'cannot be imagined, described, "unnamab e -comprehended, or understood. We have seen this idea at "The Colour out of Space," where it is impossible work in a color that is totally alien to the human to name 103 rl ·ence outside of the known spectrum. This concept of expe ' cosmic horror as defined in "The Colour Out of Space" forms the basis for the idea of something being "Unnamable." The vastness and complexity of the universe and its Lovecraft does attempt to explain humanity in the greater context of the universe in which it exists. By demeaning individual worth, he uses the fantastic as type of · 1 11°ght with which to examine the cosmos and man's artific1a place within it.
In this section we will examine six stories in detail and explore how Lovecraft's work goes beyond mere horror by looking at man and his environment through the touchstone of fantasy.
In some cases, this exploration is on the psychological level, as in ''The Outsider," where the narrator discovers a terrible truth about himself. In some cases, the fantasy may reveal insights into Lovecraft's personal and realistic fears, as in "The Haunter of the Dark," which discloses the author's growing concern with his deteriorating financial condition. Finally, in "The Shadow out of Time," fantasy will explore what Lovecraft saw as cosmic truths about the nature of the universe and human unimportance within the overall scheme of things.
As we have already seen, an underlying thread of truth and knowledge--and their destructive potential--pervades the work of H p L ft . . ovecra . The stories, then, not only reveal what Lovecraft considered to be truth, but also reveal the destructive nature of this truth, on both the psychological, personal, and cosmic levels.
In a strange sort of textual code of its own, the horror story becomes a h or for the quest for knowledge--even though we know 11etaP .
v not be pleasant, so does it attract and seduce in it ma. its own perverse way.
As we will see in Part Three, Lovecraft realized the destructive potential in even the most innocent pursuit of truth and knowledge.
Yet his fiction makes no attempt to stop man in his reckless pursuit, since it is obvious that he is doomed to seek knowledge at any cost. And, as we have seen in "The Colour out of Space," man's most painful and terrible revelation may be the discovery that the secrets of the universe cannot be known, that they are beyond man's capacity to understand.
To Lovecraft, truth is spelled with a capital "T.": it explores the nature and creation of the universe itself.
Since he sees truth--and its fearful potential--as a cosmic phenomenon, it is only natural and proper that it be expressed on a cosmic scale. Science fiction and horror are the logical tools with which to accomplish this.
Lovecraft crafted the weird tale to suit his verson of truth and express his philosophy of the universe. While the fantastic monsters do not exist on a literal level, the shadows they cast metaphorically reveal the silhouette of a realistic and disturbing universe where man is but a pawn-a view of the universe that is remarkably similar to that expressed by other major authors of the era, but on a much more cosmic scale.   No sooner could the clerk have ripped out a page from the town records than · could have kept E=MC2 to himself once he Einstein discovered it.

119
If knowledge has power, that power is expressed in the form of language.
As I have said previously, there is an inherent power in being able to name things. Language he cannot gives man the power to control his universe; control what he cannot name--hence, the "nameless" monsters of the Lovecraftian world.
In Charles Dexter Ward language takes on a magical power in the form of spells and incantations.
Knowing the right formula--the right words--can either raise or destroy the most terrible powers of the universe. The story opens with a cryptic first paragraph childhood of "fear and sadness" that seems describing a 122 and happy compared to the memories of the narrator pleasant when his mind "threatens to reach beyond the other" (DH 4 s). This "other" is purposely left vague, immediately enticing the reader into the story.
The next paragraph introduces additional enigmas as the narrator explains that he doesn't know where he was born or who cared for him.
This lack of knowledge coupled with the Gothic connotations of darkness, cobwebs, shadows and towers creates a mood of dread and anticipation for the horrors that lie ahead.
Yet, as the narrator attempts to move away from this atmosphere of terror, he ultimately discovers an even greater terror existing within himself.
This story, which may be one of the most deeply psychological of all the tales in the Lovecraft canon, is also one of the most allegorical. The narrator's quest for light and ultimate discovery of a hideous and painfu l truth underscores Lovecraft's concept of the destructive power of truth and knowledge. And, if "The Outsider'' is really meant to be interpreted as a dream, as Fulwiler has suggested, the story also illustrates the power of the imagination in discovering truth.
In this tale, the symbolic opposition between light and darkness and the quest for light represents mankind's destructive search for truth and self knowledge. From the very beginning of the story, the narrator, like a moth near is obsessed with a "longing for light" that "grew a candle, f n tic that I could rest no more." This is an so ra interesting reversal of the search for truth in "Pickman's d 1 " where the artist figure seeks truth in darkness, in Mo e ' the darker reaches of his mind. The outsider "resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding the day." The action code of this tale is also completely reversed from that of "Pickman's Model." Where Pickman finds truth and Elliot finds terror by descending into the earth, the Outsider finds truth and terror by ascending.
Indeed, his long, arduous trek upwards through the inside of the tower resembles a journey through the birth canal as he leaves his stale womb and seeks rebirth. In a mockery of labor and delivery, the Outsider emerges into the light of the full moon, knowing not "who I was or what I was, or what my surroundings might be" (DH 49).
Looking at his search for truth from a psychological perspective, we see the narrator as a newborn infant who has just entered a strange, frightening and wondrous world, filled with light and discovery. His first glimpse of truth--that he has climbed to the surface of the earth from somewhere below--shocks him but does not cure his "longing for light." At this point the Outsider, like the newborn, sees the universe merely as an extension of himself, E ven as the growing child must discov er the 1 truth that he is but a small part of the universe, painfu d oes the Outsider discover his place.
Like the child, so he learns that humankind is not always beautiful and but is often hideous and grotesque, even in the godlike eyes of his fellow man. While most individuals accept this painful reality, the Outsider, cannot face the truth and flees back into the sanctuary of his decayed womb.
Ironically, truth is originally portrayed as happy as the narrator remembers colorful pictures from some of the molding books in his possession. Yet even then this happiness is undercut with irony at the realization that there might be a price to pay; "I ... was determined to gaze upon brilliance and gaiety at any cost." The narrator, in discovering the truth about himself, learns that truth itself is painful and destructive. The brilliance of truth hurts his eyes with its light, and he discovers "that light is not for me." Yet despite the pain that accompanies truth, the narrator has no regrets. Indeed, for him it is better to "glimpse the sky ... than to live without ever beholding the day." In the end, he is satisfied, despite his pain: "I am strangely content, and cling desperately to those sere memories .... " This idea reflects what Lovecraft thought, as he tried to deal with his own personal truth as best he could: "In ceasing to care about most things, I have ceased to suffer i·n many ways. There is a real restfulness in the scientific conviction that nothing matters very much· .. ," (SL I 87).
The cultural code also comes into play in this as the outsider discovers that he is "different" instance, from what society considers "normal." Anything different is automatically shunned: " •.. there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat. Flight was universal .. ·" ( 50) • Lovecraft was an elitist in many respects and saw himself as separate from what he termed "the herd" (SL I 211). An avowed atheist since childhood, he undoubtedly felt isolated from his fellow man, and turned inwards to the imagination in order to find truth. This, coupled with his mother's belief that her son was "hideous" and "ugly" While at first glance, "The Outsider" may not seem to contain a textual or metalinguistic code, the story does address the nature of language and of . storytelling. We are initially told that the Outsider lived in a world of books and "From such books I learned all that I know." It is interesting to note that although the narrator taught himself to read, he had "never thought to try to speak aloud." Since he never spoke he was symbolically unable to communicate even with himself. His search for truth, then, took on an external form, since it could not come from within. Had he recognized truth, he would not have been able to communicate it to others or to himself. once the Outsider discovers truth, he speaks "the first and last sounds I ever uttered" (DH 51). Truth, by its very nature, forces communication, even if this Un ication takes the form of ''a ghastly ululation" or, comm 127 in the case of Lovecraft himself, a ghastly tale of terror.
And, in fact, since the tale is told from a first person point of view, the Outsider does speak again as narrator of his tale. Even though he claims that "In the supreme horror of that second I forgot what horrified me" (DH 52), he does go on to remember and to describe his revelation by narrating his story. Again, truth demands to be communicated, regardless of the terribleness of its nature or its destructive potential.
The Outsider cannot forget, but must metaphorically tell and retell the tale to whoever will listen, despite the consequences.
Finally, as Fulwiler has noted, one must be prepared to consider "The Outsider" as a dream, as is suggested by the epigraph from Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes'' that heads the story. This, according to Fulwiler, would explain the inconsistencies and illogic that make the tale irrational on a literal level. Seen as a dream, "The Outsider" represents the textual code of the subconscious, which is better able to grasp and accept truth than the conscious mind. The dream is another symbolic representation of the artist figure, the creative individual who dares to dream and to seek and express truth. While the rational man cannot or will not comprehend the obvious truth that O unds him, the artist is able to discover truth and surr articulate it.
In this case, the dream becomes a narrative vehicle to communicate truth.
"The Outsider" is probably one of the grimmest tales to come from Lovecraft's pen. Yet Lovecraft recognized that literature, as it seeks to unearth (pardon the pun) painful and often frightening truths, must, in turn, become painful, frightening, and depressing. Like Keats' Baron, the artist, to express truth, must break down the barriers to the subconscious mind and, in doing so, dream of "many a " woe. ere if you will, and that which is "beyond." This opposition between here and beyond ultimately calls into t ·on the nature of truth and reality itself.
"We see ques 1 . g only as we are constructed to see them, and can gain thin s ' dea of their absolute nature" (D 91), Tillinghast says. no i Thus, mankind with his "five feeble senses" is incapable of seeing truth and cannot comprehend the universe around him.
As philosophy this idea is harmless enough; however, the protagonist goes "beyond" merely thinking about the nature of truth, and, instead, attempts to find it first-hand. Through his "metaphysical researches" he finds "a way to break down the barriers" that keep man from seeing truth. This leads to a new and different perception of reality, a reality where ultraviolet light is now visible, as are "whole worlds of alien, unknown entities." Once the barriers have dropped, the known and the unknown merge together as one--the bipolar oppositions between fantasy and reality, truth and ignorance, no longer exist. (SL V 305). When examined on a psychoanalytical level, e r "From Beyond" speaks about the relationship howev ' 132 between the conscious and the subconscious mind, especially in relation to truth.
The "here" of course, refers to the conscious mind, where man basically invents his own reality to suit himself. The conscious mind sees the world through the limited viewpoint of the ego, the "I", who, according to the tenants of The Pleasure Principle, is the center of the h .
"I" universe. T is of the conscious mind sees all of the world in relation to itself, and considers itself of suprem'e importance. This "I" is most developed in the newborn, who sees itself as the universe; everyone and everything in the world exists only to serve its needs. As the child grows, the "I" shrinks while the universe continually expands.
In fact, the more one learns, the smaller and more insignificant one becomes in the overall scheme of things. While all men lear. this truth to a degree, the scholar and the researcher are exposed to the "cosmic truth" of man's insignificance.
The "beyond" represents the subconscious mind, which, in its own instinctive way, often has a better handle on truth than the conscious mind. Freud demonstrated that man often buries unpleasant or painful truths within the subconscious mind, truths that can only be brought to the surface through hypnosis or other forms of therapy. Hence, the "Outs1·d " · h. 1 · d · er experiences is persona ina equac1es dh a dream, as we have seen.
According to Hume, fiction has developed in two te and distinct patterns, fantasy and realism, which separa f combined and merged in various ways. Only in the are o ten twentieth century, she argues, has realism been privileged.
The explosion in twentieth century realism has, she continues, exhausted the possibilities for discovering truth through this means. Thus, she foresees greater return to fantasy as a means of expressing truth. This "Literature of Vision" presents alternate views of reality and "calls attention to the differences .... Creating a separate reality and calling attention to it is one characteristic of great, as opposed to merely competent, fiction" (82).
One of the frightening truths of Lovecraft's fiction, the "cosmic truth" that mankind, with his limited vision, is incapable of understanding the complexity of the universe, lends itself to exploration in science fiction and literature of the fantastic, which, in fact, attempts to endow the unbelievable with realism. Thus, Lovecraft's chosen genre, the weird tale, also serves as the most effective means of conveying his philosophy that the more man thinks he learns, the less he really knows. find] ..• a radical increase in that element of "[We unknowability which we always admitted" (SL III 224).
The most terrible truth for man to face is the knowledge that he is quite blind to the truth around him, yet, without the fantastic device of Crawford Tillinghast, he is destined to remain blind.
Furthermore, even were such a device available to "break down the barriers'' it would only destroy man when he tried to use it.

The final barrier that Lovecraft breaks down in "From
Beyond" is the barrier between science and philosophy, two 14.
"The Whisperer in Darkness": The This knowledge, per se, is not evil--it is, after all, the ultimate quest of the scientist to understand the one cannot find evil in the inquiries of universe-- In the cosmic scheme of things, then, these aliens are of a much lower order than the Yog-Sothoth, the Elder Gods or the Old Ones. Yet even these ''weaker" aliens greatly surpass humanity both in power and in knowledge. In addition, since they are ''fungi" they are presumably lower on the evolutionary scale than man-in other words, they have not yet evolved to their full potential. Even lower forms of life on other planets, then, · dwarf human achievement.
The second connotative point of interest lies in the description of nature, and its contrast with civilization.
As Joshi has noted, Lovecraft consistently treats nature as " some uncontrollable beast whose almost active resistance to human attempts to tame it is somehow sinister and even suggestive of some cosmic alienage" (Weird Tale 220). In virtually all of his fiction, Lovecraft's aliens inhabit remote, uncivilized parts of the earth--"The Dunwich It is obvious that knowledge is destined to be found, with no regard to the consequences--Peaslee's plea to censor such studies only makes them more attractive. "If the laws of the universe are kind, they will never be found," he says, referring to the books of the great race.
Yet, since he has already seen the laws of the universe he knows they are not kind, and nothing he can say or do will keep the knowledge secret.
In some perverse corner of Peaslee's mind he welcomes the acquisition of knowledge, knowledge which he himself "both hoped and feared to find"  According to Lovecraft, all of this knowledge points to a single truth, a terrible truth from the human point of view: namely, that mankind is but a tiny insignificant speck, without hope and without meaning. The more we learn, Lovecraft says, the smaller we become. Least one think this is not a painful truth to learn, a brief look at the initial reaction to the theories of visionaries ranging from Galileo to Darwin to Freud should offer a conv incing argument otherwise.
The ultimate horror, perhaps, lies in the fact that man will not only continue to learn terrible truths about himself and his universe, but is in fact destined to do so.
Man, by his very nature, has evolved so that he must learn; his curiosity is as strong an instinct as the desire for food and shelter. Furthermore, any efforts to censor knowledge once it is obtained are doomed to failure.
Lovecraft uses the weird tale as a metaphor for knowledge. Even as we are repulsed by horror, so too are we perversely attracted to it, just as we are also simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the forbidden aspects of knowledge. Lovecraft recognized that the tale of terror has existed as an important part of human folklore since the dawn of civilization, and that the emotion of fear symbolizes the dual nature of knowledge.
The unknown, of course, is the primeval fear; man has attempted to ease this fear through t h e creation of mythology. The systematic and scientific search for truth often upsets these myths, however, and replaces them with unpleasant truths--such as the theories of Charles Lovecraft's fiction is uneven, and one would be mistaken in viewing his inferior stories as representative of his work.
When he is at his best, as in "Pickman's Model", "The Shadow out of Time", or "The Colour out of Space'', Lovecraft uses horror to express a number of complex ideas lb~ and creates an exquisite sense of dread that lingers long after the story is done. These stories "make us feel the size of the universe we hang suspended in, and suggest shadowy forces that could destroy us all if they so much grunted in their sleep" (King 72). Yet he just as often falls short, as in "The Shunned House", for example, where the evil monster does not live up to expectations and is rather easily destroyed.
Much of Lovecraft's problem in his weaker stories stems from his desire to capture the ultimate emotion of fear, to reach the collective unconscious of human terror, and to settle for nothing less. This is an incredibly difficult feat to accomplish and, to Lovecraft's credit, he was able to come very close to capturing this elemental fear in a number of stories, including "The Colour out of Space." Yet, unlike most horror writers he was unwilling to compromise, unwilling to settle for second best. As Stephen King has said, there are three elements of horror: terror, horror, and what he terms the "gross-out." According to King, terror is the most difficult to achieve, and the gross-out the easiest. While King admits that he will settle for horror or the gross-out if he cannot achieve terror, Lovecraft would accept nothing less than terror. Thus, when he falls short of his mark, his stories suffer tremendously. In some cases, he seems to try too hard to hit fear through the collective unconscious, leaving too much to the reader's imagination and the resulting tale seems lame and unfulfilling. Lovecraft's cha racters and narrators and shows their connection with the past and, in many ways, their desire to return to older and simpler times. While it may not make them "realistic" in twentieth century terms, it does make them believable within the context of their own small and specialized world. Furthermore, this style also reflects  that have, in many ways, gone beyond the tame truths expressed by the naturalists. It is this ability to go "beyond", to show the "pets" that "are not pretty" that has made Lovecraft,s work so popular and so unforgettable.
Regardless o f whether or not Lovecraft is ever accepted by the critics, he will continue to be embraced by new generations of readers who have given him his own unofficial place both in horror and science fiction and in American l i terature.