H.P. Lovecraft’s stories “Call of Cthulu”, “Shadow Over Innsmouth”and “The Dunwich Horror” talk of other worldly creatures that have come on this earth before man was created. They sleep below the earth and sea, waiting for their human followers to resurrect them. The cult that worships them makes sacrafices to Cthulhu and proform orgies to honor him. Cthulhu wants control over the earth to again be his, and to do this the cult must clear the land of the vile humans.
These three short stories share several similarities. First they all take place in the northeastern United States shortly after the first World War. The town of Arkham is present in all of them. Each story follows one person as he slowly pieces together the bits of information that he is slowly finding about the ancient cult. The protagonist either dies or becomes part of the cult.
In “The Call of Cthulhu”, we follow a young man studying his late uncle’s research pertaining to mass instances of bizarre dreams, all occurring at the same time. He then slowly unravels information about the cult that worships Cthulhu and the unfortunate sailors that awakened him.
In “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, readers see through the eyes of a different young man who is curious to learn about the mysterious town of Innsmouth. Upon reaching this town, he discovers a deformed populace who shuns him, a normal looking old man who raves at him and a hotel which is meant to be his deathtrap. He overcomes these obstacles and escapes only to learn that he is actually one of them.
In the first half of “The Dunwich Horror”, the reader observes a peculiar boy named Wilbur. Wilbur grows so fast that by the age of fifteen, his body resembles the body of a seven foot tall twenty-five year old man. He quests to find the necronomicon, a book regarding the summoning of demons from another dimension, so that he might tame his monsterous brother who has been growing inside his house. Wilbur fails his mission and unintentionally reveals his brother’s existence to three scientists. In the second part of the story, these scholarly men, knowledgeable in the occult, travel to Dunwich and banish Wilbur’s invisible house eating brother.
Lovecrafts stories are incredibly vivid yet horribly disturbing due to the graphic concepts, images and behaviors in the stories. His use of human sacrifice and descriptions of grotesque amphibian bipeds who feast on human flesh creates images so haunting that I had trouble sleeping and dreamed bizarre dreams. My only criticism of Lovecrafts writing concerns his style. I find his prose long winded and his slang monologues torturous to read. His use of detail and plot twists enhance his stories and make his work engaging.
