For my book of choice, I read three stories by HP Lovecraft: Herbert West- Reanimator, The Call of Cthulhu, and The Dunwich Horror. Each of these tales has a rather similar setup and payoff, beginning with a narrator speaking of the unspeakable eldritch abominations they bore witness to or beginning with some sort of backstory and eventually focusing on a certain character. This character then recounts their tale about happening upon these discoveries and the terror that ensued.
The first one, Herbert West- Reanimator, featured the tale of a disgruntled medical student at Miskatonic University whose theories about the nature of the human body led him to create an elixir that could bring people back from the dead by “restarting” them. This student, named Herbert West, calls upon the aid of the narrator, who has taken interest in his experiments. They were unsuccessful in initial attempts, but they did notice that the closer to death they revived them, the more responsive they were. This led to more and more experiments being conducted with more success, however, all subjects were reduced to mindless animals. Then WWI began and they both enlisted as medical officers as volunteers for the Canadian military. Of course, they only did this to come across fresh cadavers. One particular subject, Major Clapham Lee, an old friend of West who died in a plane crash, demonstrated incredible results when West was able to reanimate both the body and the severed head. Unfortunately, Clapham Lee escaped, and began to find the old subjects West was working on, eventually taking revenge by severing West’s head in an attack on the lab.
The second story, The Call of Cthulhu, followed the perspective of a man who had come across a strange artifact bearing no basis in modern architecture or art. His curiosity leads him to hear about various happenings in the swamps of Louisiana. This led to a slippery slope where he found the memoir of Norwegian sailor who found part of the sunken city of R’lyeh.
The third tale was the Dunwich Horror. This story did not follow a narrator and it followed a child of a woman and one of the Great Old Ones, Yog-Sothoth. This child, named Wilbur, matures much faster than usual and is rather hideous in appearance, despite being extremely intelligent. Wilbur eventually tries to procure a copy of the necronomicon, presumably to awaken the Great Old Ones. Eventually, Wilbur is found mangled by a dog and his entrails are certainly not human, with greenish blood and reptilian skin. The person that found the corpse visits the town of Dunwich to see what was going on and finds Wilbur’s twin brother, who resembles his father much more than his mother.
Herbert West was the first and most lackluster of the three stories. It began with little suspense, someone’s trying to play God, of course nothing good will come of it. After the first corpse was reanimated, the trick of crazy zombies doing crazy things got old. The ending was also rather uninteresting, as West just really got what was coming to him after the his near-sadistic experiments.
Call of Cthulhu is considered one of the classic Lovecraft stories, and with good reason. It provided a hook for the audience through the statue, it carried through multiple accounts and showed the research the narrator had done, and it had an interesting and disturbing payoff. I know this is basically a meme at the school, but his imagery was incredible. It painted a vivid image in your mind even when what occurred on the pages did not match any logic, like the architecture of R’lyeh. The recounting of past events flowed seamlessly as well, something that is difficult to find in most fiction.
The Dunwich Horror was very impressive in terms of how it read. The slow buildup to the reveal of the brother and the foreshadowing of the dogs was enthralling. As for the story itself, it wasn’t as good as Call of Cthulhu because the payoff wasn’t nearly as harrowing, but it was still enjoyable. As this story wasn’t written as a personal anecdote, it does not have the same intrigue as other Lovecraft stories, but it was still a good read.
Lovecraft’s stories can be somewhat off-putting due to their lengthy descriptions and blatant racism, but they are still very good stories that can hook readers in and give them a satisfying ending in only a couple pages. The overarching themes of hopelessness and doom that permeate the universe he created should be enjoyed by anyone who is interested. The stories are not hard to find, either, as one can easily locate a compendium of his stories on multiple online databases. Lovecraft was a brilliant writer who continues to inspire fiction to this day, if you want to find an enjoyably disturbing series of tales, look no further than Lovecraft.
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