TITULO: Communal Decay: Narratological and Ideological Analysis of H.P.

Lovecraft's Fiction

AUTOR: Juan Luis Pérez de Luque

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 Communal Decay: Narratological and Ideological Analysis of H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction

in his literary production when it clashes with the Darwinian theories of evolution: the

idea that, in a remote past, we all shared the same origins, was for sure something

difficult to assimilate for a person who strongly believed in the differences among races,

and this conflict between an aristocratic near past and a hideous remote past permeate

his texts.

4.3.- Science and Lovecraft’s fiction

At this point it seems evident that Lovecraft was strongly influenced by the different

scientific sources he had access to. Social Darwinism, and its radicalization in the

eugenics movement, was contemporary to Lovecraft, and the writer slid their proposals

in his literary corpus, as I will analyze in the following chapters in this study. My goal

now is to elucidate the role science had in the global narrative of the author, and the

connection it might have with the Žižekian approach I presented in the previous chapter.

The importance of science in the Gothic/weird tale tradition is far from being

Lovecraft’s innovation. Classical texts such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) lay

upon strong scientific grounds. Similarly, the figure of Abraham van Helsing, the Dutch

professor and physician of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), is the arch-enemy of the

vampire and a key character in the fight against the Count. Poe’s “The Facts in the Case

of M. Valdemar” also relies on scientific advances and experiments.

However it is during the 20th century when science acquires a more relevant role. As

Oakes highlights, “Many of the dark aspects of society reflected by American Gothic

fiction in the twentieth century stem from science and technology” (1), and he uses the

corpus of H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson and Stephen King to exemplify his thesis.

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For Oakes, the use of “extraordinary science” is a key resource in the modern Gothic

story. The revelation of a revolutionary scientific discovery tends to be scary

because radical ideas are more fightening. Concepts that can drastically change people’s

views of themselves or the world provide far greater opportunities for writers to raise

disturbing questions. (8)

The tremendous advances experienced in the last two centuries by science have derived

in the development of highly specialized fields of knowledge which require long

educational training to master. Science has become a dark field that sometimes is too far

away from the average citizen. This has created “an atmosphere of suspicion and fear

concerning these subjects” (9). In the particular case of Lovecraft, there is a tendency to

present science as the key that reveals a hidden truth which will produce enormous

suffering to the observer and probably to all humanity. The Faustian leitmotiv of the

forbidden knowledge which leads to the damnation of the protagonist has cosmic

dimensions in the narrative of the writer since the consequences of the discovery do not

reach just the character, but threatens all humanity. In fact, Lovecraft’s materialistic

view of humanity conceives it as just an accidental event in the immensity of the

universe, “an insignificant speck when set against the backdrop of an infinite cosmos”

(33). The universe (impersonated in the figure of the alien Elder Gods) is unaware of

our presence or, at best (or worst), does not care at all about our presence and science’s

revelations “will forever change humanity’s view of the universe and its place in it”

(29).17

17
In 1899 Stephen Crane wrote a brief poem, “A Man Said to the Universe” which anticipated much of
Lovecraft’s cosmicism:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

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 Communal Decay: Narratological and Ideological Analysis of H.P. Lovecraft’s Fiction

The prototypical Lovecraftian (anti)hero is a scholar, adventurer or man of science. As

will be proved in my category analysis in the following chapter, the vast majority of the

protagonists follow this profile. The scientific community was so relevant for Lovecraft

(who never attended the university) that he even created the fictional Miskatonic

University, first appearing in “Herbert West-Reanimator” in 1922 and set in Essex

County, Massachusetts. Miskatonic University is the place where most of his scholarly

characters work, from Herbert West himself to the expedition presented in At the

Mountains of Madness, and it is clearly based on the Ivy League group, including Yale,

Harvard, Cornell and, obviously, Brown University.18

The use of technology is closely linked to science. The alien creatures Lovecraft created

are many times presented as highly technologically developed. The Mi-go race

appearing in “The Whisperer in the Darkness”, for instance, is able to transport humans

to Pluto by moving their brains into a brain cylinder. The Elder Things from At the

Mountains of Madness also have advanced technology, and they are even able to create

new forms of life –the hideous shoggoths–. The use of advanced technology is,

however, mostly restricted to the Mythos. The human characters in Lovecraft’s fiction

do not normally have access to fantastic science-fiction artifacts. There are some further

exceptions, such as the machine created by Crawford Tillinghast in “From Beyond”,

which gives him access to parallel planes of existence. As Oakes mentions, science and

technology are used by Lovecraft in order to unsettle the reader. To that end, it is more

18
It is possible that Lovecraft had a complex due to his lack of formal education. In a letter to Rheinhart
Kleiner, in 1918, the writer cofesses that:
“I no more visit the Ladd Observatory or various other attractions of Brown University. Once I expected
to utilize them as a regularly entered student, and some day perhaps control some of them as a faculty
member. But having known them with this “inside” attitude, I am today unwilling to visit them as a
casual outsider and non-university barbarian and alien (Kleiner 152).”
The academic ambitions Lovecraft had –faculty member at Brown, which is set in Providence– were
definitely high, and together with his strongly curious and avid for knowledge personality he had, the
feeling of frustration that he might suffered is evident.
According to Leiber, “the Miskatonic faculty constitutes a kind of Lovecraftian utopia of highly
intelligent, aesthetically sensitive, yet tradition-minded scholars” (16).

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effective to give the monsters the ability to design and manipulate strange artifacts than

to allow human beings to do so. When the Mythos are the owners of the machines, the

feeling of “destabilization” comes from the strangeness produced by science and the

mysterious alien artifacts.19

In the previous chapter I presented the Žižekian framework I am going to use in the

forthcoming analysis of Lovecraft’s corpus. The triad of the Real is composed by the

symbolic Real, the imaginary Real and the real Real. The symbolic Real is a lexical

construction resulting from the unfruitful attempts to represent the Real, and according

to Graham it can be presented as a vertical gap (overuse of words with empty meaning

such as “unspeakable” or “unmentionable”) or a horizontal gap (produced by the

attempt to simultaneously describe the different sensorial qualities of the object,

overusing adjectives and creating a blurring effect in the description). The imaginary

Real, on the other hand, is a narratological resource in which the presence of the

uncanny slides inside the narration. Finally, the real Real is the result of the ideological

background of the author in the text, and it is represented by the other two elements of

the triad.

In my view, science is a key element in the process of symbolization of the Real

performed by H.P. Lovecraft in his literary corpus. The “destabilization” proposed by

Oakes can be also considered in terms of the dichotomy reality-Real, since this process

can be compared with the representation of the symbolic and the imaginary Real. For

example, the people from Innsmouth in “The Shadow over Innsmouth” have been

19
The use of advanced technology in his narrative moves Lovecraft towards the science-fiction genre. It
is not easy to include him in a particular literary movement, since his oeuvre moves from the Gothic to
science-fiction, from the weird tale (category proposed by S.T. Joshi in The Weird Tale, but already
anticipated by Lovecraft himself in The Supernatural Horror in Literature) to the fantastic narration. For
a more detailed discussion on genre, see chapter 5 in this dissertation.

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intermingling with the Deep Ones and their blood is now corrupted. 20 This is clearly

connected with the eugenics theories since the result is the communal decay of the

town. To anticipate the ideological reading I will propose in the corresponding chapter,

one may say that “The Shadow over Innsmouth” attacks the immigrant invasion and

intermingling with the Teutons of New England. The Real, the Thing Lovecraft cannot

understand, is the arrival of immigrants and their mixing with the Americans during the

first decades of the 20th century. Lovecraft is unable to assimilate the consequences of

the social movements that take place during his life, but at the same time he also seems

to be strongly shocked by the Darwinian and post-Darwinian theories that have been

summarized previously in this chapter. The consequences of the eugenistic hypotheses

scare him because they menace his own reality. Science, as pure knowledge, threatens

the symbolic Real of Lovecraft, since it comprises the fear of heredity and dissolution of

the Aryan blood purity. Then knowledge, in its Faustian sense, is a menace that comes

from the imaginary Real, since it offers glimpses of the fragility of the symbolic level:

Science highlights the inconsistencies of reality, and it becomes a source of discomfort

and uneasiness.21 It acts as a mechanism that reveals the contradictions of the symbolic

Real.22

On the contrary, applied scientific knowledge, represented by technological devices and

field studies, plays a different role. When applied sciences are present in Lovecraft’s

20
I will put forward an extensive analysis of this tale in chapter 7.
21
Matolcsy puts forward the following statement about the breach produced in the symbolic Real by
science:
“In the Lovecraftian text the central anomaly is not concentrated. It is scattered around the text, and, most
importantly, the various elements are built up gradually toward a climax. […] The anomalous phenomena
–facets of the central anomaly– ultimately reach the stage where some fundamental natural law or
scientific theory is contradicted to the point of intolerance.” (172)
Matolcsy, in spite of not mentioning the triad of the Real, is depicting the process of the imaginary Real
distorting reality through science, and the final rupture of the symbolic level when the laws of reality are
no more correct.
22
In words of Tyson:
“All that can be achieved through our sciences is the destruction of our comforting illusions, one after
another, until we have nothing to support us in a black void of despair through which we must fall for
eternity.” (170)

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 Chapter 4: Lovecraft and his scientific context

narrative, they normally produce a direct strike against the symbolic level.23 What this

attack provokes is the restructuration of the conditions of reality, since it normally

allows the apparition of new entities that were previously unknown (aliens, monsters,

etc.). The expedition that goes to the South Pole in At the Mountains of Madness, firmly

holds to science in order to explain the creatures frozen in the ice. The necropsy made to

an Old One (analyzed in depth in the corresponding chapter) is the perfect example of

the “cubist” gap of language produced by the imaginary Real, defined by Harman. The

long and objective report made by the scientist is so detailed and tries to depict the

creature so profusely that the final result is almost unimaginable. This process of failed

symbolization of the creature is the attack against the symbolic order. The incapacity of

describing the object implies that there is an alien creature that should not exist in

reality, but it is there, it is made present, and it has to be symbolized sooner or later.

Reality has to change in order to adopt this new structure.

So it is not easy to fix science into a singular and defined role in the internal structure of

the Lovecraftian tale. It is a key leitmotiv, relevant in most of his tales, but its function

varies from one text to another, and it can be present as part of the imaginary or real

Real, depending on the particular story, and it will always act as a menace for the

symbolic level (in the case of science as mechanism that reveals the contradictions of

reality), or as an aggression against reality (in the case of applied sciences, that change

the conditions of the symbolic order). The importance it has is unquestionable and has

to be carefully examined in order to draw its relevance in the ideological background of

the particular tale which is being analyzed.

23
Lovecraft was not especially fond of technological devices. As a sample, see the almost comical
defense of handwriting over the use of typewriter in one of his letters (SL III 337)

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