"The Call of Cthulhu" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in the summer of 1926, it was first published in the

pulp magazine Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...

'' Weird Tales'' in February 1928.

Inspiration

The first seed of the story's first chapter ''The Horror in Clay'' came from one of Lovecraft's own dreams he had in 1919, which he described briefly in two different letters sent to his friend Rheinhart Kleiner on May 21 and December 14, 1920. In the dream, Lovecraft is visiting an antiquity museum in Providence, attempting to convince the aged curator there to buy an odd bas-relief Lovecraft himself had sculpted. The curator initially scoffs at him for trying to sell something recently made to a museum of antique objects. Lovecraft then remembers himself answering the curator: This can be compared to what the character of Henry Anthony Wilcox tells the main character's uncle while showing him his sculpted bas-relief for help in reading hieroglyphs on it which came through Wilcox's own fantastical dreams: Lovecraft then used this for a brief synopsis of a new story outlined in his own '' Commonplace Book'' at first in August 1925, which developed organically out of the idea of what the bas-relief in the dream actually might have depicted. In a footnote for his writing down of his own dream, Lovecraft then finished with the suggestion "Add good development & describe nature of bas-relief" to himself for future reference.

Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth August William Derleth (February 24, 1909 – July 4, 1971) was an ...

scholar Robert M. Price claims the irregular

sonnet A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in the poetry composed at the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the Sicilian city of Palermo. The 13th-century poet and notary Giacomo da Lentini is credited with the sonnet's invention, ...

" The Kraken", published in 1830 by Alfred Tennyson, was a major inspiration, since both reference a huge aquatic creature sleeping for an eternity at the bottom of the ocean and destined to emerge from its slumber in an apocalyptic age.

S. T. Joshi Sunand Tryambak Joshi (born June 22, 1958) is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers. Career His literary criticis ...

and David E. Schultz cited other literary inspirations: Guy de Maupassant's "

The Horla "The Horla" (French: ''Le Horla'') is an 1887 short horror story written in the style of a journal by the French writer Guy de Maupassant, after an initial, much shorter version published in the newspaper ''Gil Blas'', October 26, 1886. The ...

" (1887), which Lovecraft described in '' Supernatural Horror in Literature'' as concerning "an invisible being who...sways the minds of others, and seems to be the vanguard of a horde of extraterrestrial organisms arrived on Earth to subjugate and overwhelm mankind"; and Arthur Machen's "

The Novel of the Black Seal ''The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations'' is an episodic horror novel by British writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynotes Series. It was revived in paperback by Ballantine Books as the forty-eighth vo ...

" (1895), which uses the same method of piecing together of disassociated knowledge (including a random newspaper clipping) to reveal the survival of a horrific ancient being. It is also assumed he got inspiration from

William Scott-Elliot William Scott-Elliot (sometimes incorrectly spelled Scott-Elliott) (1849–1919) was a theosophist who elaborated Helena Blavatsky's concept of root races in several publications, most notably ''The Story of Atlantis'' (1896) and ''The Lost Lemuria ...

's ''The Story of Atlantis'' (1896) and ''The Lost Lemuria'' (1904), which Lovecraft read in 1926 shortly before he started to work on the story. Price also notes that Lovecraft admired the work of

Lord Dunsany Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (; 24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957, usually Lord Dunsany) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist. Over 90 volumes of fiction, essays, poems and plays appeared in his lifetime.Lanham, M ...

, who wrote ''

The Gods of Pegana ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'' (1905), which depicts a god constantly lulled to sleep to avoid the consequences of its reawakening. Another Dunsany work cited by Price is ''A Shop in Go-by Street'' (1919), which stated "the heaven of the gods who sleep", and "unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while he sleeps being still deep in slumber". The "slight earthquake" mentioned in the story is likely the

1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake The 1925 Charlevoix–Kamouraska earthquake struck northeastern North America on February 28, reaching 6.2 on the moment magnitude scale. It was one of the most powerful measured in Canada in the 20th century, with a maximum perceived intensity o ...

. S.T. Joshi has also cited A. Merritt's novella ''The Moon Pool'' (1918) which Lovecraft 'frequently rhapsodied about'. Joshi says that 'Merritt's mention of a "moon-door" that, when tilted, leads the characters into a lower region of wonder and horror seems similar to the huge door whose inadvertent opening by the sailors causes Cthulhu to emerge from R'lyeh'. Edward Guimont has argued that H. G. Wells' '' The War of the Worlds'' was an influence on "The Call of Cthulhu", citing the thematic similarities of ancient, powerful, but indifferent aliens associated with deities; physical similarities between Cthulhu and the Martians; and the plot detail of a ship ramming an alien in a temporarily successful but ultimately futile gesture.

Plot

The narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, recounts his discovery of notes left behind by his grand-uncle,

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

linguistic professor George Gammell Angell, after his death in the winter of 1926–27. Among the notes is a small bas-relief sculpture of a scaly creature which yields "simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature." The sculptor, a Rhode Island art student named Henry Anthony Wilcox, based the work on delirious dreams of "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths." Frequent references to

Cthulhu Cthulhu is a fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was first introduced in his short story "The Call of Cthulhu", published by the American pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' in 1928. Considered a Great Old One within the pan ...

and R'lyeh are found in Wilcox's papers. Angell also discovers reports of mass hysteria around the world. More notes discuss a 1908 meeting of an archeological society in which New Orleans police official John Raymond Legrasse asks attendees to identify a statuette of unidentifiable greenish-black stone resembling Wilcox's sculpture. It is then revealed that the previous year, Legrasse and a party of policemen found several women and children being used in a ritual by an all-male

cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...

. After killing five of the cultists and arresting 47 others, Legrasse learns that they worship the "Great Old Ones" and await the return of a monstrous being called Cthulhu.Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu", p. 139. The prisoners identify the statuette as "great Cthulhu." One of the academics present at the meeting, Princeton professor William Channing Webb, describes a group of " Esquimaux" with similar beliefs and fetishes. Thurston discovers a 1925 article from an Australian newspaper which reports the discovery of a derelict ship, the ''Alert'', of which second mate Gustaf Johansen is the sole survivor. Johansen reports that the ''Emma'' was attacked by a heavily armed yacht named the ''Alert''. The crewmen of the ''Emma'' killed those aboard the ''Alert'', but lost their own ship in the battle, commandeered the ''Alert'', and discovered an uncharted island in the vicinity of co-ordinates of . With the exception of Johansen and another man, the remaining crew died on the island. Johansen does not reveal the manner of their death. Upon traveling to Australia, Thurston views a statue retrieved from the ''Alert'' which is identical to the previous two. In Norway, he learns that Johansen died suddenly after an encounter with "two Lascar sailors". Johansen's widow provides Thurston with her late husband's manuscript, wherein the uncharted island is described as being home to a "nightmare corpse-city" called R'lyeh. Johansen's crew struggled to comprehend the non-Euclidean geometry of the city and accidentally released Cthulhu, resulting in their deaths. Johansen and one crewmate fled aboard the ''Alert'' and were pursued by Cthulhu. Johansen rammed the yacht into the creature's head, only for its injury to regenerate. The ''Alert'' escaped, but Johansen's crewmate died. After finishing the manuscript, Thurston realizes he is now a target of Cthulhu's worshippers.

Literary significance and criticism

Lovecraft regarded the short story as "rather middling—not as bad as the worst, but full of cheap and cumbrous touches". ''Weird Tales'' editor

Farnsworth Wright Farnsworth Wright (July 29, 1888 – June 12, 1940) was the editor of the pulp magazine ''Weird Tales'' during the magazine's heyday, editing 179 issues from November 1924 to March 1940. Jack Williamson called Wright "the first great fantasy ...

first rejected the story, and only accepted it after writer

Donald Wandrei Donald Albert Wandrei (20 April 1908 – 15 October 1987)Minnesota Death Certificates Index
. ...

, a friend of Lovecraft's, falsely claimed that Lovecraft was thinking of submitting it elsewhere. The published story was regarded by

Robert E. Howard Robert Ervin Howard (January 22, 1906June 11, 1936) was an American writer. He wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He is well known for his character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subge ...

(creator of Conan the Barbarian) as "a masterpiece, which I am sure will live as one of the highest achievements of literature.... Mr. Lovecraft holds a unique position in the literary world; he has grasped, to all intents, the worlds outside our paltry ken". Lovecraft scholar Peter Cannon regarded the story as "ambitious and complex...a dense and subtle narrative in which the horror gradually builds to cosmic proportions", adding "one of ovecraft'sbleakest fictional expressions of man's insignificant place in the universe". French novelist Michel Houellebecq, in his book '' H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life'', described the story as the first of Lovecraft's "great texts". Canadian mathematician Benjamin K. Tippett noted that the phenomena described in Johansen's journal may be interpreted as "observable consequences of a localized bubble of spacetime curvature", and proposed a suitable mathematical model.

E. F. Bleiler Everett Franklin Bleiler (April 30, 1920 – June 13, 2010) was an American editor, bibliographer, and scholar of science fiction, detective fiction, and fantasy literature. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he co-edited the first "year's best" s ...

has referred to "The Call of Cthulhu" as "a fragmented essay with narrative inclusions".E.F. Bleiler, ''Supernatural Fiction Writers'' Vol, NY: Scribners, 1985, p. 478 The story, published more than a decade before World War II, is interesting for its use of the word " holocaust" as a metaphor for a global massacre.

Notes

References

* Definitive version. * With explanatory footnotes. * A collection of works that inspired and were inspired by ''The Call of Cthulhu'', with commentary.

External links