"The Call of Cthulhu" is a cosmic horror

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by American writer

H. P. Lovecraft Howard Phillips Lovecraft (, ; August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer of Weird fiction, weird, Science fiction, science, fantasy, and horror fiction. He is best known for his creation of the Cthulhu Mythos. Born in Provi ...

. 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 until around 1955. The term "pulp" derives from the Pulp (paper), wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed, due to their ...

Weird Tales ''Weird Tales'' is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine founded by J. C. Henneberger and J. M. Lansinger in late 1922. The first issue, dated March 1923, appeared on newsstands February 18. The first editor, Edwin Baird, printe ...

'' in February 1928. The story is a founding document of the

Cthulhu Mythos The Cthulhu Mythos is a mythopoeia and a shared fictional universe, originating in the works of American Horror fiction, horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. The term was coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent and protégé of Lovecraft, t ...

, a

mythopoeia Mythopoeia (, ), or mythopoesis, is a subgenre of speculative fiction, and a theme in modern literature and film, where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose fiction, prose, poetry, or other literary forms. T ...

and shared fictional universe expanded upon by Lovecraft and successors.

Plot

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

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

linguistic professor George Gammell Angell, after his death in the winter of 1926–27. Among the notes is a small

bas-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

sculpture of a scaly creature which yields "simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature." The sculptor, a

Rhode Island Rhode Island ( ) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Is ...

art student named Henry Anthony Wilcox, based the work on delirious dreams of "great

Cyclopean Cyclopean masonry is a type of masonry, stonework found in Mycenaean Greece, Mycenaean architecture, built with massive limestone boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal Engineering tolerance, clearance between adjacent stones and with clay ...

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 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 pantheon ...

and R'lyeh are found in Wilcox's papers. Angell also discovers reports of

mass hysteria Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for c ...

around the world. More notes discuss a 1908 meeting of an archeological society in which

New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...

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 Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...

. 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 ''Eskimo'' () is a controversial exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Canadian Inuit, and the Greenlandic Inuit) and the Yupik (or Yuit) of eastern Siberia and Alaska. A ...

" 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 A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland or other lands east of the Cape of Good Hope who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the mid-20th centur ...

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 In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean ge ...

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, and hopes in vain that it will be destroyed following his death.

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

Lovecraft himself had sculpted. The curator initially scoffs at him for trying to sell something that was 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 Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into blank books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such 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.

scholar Robert M. Price claims the irregular

sonnet A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with a structure traditionally consisting of fourteen lines adhering to a set Rhyme scheme, rhyming scheme. The term derives from the Italian word ''sonetto'' (, from the Latin word ''sonus'', ). Originating in ...

" The Kraken", published in 1830 by

Alfred Tennyson Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (; 6 August 1809 – 6 October 1892) was an English poet. He was the Poet Laureate during much of Queen Victoria's reign. In 1829, Tennyson was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal at Cambridge for one of ...

, 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 and David E. Schultz cited other literary inspirations: Guy de Maupassant's " The Horla" (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 Arthur Machen ( or ; 3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh people, Welsh author and mysticism, mystic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for his influential supernatural ...

's "

The Novel of the Black Seal ''The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations'' is an episodic horror fiction, horror novel by Welsh people, Welsh writer Arthur Machen, first published in 1895 in literature, 1895 in The Bodley Head's Keynotes Series. It was revived in pape ...

" (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'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 Dunsany (; 24 July 1878 – 25 October 1957), commonly known as Lord Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist. He published more than 90 books during his lifetime, and his output consist ...

, who wrote '' The Gods of Pegana'' (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 ...

. 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 Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer, prolific in many genres. He wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, hist ...

' ''

The War of the Worlds ''The War of the Worlds'' is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in '' Pearson's Magazine'' in the UK and ''Cosmopolitan'' magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was ...

'' 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.

Literary significance and reception

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 first rejected the story, and only accepted it after writer Donald Wandrei, 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, 1906 – June 11, 1936) was an American writer who wrote pulp magazine, pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. He created the character Conan the Barbarian and is regarded as the father of the sword and sor ...

(creator of

Conan the Barbarian Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero created by American author Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) and who debuted in 1932 and went on to appear in a series of fantasy stories published in ''We ...

) 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 Michel Houellebecq (; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. H ...

, 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 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

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