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H. P. Lovecraft's The Beast In The Cave

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“The Beast in the Cave”, a short story written by notorious horror author, H.P. Lovecraft, chills readers to the bone as they drink in the rich imagery created by Lovecraft’s twisted mind. As the audience is immersed into the narrator’s world, a dark, claustrophobic cave, they feel the same horror and panic as the main character. How are they going to get out of that cave? What is that mysterious sound coming closer to them? Are they going to die in there? However, was fear the only reason Mr. Lovecraft penned this petrifying piece? Perhaps Lovecraft was trying to convey a deeper meaning beneath his dark text and thrilling conclusion. Maybe he was determined to shine a light on a simple flaw of human nature. Lovecraft may have been trying to …show more content…

His whole life, Howard Phillips suffered from a visage that made him appear sickly and even pushed his mother to describe him as “grotesque” (Cain). As a result, H.P. rarely left his residence. Lovecraft even went so far as to write, “I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous - that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn’t” (Lovecraft). For this reason, it can be made certain that numerous assumptions and conclusions were fabricated about Lovecraft, by those who were barely acquainted with him. As the main character in the story assumes that the sounds in the cave were those of a mountain fiend, “I was now convinced that I had by my own cries aroused and attracted some wild beast… (Lovecraft),” so too do the people around Lovecraft make assumptions about him. Not to mention, Lovecraft was fairly learned amongst a society that encouraged labor jobs, resulting in him constantly being the outcast. Finding the esoteric meaning in a piece written by H.P. Lovecraft may prove difficult, as it can be hard to look past the eeriness and gruesomeness of his works. However, if you are willing to be persistent, and have a desire to discover the deeper meanings of Lovecraft’s texts, you are most certain to find them. In “The Beast in the Cave”, the audience can use the context of the story and the language of the main character to surmise that Lovecraft was hoping to tell the world of how much he despised the assumptions society made of

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