Cool Air Lovecraft Analysis

Waiting on every exhausting whim of an 18 year old preserved corpse sounds absurd and impossible, but for H.P. Lovecraft’s first person narrator in “Cool Air” it is a shocking reality. The strategic application of first person point of view keeps the reader on edge with a limited view. Any other point of view would reveal too much information on the pivotal Doctor Muñoz, and not allow access to the narrator's thoughts and emotions. First person point of view in H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air” connects the reader to the emotions of the narrator and keeps critical plot information a mystery. In the crazy, bizarre story “Cool Air”, the ability to get inside the narrator’s head is an essential aspect of the plot. If the story were not set in first person, the narrator’s thoughts of confusion, fear, and dedication would cease to exist. Within the first few paragraphs of “Cool Air” the narrator wastes no time delving right into these emotions. To set the stage the narrator utters, “You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day”(Lovecraft 486). The tone of the narrator is established here. The

Some may argue however, witnessing “Cool Air” unfold through a third person narrator may not affect the connection, it could not possibly happen since nowhere is closer to the narrator than inside his own mind. With any other point of view always something always separates the reader and the main character. Gotham Writers’ Workshop describes the direct relationship, “There’s nothing standing between this character’s consciousness and the reader”(Gotham Writers’ Workshop 79). The described connection to the character’s consciousness forces the reader to experience everything along with the narrator without any