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Fear In H. P. Lovecraft's The Colour Out Of Space

1497 Words6 Pages

Fear plays a big part in everyone’s lives. While not everyone will admit it, everyone is scared of something. There is a lot that isn’t known about the world and everything in it. For some this is a tool that can be used to develop horror in literature as well as many other things. “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”(H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”) This quote which has been stated by H.P. Lovecraft himself in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” reflects a big aspect of his writing. Lovecraft’s works make use of the unknown; the fear of it. By referring to the supernatural, things that are not known or widely understood, Lovecraft …show more content…

Lovecraft as well. This story is a first person narrative of a surveyor who journeys to a place referred to by the locals of Arkham as “blasted heath.” The surveyor is told of a mysterious meteor that had crashed onto the land. The mysterious meteor never cooled but began shrinking and was impossible to describe. Over the course of a year, all crops nearby the crash begin to alter in mysterious ways and eventually Nahum Gardner, the owner of the farm, and his family all die. As the narrator and a few others go to check a well that is by the house, they discover many remains at the bottom of it after which the “colour” begins to pour out and spread across the land before eventually returning to the …show more content…

Lovecraft tells a short story about protagonist Randolph Carter who is again with a good friend. This time around Carter’s friend, Joel Manton, and Carter are sitting around a cemetery in which Carter tells Manton about a mysterious entity that haunts the house and surrounding area. Since this entity cannot be described by the five senses it gains the name of the unnamable. Both men are attacked by the unnamable and wake up in a hospital with multiple injuries. The object is described as “It was everywhere — a gelatin — a slime — yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes — and a blemish. It was the pit — the maelstrom — the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the unnamable!” (H.P. Lovecraft, “The Unnamable”) The unnamable is the source of horror in this piece of literature by Lovecraft. Like the unknown realm, and the colour, this is also another entity that the reader isn’t told a lot about. The characters describe it as an object that they can’t give a name to. It is described as something that can’t be perceived by the senses. All that is known that it left both men severely injured and hospitalized a few days. Just as the underworld and the colour in “The Statement of Randolph Carter” and “The Colour Out of Space” respectively, this piece also left the horror to the imagination of the

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