The Call of Cthulhu

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”

The story’s opening line is a famous statement of Lovecraft’s unique vision. The author saw human knowledge as a thin veneer over a reality too vast and horrifying to contemplate. The opening line is also ironic, as Thurston spends the whole story trying to “correlate” an especially horrifying set of facts. Indeed, the story is Thurston’s attempt at “correlation.”

“Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it.”

Here Thurston makes a distinction between the beliefs of theosophy, which include esoteric powers beyond human comprehension, and the Cthulhu Cult, which Thurston paints as a grotesque racialized perversion of theosophical beliefs and practices.

“The bas-relief was a rough rectangle less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in area; obviously of modern origin. Its designs, however, were far from modern in atmosphere and suggestion; for, although the vagaries of cubism and futurism are many and wild, they do not often reproduce that cryptic regularity which lurks in prehistoric writing.”

Thurston describes cubism and futurism as “wild,” referring to their non-Euclidean geometry and inspiration from African art. Wilcox’s bas relief tablet is a mystery because it conflates the modern and the prehistoric, a tension that exists throughout the story.

“It was from the artists and poets that the pertinent answers came, and I know that panic would have broken loose had they been able to compare notes. […] I half suspected the compiler of having asked leading questions, or of having edited the correspondence in corroboration of what he had latently resolved to see. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognizant of the old data which my uncle had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist.”

Here Thurston gives his reasons for suspecting that Wilcox had fabricated his stories to gain Angell’s attention. Thurston also suspects that his uncle may have encouraged his interviewees to provide the answers he wanted by referencing notes from other interviews. Eventually, after conducting his own interview, Thurston acknowledges that Wilcox’s accounts were authentic.

“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

The chant of the Cthulhu cultists repeats throughout the story, occurring first in dream fragments before it is heard by Legrasse and reported to Angell. Its alien sounds suggest the horror of the unknown as well as the fear of non-Anglo-American cultures that haunts the story.

“Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises heard by Legrasse’s men as they plowed on through the black morass toward the red glare and the muffled tom-toms.”

This passage links artistic tendencies to psychiatric disabilities and the irrational. Various forms of artistic expression are invoked to make sense of Cthulhu—sculpture, the tablet, poetry, singing and chanting, architecture, and visual art—even though the representations they create are incomplete. The inability to convey the experiences surrounding Cthulhu reinforces the theme that it is beyond human understanding.

“Examined at headquarters after a trip of intense strain and weariness, the prisoners all proved to be men of a very low, mixed-blooded, and mentally aberrant type. Most were seamen, and a sprinkling of negroes and mulattoes, largely West Indians or Brava Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, gave a coloring of voodooism to the heterogeneous cult.”

This passage exemplifies the racism at the heart of Lovecraft’s supernatural aesthetic. His supernatural “others” could not exist because if they were not tied to those whom he considers the lower races there would be no counterpoint to his concept of humanity. In Lovecraft’s worldview, only white people are considered human. Everyone else is part of an inherently hostile or indifferent universe, which is always threatening to destroy civilization.

“But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. […] The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by.”

Here, Old Castro explains the nature of the Old Ones. The explanation is important because it outlines the mythos that Lovecraft develops in his other Cthulhu stories. It is not clear if they cast the “spells” on themselves, or if the spells were cast on them by an even older, more powerful entity, but the spellcaster put the power to release the Old Ones into the hands of those whom they would destroy, namely humans.

“[T]hen mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy.”

Thurston reports something said by Old Castro. The Old Ones are not terrifying because they are evil; they are terrifying because human moral values are utterly meaningless to such ancient and powerful beings. For Lovecraft, mankind’s insignificance in the universe is more terrifying than any evil force.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie, / And with strange eons even death may die.”

These famous lines come from the Necronomicon, the fictional occult text that Lovecraft invented and that appears in many of his stories. These lines represent the paradox of the Old Ones, which is that their eternal death-like state can (or may) eventually outlast death itself.

“The authorities at Tulane University could shed no light upon either cult or image, and now the detective had come to the highest authorities in the country and met with no more than the Greenland tale of Professor Webb.”

The existence of Cthulhu—and even the existence of his cult—is a secret the authorities do not know. The repeated use of the word “authorities” is somewhat ironic. The academics not only are ignorant of Cthulhu, but they are also powerless and insignificant when considered from the perspective revealed by the existence of the Old Ones. At the same time, Lovecraft views these authorities as the bastions of Euro-American civilization. Academic knowledge and inquiry are closely bound up with the “authority” of that civilization.

“One thing which I began to suspect, and which I now fear I know, is that my uncle’s death was far from natural. He fell on a narrow hill street leading up from an ancient waterfront swarming with foreign mongrels, after a careless push from a negro sailor. I did not forget the mixed blood and marine pursuits of the cult-members in Louisiana, and would not be surprised to learn of secret methods and poison needles as ruthless and as anciently known as the cryptic rites and beliefs.” 

Thurston’s suspicion of non-white races is so strong that he finds it plausible that a Black sailor in Rhode Island could be an agent of a mysterious cult in Louisiana because they share the same race. The proximity of “foreign mongrels,” rather than a dart or needle, seems to be the real poison Thurston believes responsible for his uncle’s death.

“[T]he geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.” 

Non-Euclidean geometry is a mathematical discovery that plays a significant role in the theory of relativity. Here it also plays a role in the architecture of the Old Ones. This correlation reflects Lovecraft’s belief (and the story’s insistence) that scientific inquiry will one day reveal unbearable horrors.