The Call of Cthulhu

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1928

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Themes

The Danger of Modernity and Limits of Human Knowledge

At the turn of the 20th century, branches of empirical science were closely linked with studies of the occult and spiritual realm. Scientific breakthroughs like Einstein’s theory of relativity and Freudian psychology, along with the great movement of modernization and industrialization in the West, created a rapidly changing, disorienting world. Life and society as people knew it was altered down to foundational beliefs in the universe and human nature. Increasing access to land and sea travel meant mass migration and increased intermingling of people from different cultures.

Although it is Cthulhu that threatens the human race, and the Cthulhu cultists who menace Thurston’s life, the real threat in “The Call of Cthulhu” is modernity. Lovecraft was socially conservative and, paradoxically, the “mongrel” races who align with the prehistorical Old Ones represent a grotesque vision of the future that Lovecraft envisioned if modernization is allowed to continue unchecked.

The story’s main theme is that humanity should know its limits and not search beyond them because too much knowledge will be our downfall. Thurston’s life is in danger because he has pursued forbidden knowledge. Possessing that knowledge has damaged him psychically to the point where death holds no terror: “I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me” (287). Just as Adam and Eve lost their innocence after eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, Thurston can never return to the state of blissful ignorance before he knew the secret terrors of the universe.

The Cthulhu Cult terrifies Thurston not because of the loathsomeness of Cthulhu’s appearance or the murderous frenzy of its worshippers, but because it reveals humanity’s cosmic insignificance. The modern art movements of cubism and futurism, which Thurston cites for their depictions of nonlinear space, and non-Euclidean geometry, which describes space as curved rather than operating on horizontal and vertical axes, show that aspects of the world exist beyond our powers of perception.

The Artistic Temperament, the Irrational, and “Madness”

Virtually every character in “The Call of Cthulhu” exhibits symptoms that align with a psychiatric disability, at least temporarily. Thurston suspects that his uncle’s inquiries into the cult began to affect his reason. The Cthulhu Cult seems to instill psychosis in its followers; of the cultists arrested in Louisiana, only two are “found sane enough to be hanged” (171). The sailor Briden is left a “laughing maniac” by his encounter with Cthulhu, and his mental health deteriorates to the point of death. Even distant brushes with Cthulhu leave their mark: Wilcox experiences frequent bouts of delirium, neurosis, and strange dreams, and Thurston, by story’s end, has become convinced of an international—indeed interstellar—conspiracy that his mind struggles to comprehend.

A particular link is made between people of an artistic temperament and Cthulhu’s call. When Angell interviews his acquaintances about their dreams, he finds that artists and poets had visions most like Wilcox’s (164). The non-white individuals who comprise the Cthulhu Cults are said to be in touch with the occult knowledge that allows them to participate in the Old Ones’ ancient, alien rituals. They are linked to the artists through the modern art movements of cubism and futurism, which like fauvism, took inspiration from non-Western cultures. Modernist artists held the view that “primitive” cultures had freer expression because they were not bound by the same civilizational restrictions as Europeans. The Cthulhu statuettes represent the link between the Cthulhu cultists, “madness,” and art.

Western and non-Western characters alike cannot approach the reality of what Cthulhu represents without risking their mental health. While the cultists’ psychiatric disabilities align with their worship of the Cthulhu, Wilcox’s and Thurston’s mental health conditions align with their resistance to the cosmic destruction Cthulhu represents. The story suggests that declining mental health is not a malfunction of the human intellect so much as a reasonable defensive response to an unbearable truth: that human life is insignificant and fragile.

Race and Civilization

For much of his life, Lovecraft believed in the intrinsic superiority of Anglo-Saxons to other races. He regarded “civilization”—including science and the arts—as an Anglo-American project, and he regarded mass immigration to the United States of non-Anglo-Saxons (including Irish Catholics) as a threat to that civilization.

Lovecraft’s racist theories shape “The Call of Cthulhu.” For example, as Cthulhu awakes, white and non-white people respond very differently. Most white people do not notice the creature’s call, and those who do respond sensitively and artistically: “a fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot hangs a blasphemous Dream Landscape in the Paris spring salon of 1926” (163). Non-white people respond with excitement that menaces white observers:

Voodoo orgies multiply in Haiti, and African outposts report ominous mutterings. American officers in the Philippines find certain tribes bothersome about this time, and New York policemen are mobbed by hysterical Levantines on the night of March 22-23 (163).

The Cthulhu cultists are all non-white, and they conduct their rituals in places where “civilization” has not reached: the swamps of rural Louisiana, the remote Greenland coast, the mountains of China, and the deserts of Arabia.

The story presents two terrors to its (presumed white) readership, one nested inside the other. The Old Ones menace humanity, and the marginalized non-white people of the globe menace “civilization,” which defines the limits between who is considered human and who is “other,” alien, or subhuman.

“The Call of Cthulhu” presents a vision of a universe so ancient and vast that human moral values are insignificant when viewed from a cosmic perspective. Thurston fears the Old Ones not because they are hostile to humans but because they are simply indifferent to civilization’s values. This fear is confirmed by Old Castro, who envisions a time when the Old Ones will make mankind “free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy” (168-69).

In pursuing his investigation, Thurston loses his rationalist perspective and is forced to confront the “other” on its own terms, taking him to the edge of his mental health. He initially seeks evidence of the cult out of curiosity, then for the self-serving reason of becoming famous as its discoverer. By the end of the story, he has succumbed to a grim compulsion to pursue the Cthulhu Cult. The journey alters his perspective, and he cannot return to his mindset before he discovered the cult. His final act in the story—recording and preserving his findings—is curiously ambivalent, since he points out that it would be better for him not to do it. The reader wonders how Thurston will live out the rest of his life, or if, as he believes, he will soon be dispatched by a shadowy cult who wants its existence to remain a secret.