First Response to H P Lovecraft’s The Outsider
This is my initial thoughts on the story, nothing too in depth. Warning, big spoiler, if you want to read the story do that first. It's here.
The beginning of this story reminded me somewhat of Gormenghast but with a more literal take on the idea of Titus Alone. Its mouldy, decaying castle is viscerally described and the infinite loneliness of the narrator is palpable. The nature of this castle with its immense forest is kept a mystery, but there is a hint that not all is as described when we're told the narrator believed himself young because he remembered so little. A failed memory and a life in a place that seems to exist outside the real world.
Only when the escape is made – and leads not to a high tower above the forest, but ground level in an aged churchyard does the mystery of the castle, a veritable crypt, become clear. From there it’s clear what must happen, the narrator must learn it is a dead thing crawled up from its grave, but Lovecraft spins the discovery out to full effect in both horror and sympathy.
The use of nepenthe to erase the sorrow through forgetfulness and allow the ghoul to be just that in some sense breaks the sympathy we might feel for it, but at the same time gives rise to an explanation behind the raison d’être of ghouls and ghosts everywhere. The horror, the otherness and extreme loneliness of their existence drives them to flee the light and take delight in scaring the living who shun them.
Calling the story the Outsider and giving the reader an attachment to the ghoul before revealing its nature allows Lovecraft to make the connection – is this a ghoul or a man shunned for being different? Obviously in the story it is a genuine undead being, but the metaphor is carefully woven so the simple horror of the story is twisted to an analogy of human existence and the loneliness of the ‘other’.
Until next time, keep dreaming!
The beginning of this story reminded me somewhat of Gormenghast but with a more literal take on the idea of Titus Alone. Its mouldy, decaying castle is viscerally described and the infinite loneliness of the narrator is palpable. The nature of this castle with its immense forest is kept a mystery, but there is a hint that not all is as described when we're told the narrator believed himself young because he remembered so little. A failed memory and a life in a place that seems to exist outside the real world.
Only when the escape is made – and leads not to a high tower above the forest, but ground level in an aged churchyard does the mystery of the castle, a veritable crypt, become clear. From there it’s clear what must happen, the narrator must learn it is a dead thing crawled up from its grave, but Lovecraft spins the discovery out to full effect in both horror and sympathy.
The use of nepenthe to erase the sorrow through forgetfulness and allow the ghoul to be just that in some sense breaks the sympathy we might feel for it, but at the same time gives rise to an explanation behind the raison d’être of ghouls and ghosts everywhere. The horror, the otherness and extreme loneliness of their existence drives them to flee the light and take delight in scaring the living who shun them.
Calling the story the Outsider and giving the reader an attachment to the ghoul before revealing its nature allows Lovecraft to make the connection – is this a ghoul or a man shunned for being different? Obviously in the story it is a genuine undead being, but the metaphor is carefully woven so the simple horror of the story is twisted to an analogy of human existence and the loneliness of the ‘other’.
Until next time, keep dreaming!
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