Week 6

What is the philosophy of cosmicism and how is it used to convey a sense of dread in both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space?

First what is cosmicism as stated by the Wiktionary cosmicism is “The literary philosophy developed by the American writer H P Lovecraft, stating that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as God, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence.”(cosmicism 2020) from this alone we can infer alot especially in the context of the texts of Shadow Over Innsmouth and the Colour out of Space during one scene of the colour out of space where the Hydrologist was staring into the eyes of the now mutated teenage girl he could see a world a world that was not our own maybe it was the future what was to become of earth maybe it was the home world of what ever had contaminated and mutated the residents of the forested area,One thing that was to be discerned was that there was no human presence nor of any life that wasn’t part of the one the giant worm creature that inhabited the planet in her eyes.After the area was annihilated as the creature had either returned home or traveled somewhere else and the surrounding area consumed by water of the newly built dam we hear the hydrologist talk about how this wasnt the end and something would be coming and we see the mutated pink praying mantis that was the first creature mutated flying across the screen showing that the thing was still here.

Shadow over Innsmouth the dread that is conveyed is through the near limitless number of the creatures that seemed to have been spawned by earth that were anthropomorphic in nature but with fish heads ‘blasphemous fish-frogs'(LOVECRAFT, 1936) as they were called in text being as they are near limitless in number with horrific visages you can see they they understand from the line “It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of this earth”(LOVECRAFT, 1936) that they understood that life was over and that the creatures that had come about in never ending numbers would be taking over.

Cosmicism. (n.d.). Retrieved September 06, 2020, from https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cosmicism

LOVECRAFT, H. (1936). SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH. Visionary Publishing Company.