Reyes (2014), describes Body Horror as being a “fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.” How do The Colour out of Space and Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth make use of this definition to explore themes of the unknown?

One example of the use of body horror in ‘The Colour Out of Space’ by H.P. Lovecraft is the deaths of three members of the Gardner family at the center of the story. One by one, Thaddeus, Nabby and Nahun, son, wife and husband, all fall victim to a horrific death brought on by the alien entity that has overtaken the farm following the meteorite’s fall. The nature of their deaths falls firmly into the category of ‘body horror’ – however, the audience is not entirely privy to what this death looks like initially. The first death, Thaddeus’, is given little description, as in the text, Ammi is only told of the death by Thaddeus’ father Nahun. The death and it’s nature is only given a single sentence; ‘The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room, and it had come in a way that could not be told.’ (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927)

While, initially, this line could easily be looked over, upon subsequent readings and analysis, it actually serves to emphasize the body horror aspect of the deaths of the family, which are expanded upon with Nabby and Nahun’s deaths. It does this by introducing, early on, the idea that the nature of death was not comprehensible to the human mind – a key aspect of body horror in the definition provided by Reyes, ‘fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.’ (Reyes, 2014)

In The Colour Out of Space, in the very same sentence that human death is introduced, so too is it’s psychological impact (and incomprehensibility), before the author even begins to dive into the visuals of it. It is this which makes the text not just an effective body horror text (although this is clearly true), but also an effective horror, as it shows an intent to not simply shock the audience with frightening visuals, but to disturb them on a psychological level and disrupt the audience’s knowledge and expectations of the world. While it is a key aspect of body horror, aiming to inspire fear in the audience by targeting the intrinsic human fear of the unknown is a key aspect in horror fiction in general. It was a key aspect for the works of H.P. Lovecraft, as well, who remains famed for the presence of the unknown within his works. Dubbing it the ‘cosmic mystery’ or ‘weirdness’, in the essay, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’, Lovecraft writes that, ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’. (Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927)

While the psychological aspect of body horror is arguably that which makes it most effective in disturbing the audience and therefore that which should be focused on, the visuals should not be brushed over, either. In ‘The Colour Out of Space’, the audience is finally shown – as any reader can be shown in a written text – the nature of the alien death with Nabby and Nahun. For the first, it is through Ammi’s eyes as he discovers Nabby’s half-dead body. For the first time the reader is given visual clues as Ammi describes Nabby’s body in the corner of the attic, ‘But the terrible thing about this horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble’. (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927) The movement of the body – incredibly slow – and the single word ‘crumble’ both go against regular, ‘natural’ human behaviour and decay as the reader would know it, falling in line with the already introduced psychological aspect of the unnatural. While this is not expanded much further with Nabby’s death, it doesn’t need to be, as very shortly after comes the death of Nahun. This final death of the Gardner family is a key point in the text as it seems to be the point in which the possession of the farm by the alien entity and it’s horrible effects go from rumour and inference to known by the protagonist who’s eyes the reader sees through, Ammi. Nahun’s death is described extensively (especially in comparison to the previous deaths); ‘collapse, greying and disintegration’, ‘a horrible brittleness…dry fragments were scaling off’, ‘the distorted parody that had been a face’,  and ‘cleft, bulging lips’. (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927)  These descriptions are entirely devoted to producing the image of something inhuman and unnatural in the minds of the reader. Falling in line with the description of the visual aspect of body horror provided by Reyes – ‘the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered’ (Reyes, 2014) – while not being the only instance of body horror in the text, it stands as an example of the introduction and then realization of body horror within the text, as the seed of fear of the unknown that was planted in the minds of the readers with Thaddeus’ death is completely realized, in horrifying visuality, with Nahun’s death.

References

Lovecraft, H. (1927). Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Lovecraft, H. (1927). The Colour Out of Space. In H. Gernsback, Amazing Stories. New York: Experimenter Publishing.

Reyes, X. A. (2014). Body Horror. In X. A. Reyes, Body Gothic : Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror (pp. 52-74). University of Wales Press.