Week 6: Horror

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?

The philosophy of cosmicism was developed by H.P Lovecraft an American writer that naturalistic fusion of horror and science fiction which is known as ‘Lovecraftian Horror’. A common theme in Lovecrafts novels was fear of the unknown fear of species or an entity that is beyond our understanding as said my Lovecraft himself “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” this theme can be seen as comicism which is conveyed in Lovecrafts work such as, The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space.

Lovecraft’s ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ has a supernatural entity which is called the ‘deep ones’ who are half human and fish hybrids that take control over the town as the inbreeds change fully into hybrids they lose their humanity while gaining immortality in the story they are described as repulsive. The cosmicism horror is shown through the protagonist Robert Olmstead who in the end turns about be a descendant of the ‘deep ones’ which leaves him in a state of shock which ultimately leads him to insanity because he fears of what will become of him. This theme of the unknown is repeated once again in Lovecrafts ‘The Colour out of Space’ where a meteorite crashes into a family’s garden the meteorite is from an exoplanet which is occupied tentacle entities the meteorite has an unknown energy beyond human understanding it mutates and kills anything that is around it. This classic weird horror themed story by Lovecraft shows that his stories were consistence with the theme of fear of the unknown.

Lovecrafts stories start of as uncertainty which quickly coverts into dreadful horror beyond humans capacity to comprehend as Slåtten (2016) writes in his article “idea of “cosmicism” which consists in the notion that humanity is utterly insignificant in and in relation to the cosmos-at large” Which shows, that cosmicism is used as dread in both The Shadow Over Innsmouth and The Colour out of Space and many other stories by H.P Lovecraft he used cosmicsim to simply reinforce the readers natural fear of the unknown because it is the oldest feeling that humans have. He uses it in his interest to create dread and horror in the readers minds which ultimately keeps them captured into his weird stories.

References:

Slåtten, K. Ø. (2016). Humans in a hostile cosmos: Science, cosmicism and race in HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Master’s thesis. University of Stavanger, Norway.

Jones, N. (2020). Lovecraftian Horror Video Lecture. Retrieved from AUT Blackboard.

Wikipedia. (n.d.). The shadow over innsmouth. Retrieved october 10, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow_over_Innsmouth