An analysis of the american gothic aspects in the short story the outsider by hp lovecraft

Amazingly, he finds himself not at the great height he anticipated, but at ground level in another world. Keats and company were brilliant poets, but they could get pretty purple when the mood suited, and no one ever accused them of emotional understatement.

Although an ugly vampire — Never mind, on to Lesson Two: At the onset of the story, it is revealed that he has lived for years in the castle but cannot recall any person ever being there except for himself.

He decides to climb the ruined staircase of the high castle tower that seems to be his only hope for an escape. Such a lot the gods gave to me — to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken.

As he moves towards one of the rooms alcoves, he detects a presence and approaches it slowly.

Many of his works, comprising some sixty short stories, were published in the magazine Weird Tales, and a number of his stories were reprinted in anthologies of horror fiction beginning in the late s.

The narrator opens the gate with care, fearful of a great fall. The description of the climb up the tower caused my heart to race, sensing that some terrible secret lay at the top, or that some dire event would occur upon reaching the summit.

He has come to witness human life and has been immediately shunned from it due to his appearance. Upon coming to the castle that he finds "maddeningly familiar," the narrator sees a gathering of people at a party within.

Longing for some type of human contact, he climbs through a window into the room. The idea that the Mythos can be actively welcoming is one I still find appealing, and one that Lovecraft himself rarely acknowledges quite so overtly.

The formation of personal identity based upon material evidence, whether that evidence is gathered from external appearance or from the internal biological structure of the human, is always in danger of reducing the person to a sum of his or her parts.

I dunno, hang out with ghouls. Accept yourself, no matter how bad you think you look or are. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and dissolution; the putrid dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful baring of that which the merciful earth should always hide.

I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. In a few stories the Old Ones can be banished by various magical defenses, but, for the most part, once they are reanimated, they are invulnerable; only accident, luck, or whim saves humanity.

The story may also have been inspired in part by Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man", in which a man dreams that he is walking down Broadway in a burial shroud, only understanding the shocked reaction of passersby when he sees his reflection in a shop window. The effect is even stronger should the reader not be directly aware of it.

At a year and a half he is as big as a four-year-old; at ten he is fully grown; at thirteen he assumes the role of an adult—and a height of more than seven feet.

The craving for light and gaiety drives him onward, through a land of ruins to a castle in a wooded park. The two lived together in Brooklyn until they separated two years later, and Lovecraft returned to Providence. The narrator approaches and screams—his first and last vocalization—when he perceives the abomination beyond the arch.

One could discern that the company present in the festivities have also made this error in judgment and cannot understand what they see when the narrator first appears, exemplified by their erratic behavior. All but Johansen and one other are killed; chased by Cthulhu they flee and survive by ramming the monster head-on.

To relieve the darkness, the narrator stares at candles. However, this time it has been made worse because what he has lost was no longer a vague idea from a book but a tangible thing held out of his grasp. Although none of these readings is completely satisfying, they all have some merit and illustrate the important point: The power of the Cthulhu Mythos lies in the fact that, despite the clumsiness, turgidity, and triteness of much of the writing, it presents a powerful metaphorical construct of the modern world and the extremely precarious place of human beings in it.

Unfortunately, though, the world has changed, and there is no longer a place where he belongs. The Supernatural in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Outsider One of H.P. Lovecraft’s many short stories, “The Outsider” has been praised since its publication as his most profound and meaningful.

This story has been interpreted many different ways, varying from an autobiography of Lovecraft himself to several different philosophical analyses. "The Outsider" Character Analysis.

Upon first reading H.P. Lovecraft's tale, "The Outsider", seems difficult to characterize. When it is read again, however, the confusion clearly stems from the reader's lack of information.

Lovecraft intentionally keeps his audience in the dark to add to the suspense, mystery, and shock of the story. "The Outsider" is a short story by American horror writer H.

P. Lovecraft. Written between March and Augustit was first published in Weird Tales, April In this work, a mysterious man who has been living alone in a castle for as long as he can remember decides to break free in search of human contact.4/5.

Feb 25,  · In H.P. Lovecraft wrote “The Outsider”, a short story that was first seen in Weird Tales, a magazine which featured writings of the Horror and Fantasy genres. Despite “The Outsider” being labeled as Horror in this particular instance, over time it. Aug 30,  · "The Outsider" classic horror fiction by H.P.

Lovecraft ― performed by Otis Jiry "The Outsider" is a short story by American writer H.P. Lovecraft. "The Outsider" is one of Lovecraft's. An Analysis of the American Gothic Aspects in the Short Story The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft PAGES 5. WORDS 1, View Full Essay. More essays like this: Not sure what I'd do without @Kibin - Alfredo Alvarez, student @ Miami University.

Exactly what I needed. - Jenna Kraig, student @ UCLA.

An analysis of the american gothic aspects in the short story the outsider by hp lovecraft