The Call of Cthulhu - Review
The Call of Cthulhu is an amazing short story with
intriguing mysteries, fascinating lore, great philosophical themes, and a
haunting ending that I can’t stop thinking about. It’s a great
introductory story to the bigger world of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
For those of you who haven’t read this story and also for those who
already have, I highly recommend you read the illustrated edition by
Francois Baranger. His gorgeous artwork superbly brings this story to
life on an epic scale and it enhances your reading experience. I’ll
provide some of his artwork throughout this review so you can get a
little preview of how amazing his work is. This is a really short story
so the format and length of this review will be much different. This
review will include spoilers and it will cover the 3 chapters/sections
of this brief story.
Image: Cthulhu rising from the seas.
[Chapter 1 - The Horror In Clay]:
The narrator of the story is Francis Wayland Thurston. In this 1st chapter, he’s looking through notes and boxes left behind by his great-uncle, George Gammel Angell, a prominent professor of Semitic Languages and Ancient Inscriptions, who was killed in 1926 and all his belongings were passed on to Francis. In one box, Francis finds a terrifying bas-relief sculpture which his mind can barely comprehend. It has a tentacled head like an octopus and a grotesque and scaly body with wings like a dragon, but it also has characteristics of a human body. Sifting through his great-uncle’s notes which were written and compiled in March 1925, Francis finds out the sculpture was made by Henry Anthony Wilcox, who has been having strange dreams of indescribable cities and heard something below emitting a sound unheard of to human ears, but all he could make out was “Cthulhu fhtagn”. Professor Angell tracked Henry down to find out more information and a few weeks later, Henry started becoming deliriously ill and rambled on about a “gigantic thing miles high, walking or lumbering about”. Francis finds out that several other people have had similar dreams around the same period Henry was deliriously ill.
This chapter was fascinating. H.P. Lovecraft does a good job at providing evocative imagery, from the way he describes the bas-relief sculpture to the eerie dream that Henry Wilcox recounts. This is my 1st time reading a story in 1st-person perspective and I don’t know if every other story that uses this perspective does this as well but I really enjoyed the way it was written, of how the narrator is reading a dead professor’s manuscript and conveying the story to us through his shock and curiosity. I also enjoyed the conspiratorial nature of this chapter because the way Professor Angell died was suspicious and the narrator Francis had suspicions about the sculptor Henry having secrets and purposely omitting information.
The 2nd chapter refers to another part of Professor Angell’s manuscript which records his experiences back in 1908 with Police Inspector John Raymond Legrasse. Inspector Legrasse brings a statuette (similar to the sculpture from the first chapter) to several professors and academics at an annual meeting at the American Archaeological Society. The Inspector confiscated the statuette from a cult-bust in the swamps south of New Orleans. He re-tells the professors of his cult search in the swamps back in 1907 and how he came across a horrifying scene of a cult worshiping and sacrificing humans while repeating a weird phrase and the only words similar to that of Henry Wilcox’s dream in the 1st chapter was “Cthulhu fhtagn”. The prisoners from the cult identify the statuette as a portrait of Cthulhu and they translate the mysterious phrase as: “In his house at R’yleh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”. Of all the academics at the 1908 meeting, Professor William Channing Webb says he once went on an expedition to Greenland in 1860 where he came across a weird cult of devil-worshipers who were chanting the exact same phrase and had the same sort of statuette.
This chapter was phenomenal. The scene of the actual cult worshiping was very creepy and I loved the detective/noir feel of this chapter as the narrator was piecing together all the clues from this manuscript and the one from the previous chapter. One of my favorite parts of this chapter was the ominous tale that Castro (one of the arrested cult members) was telling the Inspector that he sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. He said there were aeons when other “things” called The Great Old Ones ruled the earth and they had great cyclopean cities, whose remnants can be found on islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Old Ones came from the stars, they weren’t made of flesh and blood, and they could plunge from world to world throughout the sky. They lie dormant now but when the stars align with the earth, they would come alive again and bring absolute destruction. H.P. Lovecraft builds fascinating and intriguing lore in just one brief chapter. I couldn’t even imagine what he would have done with a 300-500+ page book.
Image: Police Inspector John Raymond Legrasse searching for the Cult of Cthulhu.
[Chapter 3 - The Madness From The Sea]:
In the 3rd and final chapter, the narrator Francis reads a newspaper article from April 1925 of the discovery of a broken-down ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with only 1 survivor (Sailor Gustaf Johansen). The sailors were attacked by another ship but the surviving crew-members were able to flee to an uncharted island. The events occurring at that island were unknown since Gustaf refused to speak of the horrors of that island and how the other crew-members had died, so Francis travels to Oslo, Norway to track down Gustaf and to find out more information. Gustaf’s widow tells Francis that he died, but she gives Francis the manuscript that Gustaf wrote about his experience at that island. In his manuscript, Gustaf describes him and his crew encountering the nightmare corpse-city of R’yleh rising out of the sea and one of the sailors of the crew accidentally releasing Cthulhu. The crew tried to flee but all of them either got killed or went mad from what they witnessed, except Gustaf who eventually escaped and is rescued. After reading the terrifying manuscript, Francis realizes that all the people who mysteriously died later on like Professor Angell and Gustaf Johansen were actually assassinated by the Cult of Cthulhu, and that Francis himself might be the next target.
The first 2 chapters were great, but this chapter was just on another level. The newspaper article in this chapter set up such an intriguing mystery regarding what happened on the island with Gustaf and the other crew-members and the fact that we actually got to read what happened through Gustaf’s manuscript and the fact that all those crew-members were dead made that manuscript feel even more sacred and significant to read. It felt like I was reading some top-secret file about Area 51 that no one had ever read before. Cthulhu itself is terrifying and I like how Lovecraft describes the city of R’yleh as having weird geometry and hieroglyphics, making it feel that much more alien-like and bone-chilling. I absolutely loved how the story ended ambiguously so the reader doesn’t know the fate of the narrator, but if you really think about it, the narrator says that in the scenario that he is assassinated by one of the cult members, he hopes they would hide all his compiled notes and information from the public but the very fact that us as the readers are reading this story suggests that he’s dead. It’s absolutely brilliant.
Image: The lost city of R’lyeh rising from the Pacific Ocean.
[Final Thoughts & Rating]:
H.P. Lovecraft portrays a realistic take on horror, even though this is still a very cosmic and fantastical story. If people encountered these monstrosities in real life, they wouldn’t all just run away like in the movies. Some or most of them would go insane by what they were witnessing. The indescribable language, architecture of the city and biology of Cthulhu itself were so captivating to read. One of my issues with the book was that Lovecraft has a difficult prose in the sense that he uses a lot of archaic words to the point where I have to pause occasionally just to search up the meanings of these old-fashioned words. Another issue was the obvious and uncomfortable racial undertones in some of his passages, thought I tried to gloss over that since he wrote it in the 1920’s and I have no clue what the norms of racism in literature were at that time.
Aside from that, I loved every aspect of this book. I loved the secretive and confidential nature of this reading perspective where I felt like I was reading a top-secret document, I enjoyed the mystery/detective element of the story and I really loved the horrifically detailed imagery of Lovecraft’s descriptions. The theme of this story is that too much knowledge can be dangerous, and I felt that theme throughout the entirety of the book with all the conspiracies and mysteries. At the time of writing this review, it’s been a week or so since I read this book but I still can’t stop thinking about it. It’s easily one of my favorite stories I’ve read so far in my life.
Rating: 9.25/10
My Book Rankings: https://jaytargaryen.blogspot.com/p/b...
*My Rating System*
5 Stars (9-10): Amazing
4 Stars (7-9): Really Good to Great
3 Stars (5-7): Average to Good
2 Stars (3-5): Bad to Mediocre
1 Star (1-3): Terrible
Image: Cthulhu rising from the seas.
[Chapter 1 - The Horror In Clay]:
The narrator of the story is Francis Wayland Thurston. In this 1st chapter, he’s looking through notes and boxes left behind by his great-uncle, George Gammel Angell, a prominent professor of Semitic Languages and Ancient Inscriptions, who was killed in 1926 and all his belongings were passed on to Francis. In one box, Francis finds a terrifying bas-relief sculpture which his mind can barely comprehend. It has a tentacled head like an octopus and a grotesque and scaly body with wings like a dragon, but it also has characteristics of a human body. Sifting through his great-uncle’s notes which were written and compiled in March 1925, Francis finds out the sculpture was made by Henry Anthony Wilcox, who has been having strange dreams of indescribable cities and heard something below emitting a sound unheard of to human ears, but all he could make out was “Cthulhu fhtagn”. Professor Angell tracked Henry down to find out more information and a few weeks later, Henry started becoming deliriously ill and rambled on about a “gigantic thing miles high, walking or lumbering about”. Francis finds out that several other people have had similar dreams around the same period Henry was deliriously ill.
This chapter was fascinating. H.P. Lovecraft does a good job at providing evocative imagery, from the way he describes the bas-relief sculpture to the eerie dream that Henry Wilcox recounts. This is my 1st time reading a story in 1st-person perspective and I don’t know if every other story that uses this perspective does this as well but I really enjoyed the way it was written, of how the narrator is reading a dead professor’s manuscript and conveying the story to us through his shock and curiosity. I also enjoyed the conspiratorial nature of this chapter because the way Professor Angell died was suspicious and the narrator Francis had suspicions about the sculptor Henry having secrets and purposely omitting information.
[Chapter 2 - The Tale of Inspector Legrasse]:
The 2nd chapter refers to another part of Professor Angell’s manuscript which records his experiences back in 1908 with Police Inspector John Raymond Legrasse. Inspector Legrasse brings a statuette (similar to the sculpture from the first chapter) to several professors and academics at an annual meeting at the American Archaeological Society. The Inspector confiscated the statuette from a cult-bust in the swamps south of New Orleans. He re-tells the professors of his cult search in the swamps back in 1907 and how he came across a horrifying scene of a cult worshiping and sacrificing humans while repeating a weird phrase and the only words similar to that of Henry Wilcox’s dream in the 1st chapter was “Cthulhu fhtagn”. The prisoners from the cult identify the statuette as a portrait of Cthulhu and they translate the mysterious phrase as: “In his house at R’yleh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming”. Of all the academics at the 1908 meeting, Professor William Channing Webb says he once went on an expedition to Greenland in 1860 where he came across a weird cult of devil-worshipers who were chanting the exact same phrase and had the same sort of statuette.
This chapter was phenomenal. The scene of the actual cult worshiping was very creepy and I loved the detective/noir feel of this chapter as the narrator was piecing together all the clues from this manuscript and the one from the previous chapter. One of my favorite parts of this chapter was the ominous tale that Castro (one of the arrested cult members) was telling the Inspector that he sailed to strange ports and talked with undying leaders of the cult in the mountains of China. He said there were aeons when other “things” called The Great Old Ones ruled the earth and they had great cyclopean cities, whose remnants can be found on islands in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Old Ones came from the stars, they weren’t made of flesh and blood, and they could plunge from world to world throughout the sky. They lie dormant now but when the stars align with the earth, they would come alive again and bring absolute destruction. H.P. Lovecraft builds fascinating and intriguing lore in just one brief chapter. I couldn’t even imagine what he would have done with a 300-500+ page book.
Image: Police Inspector John Raymond Legrasse searching for the Cult of Cthulhu.
[Chapter 3 - The Madness From The Sea]:
In the 3rd and final chapter, the narrator Francis reads a newspaper article from April 1925 of the discovery of a broken-down ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with only 1 survivor (Sailor Gustaf Johansen). The sailors were attacked by another ship but the surviving crew-members were able to flee to an uncharted island. The events occurring at that island were unknown since Gustaf refused to speak of the horrors of that island and how the other crew-members had died, so Francis travels to Oslo, Norway to track down Gustaf and to find out more information. Gustaf’s widow tells Francis that he died, but she gives Francis the manuscript that Gustaf wrote about his experience at that island. In his manuscript, Gustaf describes him and his crew encountering the nightmare corpse-city of R’yleh rising out of the sea and one of the sailors of the crew accidentally releasing Cthulhu. The crew tried to flee but all of them either got killed or went mad from what they witnessed, except Gustaf who eventually escaped and is rescued. After reading the terrifying manuscript, Francis realizes that all the people who mysteriously died later on like Professor Angell and Gustaf Johansen were actually assassinated by the Cult of Cthulhu, and that Francis himself might be the next target.
The first 2 chapters were great, but this chapter was just on another level. The newspaper article in this chapter set up such an intriguing mystery regarding what happened on the island with Gustaf and the other crew-members and the fact that we actually got to read what happened through Gustaf’s manuscript and the fact that all those crew-members were dead made that manuscript feel even more sacred and significant to read. It felt like I was reading some top-secret file about Area 51 that no one had ever read before. Cthulhu itself is terrifying and I like how Lovecraft describes the city of R’yleh as having weird geometry and hieroglyphics, making it feel that much more alien-like and bone-chilling. I absolutely loved how the story ended ambiguously so the reader doesn’t know the fate of the narrator, but if you really think about it, the narrator says that in the scenario that he is assassinated by one of the cult members, he hopes they would hide all his compiled notes and information from the public but the very fact that us as the readers are reading this story suggests that he’s dead. It’s absolutely brilliant.
Image: The lost city of R’lyeh rising from the Pacific Ocean.
[Final Thoughts & Rating]:
H.P. Lovecraft portrays a realistic take on horror, even though this is still a very cosmic and fantastical story. If people encountered these monstrosities in real life, they wouldn’t all just run away like in the movies. Some or most of them would go insane by what they were witnessing. The indescribable language, architecture of the city and biology of Cthulhu itself were so captivating to read. One of my issues with the book was that Lovecraft has a difficult prose in the sense that he uses a lot of archaic words to the point where I have to pause occasionally just to search up the meanings of these old-fashioned words. Another issue was the obvious and uncomfortable racial undertones in some of his passages, thought I tried to gloss over that since he wrote it in the 1920’s and I have no clue what the norms of racism in literature were at that time.
Aside from that, I loved every aspect of this book. I loved the secretive and confidential nature of this reading perspective where I felt like I was reading a top-secret document, I enjoyed the mystery/detective element of the story and I really loved the horrifically detailed imagery of Lovecraft’s descriptions. The theme of this story is that too much knowledge can be dangerous, and I felt that theme throughout the entirety of the book with all the conspiracies and mysteries. At the time of writing this review, it’s been a week or so since I read this book but I still can’t stop thinking about it. It’s easily one of my favorite stories I’ve read so far in my life.
Rating: 9.25/10
My Book Rankings: https://jaytargaryen.blogspot.com/p/b...
*My Rating System*
5 Stars (9-10): Amazing
4 Stars (7-9): Really Good to Great
3 Stars (5-7): Average to Good
2 Stars (3-5): Bad to Mediocre
1 Star (1-3): Terrible
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