[YSDC] Into The Deep - User contributions [en]

Innsmouth

2007-10-03T12:14:21Z

Dagon: /* Manuxet River */

'''Innsmouth''' is a [[fictional town]] in the writings of [[H.P. Lovecraft]], part of the [[Lovecraft Country]] setting of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].

Lovecraft first used the name "Innsmouth" in his 1920 [[short story]] "[[Celephaïs]]"<ref>[[S. T. Joshi]]'s notes on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", ''The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories'', p. 411.</ref> ([[1920 in literature|1920]]), where it refers to a fictional town in [[England]]. Lovecraft's more famous Innsmouth, however, is found in his ([[1936 in literature|1936]]) story "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]", set in [[Massachusetts]].

Lovecraft called Innsmouth "a considerably twisted version of [[Newburyport, Massachusetts|Newburyport]]," Massachusetts.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters V'', p. 86.</ref>

==Location==
Lovecraft placed Innsmouth on the coast of [[Essex County, Massachusetts|Essex County]], [[Massachusetts]], south of [[Plum Island (Massachusetts)|Plum Island]] and north of [[Cape Ann]]. The town of [[Ipswich, Massachusetts]] is said to be a near neighbor, where many Innsmouth residents do their shopping; [[Rowley, Massachusetts]], another neighboring town, is said to be to the northwest. This would place Innsmouth in the vicinity of Essex Bay.

==Description==
In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", the protagonist describes his first sight of the place:

:It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. One of them was crumbling down at the top, and in that and another there were only black gaping holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle of sagging [[gambrel]] roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. There were some large square [[Colonial house|Georgian houses]], too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed "widow's walks". These were mostly well back from the water, and one or two seemed to be in moderately sound condition....

:The decay was worst close to the waterfront, though in its very midst I could spy the white belfry of a fairly well-preserved brick structure which looked like a small factory. The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater....

:Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most decayed. And far out to sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long, black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil's Reef.

==History==
Lovecraft writes that Innsmouth was "founded in [[1643]], noted for shipbuilding before the [[American Revolution|Revolution]], a seat of great marine prosperity in the early nineteenth century, and later a minor factory centre." The loss of sailors due to shipwrecks and the [[War of 1812]] caused the town's profitable trade with the [[South Seas]] to falter; by [[1828]], the only fleet still running that route was that of Captain [[Cthulhu Mythos biographies#Marsh, Obed|Obed Marsh]], the head of one of the town's leading families.

In [[1840]], Marsh started a cult in Innsmouth known as the ''Esoteric Order of Dagon'', basing it on a religion practiced by certain [[Polynesia]]n islanders he had met during his travels. Shortly thereafter, the town's fishing industry experienced a great upsurge.

Records indicate that in [[1846]] a mysterious plague struck the town, causing mass depopulation. In reality, the deaths were caused by the [[Deep One]]s themselves. Obed Marsh had entered into a compact with the aforementioned creatures, offering them sacrifices in exchange for plentiful gold and fish. When Obed and his followers were arrested, the sacrifical rites ceased and the Deep Ones retaliated. However, the cult activity subsequently resumed, and the interbreeding policy greatly increased, resulting in numerous deformities. Consequently, Innsmouth was shunned for many years, until [[1927]] when it came under investigation by Federal authorities for alleged [[rum-running|bootlegging]].

==Esoteric Order of Dagon==

The '''Esoteric Order of Dagon''' was the primary religion in Innsmouth after Marsh returned from the South Seas with the dark religion circa [[1838]]. It quickly took root due to its promises of expensive gold artifacts and fish, which were desired by the primarily-fishing town.

The central beings worshipped by the Order were the [[Deep One#Father Dagon and Mother Hydra|Father Dagon and Mother Hydra]], and, to a lesser extent, [[Cthulhu]]. Dagon and Hydra were seen largely as intermediaries between the various gods, rather than as gods themselves. Even so, the cultists sacrificed various locals to the Deep Ones at specific times in exchange for a limitless supply of gold and fish.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon (which masqueraded as the local [[Masonic]] movement) had three oaths which members had to take. The first was an oath of secrecy, the second, an oath of loyalty, and the third, an oath to marry a Deep One and bear or sire its child. Due to the latter oath, interbreeding became the norm in Innsmouth, resulting in wide-spread deformities and many half-breeds.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon was seemingly destroyed when one of Obed Marsh's "lost descendants" sent the [[U.S. Treasury Department]] to seize the town. As a result, the town was more or less destroyed, and the Order was thought disbanded.

==Other appearances==
* The Esoteric Order is also featured in many ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]'' [[role-playing game]] supplements.

* The video game ''Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth'' is et in Innsmouth.

* The Lovecraftian musical ''A Shoggoth on the Roof'' features [[Obed Marsh]] as a main character, along with the head cultist of a chapter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

* The graphic novel ''The Five Fists of Science'' features an "Innsmouth Tower" being built in turn of the century New York City. While seemingly benign, the skyscraper's true purpose is to summon a demon known as Leviathan.

* In the ''Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'', the player can visit a town called Hackdirt in a quest called "A Shadow Over Hackdirt," which is based on Innsmouth.

* The writer [[Neil Gaiman]] has written several short stories set in the town.

==Manuxet River==
The Manuxet River is a fictional river that runs through Massachusetts and empties into the sea at the town of Innsmouth. Although there is a Manuxet River in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], Will Murray believes that Lovecraft based his fictional Manuxet on the [[Merrimack River]] and probably invented the name from root words of an [[Algonquian]] language.

To support his claim, Murray gives two reasons. First, even though Newburyport was the inspiration for Innsmouth, it is clearly a separate location since Lovecraft himself placed the real-life Newburyport to the north of Innsmouth in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Based on his research, Murray thinks that Lovecraft actually based Innsmouth on [[Gloucester, Massachusetts]], BEGINS....
In 1987, Will Murray took a field trip to Newburyport and Gloucester to research locales from Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". In Newburyport there is a State Street (the street where the narrator of the story boards a bus to Innsmouth) and a State Street [[YMCA]] (where the protagonist roomed and where Lovecraft himself may have stayed during his visit to the town). When he visited Gloucester, Murray found a Gilman House — more formally, the Sargeant-Murray-Gilman-Hough House — a hotel in the story but in real life a [[Georgian architecture|Georgian]]-era mansion turned into a public museum. He also found other landmarks mentioned in the story, including streets named Adams Church, Babson, Main, and Fish, and a building adorned with large, white wooden pillars on its front and side — the Legion Memorial Building — that looks remarkably like the story's [[freemasonry|Masonic]] Lodge (the meeting place for the Esoteric Order of Dagon). The Legion Building, built in [[1844]]–[[1845|45]], served as the Gloucester Town Hall until [[1867]] when it became the Forbes School. Saving it from demolition, the [[American Legion]] took over the building in [[1919]] and, a year later, added a columned [[portico]] to the Middle Street side to match the Washington Street frontage. It has never been a Masonic Lodge, however. (Murray, "I Found Innsmouth!", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #57''.)
which is located on [[Cape Ann]] on the coast. Secondly, Lovecraft is known to have come up with the name for his fictional [[Miskatonic River]] by combining Algonquin root words.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters III'', p. 432.</ref> Murray believes that Lovecraft used a similar method to come up with ''Manuxet''. In Algonquin, ''man'' means "island" and ''uxet'' translates to "at the large part of the river"; thus, when combined ''Manuxet'' means "Island at the large part of the river". Murray contends that this meaning is well suited to Innsmouth's placement at the mouth of the Manuxet. And Cape Ann itself (the alleged site of Innsmouth) is connected to the mainland by only a thin strip of land and might be thought of as an island.<ref>Murray, "Roots of the Manuxet", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #75''.</ref>

As stated earlier, the town was taken by the U.S. Treasury Department. During the assault, the Manuxet allowed the personnel to cross during February and take the town when it froze over.

==See also==
* [[Arkham]]
* [[Dunwich (Lovecraft)|Dunwich]]
* [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]]
* [[Lovecraft Country]]
* [[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]

==References==
===Books===
*{{cite book|last=Harms|first=Daniel|chapter=Esoteric Order of Dagon|title=The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana|edition=2nd ed.|pages=pp. 103–4|year=1998|publisher=Chaosium|location=Oakland, CA|id=ISBN 1-56882-119-0}}
:—"Innsmouth", pp. 149–50. Ibid.

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1999|location=London, UK; New York, NY|publisher=Penguin Books|id=ISBN 0-14-118234-2}}

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|edition=9th corrected printing|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1984|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters III|year=1998|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-032-7}}

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters V|year=1976|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-036-X}}

===Journals===
*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=St. John's Eve 1988|title=I Found Innsmouth!|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #57: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 7|issue=No. 7|pages=pp. 10–14}} [[Robert M. Price]] (ed.), Mount Olive, NC: Cryptic Publications.

*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=Michaelmas 1990|title=Roots of the Manuxet|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #75: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 9|issue=No. 8|pages=p. 34}} Robert M. Price (ed.), Upper Montclair, NJ: Cryptic Publications.

===Notes===
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=75 "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," by H. P. Lovecraft.] The original story which brought Innsmouth into the Cthulhu Mythos.
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmap.htm Map of Innsmouth and Environs], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmth.htm Tourist's Guide to Innsmouth], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.andylogam.com/Pictures/Maps/map_innsmouth.gif Land Map of Innsmouth], from [http://www.andylogam.com/maps_main.html Maps of Non-Existent Places]

[[Category:Mythos:locations]]

Innsmouth

2007-10-03T12:13:04Z

Dagon: /* Other appearances */

'''Innsmouth''' is a [[fictional town]] in the writings of [[H.P. Lovecraft]], part of the [[Lovecraft Country]] setting of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].

Lovecraft first used the name "Innsmouth" in his 1920 [[short story]] "[[Celephaïs]]"<ref>[[S. T. Joshi]]'s notes on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", ''The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories'', p. 411.</ref> ([[1920 in literature|1920]]), where it refers to a fictional town in [[England]]. Lovecraft's more famous Innsmouth, however, is found in his ([[1936 in literature|1936]]) story "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]", set in [[Massachusetts]].

Lovecraft called Innsmouth "a considerably twisted version of [[Newburyport, Massachusetts|Newburyport]]," Massachusetts.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters V'', p. 86.</ref>

==Location==
Lovecraft placed Innsmouth on the coast of [[Essex County, Massachusetts|Essex County]], [[Massachusetts]], south of [[Plum Island (Massachusetts)|Plum Island]] and north of [[Cape Ann]]. The town of [[Ipswich, Massachusetts]] is said to be a near neighbor, where many Innsmouth residents do their shopping; [[Rowley, Massachusetts]], another neighboring town, is said to be to the northwest. This would place Innsmouth in the vicinity of Essex Bay.

==Description==
In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", the protagonist describes his first sight of the place:

:It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. One of them was crumbling down at the top, and in that and another there were only black gaping holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle of sagging [[gambrel]] roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. There were some large square [[Colonial house|Georgian houses]], too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed "widow's walks". These were mostly well back from the water, and one or two seemed to be in moderately sound condition....

:The decay was worst close to the waterfront, though in its very midst I could spy the white belfry of a fairly well-preserved brick structure which looked like a small factory. The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater....

:Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most decayed. And far out to sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long, black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil's Reef.

==History==
Lovecraft writes that Innsmouth was "founded in [[1643]], noted for shipbuilding before the [[American Revolution|Revolution]], a seat of great marine prosperity in the early nineteenth century, and later a minor factory centre." The loss of sailors due to shipwrecks and the [[War of 1812]] caused the town's profitable trade with the [[South Seas]] to falter; by [[1828]], the only fleet still running that route was that of Captain [[Cthulhu Mythos biographies#Marsh, Obed|Obed Marsh]], the head of one of the town's leading families.

In [[1840]], Marsh started a cult in Innsmouth known as the ''Esoteric Order of Dagon'', basing it on a religion practiced by certain [[Polynesia]]n islanders he had met during his travels. Shortly thereafter, the town's fishing industry experienced a great upsurge.

Records indicate that in [[1846]] a mysterious plague struck the town, causing mass depopulation. In reality, the deaths were caused by the [[Deep One]]s themselves. Obed Marsh had entered into a compact with the aforementioned creatures, offering them sacrifices in exchange for plentiful gold and fish. When Obed and his followers were arrested, the sacrifical rites ceased and the Deep Ones retaliated. However, the cult activity subsequently resumed, and the interbreeding policy greatly increased, resulting in numerous deformities. Consequently, Innsmouth was shunned for many years, until [[1927]] when it came under investigation by Federal authorities for alleged [[rum-running|bootlegging]].

==Esoteric Order of Dagon==

The '''Esoteric Order of Dagon''' was the primary religion in Innsmouth after Marsh returned from the South Seas with the dark religion circa [[1838]]. It quickly took root due to its promises of expensive gold artifacts and fish, which were desired by the primarily-fishing town.

The central beings worshipped by the Order were the [[Deep One#Father Dagon and Mother Hydra|Father Dagon and Mother Hydra]], and, to a lesser extent, [[Cthulhu]]. Dagon and Hydra were seen largely as intermediaries between the various gods, rather than as gods themselves. Even so, the cultists sacrificed various locals to the Deep Ones at specific times in exchange for a limitless supply of gold and fish.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon (which masqueraded as the local [[Masonic]] movement) had three oaths which members had to take. The first was an oath of secrecy, the second, an oath of loyalty, and the third, an oath to marry a Deep One and bear or sire its child. Due to the latter oath, interbreeding became the norm in Innsmouth, resulting in wide-spread deformities and many half-breeds.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon was seemingly destroyed when one of Obed Marsh's "lost descendants" sent the [[U.S. Treasury Department]] to seize the town. As a result, the town was more or less destroyed, and the Order was thought disbanded.

==Other appearances==
* The Esoteric Order is also featured in many ''[[Call of Cthulhu]]'' [[role-playing game]] supplements.

* The video game ''Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth'' is et in Innsmouth.

* The Lovecraftian musical ''A Shoggoth on the Roof'' features [[Obed Marsh]] as a main character, along with the head cultist of a chapter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

* The graphic novel ''The Five Fists of Science'' features an "Innsmouth Tower" being built in turn of the century New York City. While seemingly benign, the skyscraper's true purpose is to summon a demon known as Leviathan.

* In the ''Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion'', the player can visit a town called Hackdirt in a quest called "A Shadow Over Hackdirt," which is based on Innsmouth.

* The writer [[Neil Gaiman]] has written several short stories set in the town.

==Manuxet River==
The Manuxet River is a fictional river that runs through Massachusetts and empties into the sea at the town of Innsmouth. Although there is a Manuxet River in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], Will Murray believes that Lovecraft based his fictional Manuxet on the [[Merrimack River]] and probably invented the name from root words of an [[Algonquian]] language.

To support his claim, Murray gives two reasons. First, even though Newburyport was the inspiration for Innsmouth, it is clearly a separate location since Lovecraft himself placed the real-life Newburyport to the north of Innsmouth in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Based on his research, Murray thinks that Lovecraft actually based Innsmouth on [[Gloucester, Massachusetts]],<ref>
In [[1987]], Will Murray took a field trip to Newburyport and Gloucester to research locales from Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". In Newburyport there is a State Street (the street where the narrator of the story boards a bus to Innsmouth) and a State Street [[YMCA]] (where the protagonist roomed and where Lovecraft himself may have stayed during his visit to the town). When he visited Gloucester, Murray found a Gilman House — more formally, the Sargeant-Murray-Gilman-Hough House — a hotel in the story but in real life a [[Georgian architecture|Georgian]]-era mansion turned into a public museum. He also found other landmarks mentioned in the story, including streets named Adams Church, Babson, Main, and Fish, and a building adorned with large, white wooden pillars on its front and side — the Legion Memorial Building — that looks remarkably like the story's [[freemasonry|Masonic]] Lodge (the meeting place for the Esoteric Order of Dagon). The Legion Building, built in [[1844]]–[[1845|45]], served as the Gloucester Town Hall until [[1867]] when it became the Forbes School. Saving it from demolition, the [[American Legion]] took over the building in [[1919]] and, a year later, added a columned [[portico]] to the Middle Street side to match the Washington Street frontage. It has never been a Masonic Lodge, however. (Murray, "I Found Innsmouth!", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #57''.)
</ref> which is located on [[Cape Ann]] on the coast. Secondly, Lovecraft is known to have come up with the name for his fictional [[Miskatonic River]] by combining Algonquin root words.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters III'', p. 432.</ref> Murray believes that Lovecraft used a similar method to come up with ''Manuxet''. In Algonquin, ''man'' means "island" and ''uxet'' translates to "at the large part of the river"; thus, when combined ''Manuxet'' means "Island at the large part of the river". Murray contends that this meaning is well suited to Innsmouth's placement at the mouth of the Manuxet. And Cape Ann itself (the alleged site of Innsmouth) is connected to the mainland by only a thin strip of land and might be thought of as an island.<ref>Murray, "Roots of the Manuxet", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #75''.</ref>

As stated earlier, the town was taken by the U.S. Treasury Department. During the assault, the Manuxet allowed the personnel to cross during February and take the town when it froze over.

==See also==
* [[Arkham]]
* [[Dunwich (Lovecraft)|Dunwich]]
* [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]]
* [[Lovecraft Country]]
* [[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]

==References==
===Books===
*{{cite book|last=Harms|first=Daniel|chapter=Esoteric Order of Dagon|title=The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana|edition=2nd ed.|pages=pp. 103–4|year=1998|publisher=Chaosium|location=Oakland, CA|id=ISBN 1-56882-119-0}}
:—"Innsmouth", pp. 149–50. Ibid.

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1999|location=London, UK; New York, NY|publisher=Penguin Books|id=ISBN 0-14-118234-2}}

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|edition=9th corrected printing|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1984|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters III|year=1998|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-032-7}}

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters V|year=1976|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-036-X}}

===Journals===
*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=St. John's Eve 1988|title=I Found Innsmouth!|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #57: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 7|issue=No. 7|pages=pp. 10–14}} [[Robert M. Price]] (ed.), Mount Olive, NC: Cryptic Publications.

*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=Michaelmas 1990|title=Roots of the Manuxet|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #75: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 9|issue=No. 8|pages=p. 34}} Robert M. Price (ed.), Upper Montclair, NJ: Cryptic Publications.

===Notes===
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=75 "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," by H. P. Lovecraft.] The original story which brought Innsmouth into the Cthulhu Mythos.
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmap.htm Map of Innsmouth and Environs], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmth.htm Tourist's Guide to Innsmouth], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.andylogam.com/Pictures/Maps/map_innsmouth.gif Land Map of Innsmouth], from [http://www.andylogam.com/maps_main.html Maps of Non-Existent Places]

[[Category:Mythos:locations]]

Innsmouth

2007-10-03T12:11:21Z

Dagon:

'''Innsmouth''' is a [[fictional town]] in the writings of [[H.P. Lovecraft]], part of the [[Lovecraft Country]] setting of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].

Lovecraft first used the name "Innsmouth" in his 1920 [[short story]] "[[Celephaïs]]"<ref>[[S. T. Joshi]]'s notes on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", ''The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories'', p. 411.</ref> ([[1920 in literature|1920]]), where it refers to a fictional town in [[England]]. Lovecraft's more famous Innsmouth, however, is found in his ([[1936 in literature|1936]]) story "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]", set in [[Massachusetts]].

Lovecraft called Innsmouth "a considerably twisted version of [[Newburyport, Massachusetts|Newburyport]]," Massachusetts.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters V'', p. 86.</ref>

==Location==
Lovecraft placed Innsmouth on the coast of [[Essex County, Massachusetts|Essex County]], [[Massachusetts]], south of [[Plum Island (Massachusetts)|Plum Island]] and north of [[Cape Ann]]. The town of [[Ipswich, Massachusetts]] is said to be a near neighbor, where many Innsmouth residents do their shopping; [[Rowley, Massachusetts]], another neighboring town, is said to be to the northwest. This would place Innsmouth in the vicinity of Essex Bay.

==Description==
In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", the protagonist describes his first sight of the place:

:It was a town of wide extent and dense construction, yet one with a portentous dearth of visible life. From the tangle of chimney-pots scarcely a wisp of smoke came, and the three tall steeples loomed stark and unpainted against the seaward horizon. One of them was crumbling down at the top, and in that and another there were only black gaping holes where clock-dials should have been. The vast huddle of sagging [[gambrel]] roofs and peaked gables conveyed with offensive clearness the idea of wormy decay, and as we approached along the now descending road I could see that many roofs had wholly caved in. There were some large square [[Colonial house|Georgian houses]], too, with hipped roofs, cupolas, and railed "widow's walks". These were mostly well back from the water, and one or two seemed to be in moderately sound condition....

:The decay was worst close to the waterfront, though in its very midst I could spy the white belfry of a fairly well-preserved brick structure which looked like a small factory. The harbour, long clogged with sand, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater....

:Here and there the ruins of wharves jutted out from the shore to end in indeterminate rottenness, those farthest south seeming the most decayed. And far out to sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long, black line scarcely rising above the water yet carrying a suggestion of odd latent malignancy. This, I knew, must be Devil's Reef.

==History==
Lovecraft writes that Innsmouth was "founded in [[1643]], noted for shipbuilding before the [[American Revolution|Revolution]], a seat of great marine prosperity in the early nineteenth century, and later a minor factory centre." The loss of sailors due to shipwrecks and the [[War of 1812]] caused the town's profitable trade with the [[South Seas]] to falter; by [[1828]], the only fleet still running that route was that of Captain [[Cthulhu Mythos biographies#Marsh, Obed|Obed Marsh]], the head of one of the town's leading families.

In [[1840]], Marsh started a cult in Innsmouth known as the ''Esoteric Order of Dagon'', basing it on a religion practiced by certain [[Polynesia]]n islanders he had met during his travels. Shortly thereafter, the town's fishing industry experienced a great upsurge.

Records indicate that in [[1846]] a mysterious plague struck the town, causing mass depopulation. In reality, the deaths were caused by the [[Deep One]]s themselves. Obed Marsh had entered into a compact with the aforementioned creatures, offering them sacrifices in exchange for plentiful gold and fish. When Obed and his followers were arrested, the sacrifical rites ceased and the Deep Ones retaliated. However, the cult activity subsequently resumed, and the interbreeding policy greatly increased, resulting in numerous deformities. Consequently, Innsmouth was shunned for many years, until [[1927]] when it came under investigation by Federal authorities for alleged [[rum-running|bootlegging]].

==Esoteric Order of Dagon==

The '''Esoteric Order of Dagon''' was the primary religion in Innsmouth after Marsh returned from the South Seas with the dark religion circa [[1838]]. It quickly took root due to its promises of expensive gold artifacts and fish, which were desired by the primarily-fishing town.

The central beings worshipped by the Order were the [[Deep One#Father Dagon and Mother Hydra|Father Dagon and Mother Hydra]], and, to a lesser extent, [[Cthulhu]]. Dagon and Hydra were seen largely as intermediaries between the various gods, rather than as gods themselves. Even so, the cultists sacrificed various locals to the Deep Ones at specific times in exchange for a limitless supply of gold and fish.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon (which masqueraded as the local [[Masonic]] movement) had three oaths which members had to take. The first was an oath of secrecy, the second, an oath of loyalty, and the third, an oath to marry a Deep One and bear or sire its child. Due to the latter oath, interbreeding became the norm in Innsmouth, resulting in wide-spread deformities and many half-breeds.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon was seemingly destroyed when one of Obed Marsh's "lost descendants" sent the [[U.S. Treasury Department]] to seize the town. As a result, the town was more or less destroyed, and the Order was thought disbanded.

==Other appearances==
* The Esoteric Order is also featured in many [[Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)|''Call of Cthulhu'']] [[role-playing game]] supplements.

* The video game ''[[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]'' is set in Innsmouth.

* The Lovecraftian musical ''[[A Shoggoth on the Roof]]'' features [[Cthulhu Mythos biographies#Marsh, Obed|Obed Marsh]] as a main character, along with the head cultist of a chapter of the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

* The graphic novel ''[[The Five Fists of Science]]'' features an "Innsmouth Tower" being built in turn of the century [[New York City]]. While seemingly benign, the skyscraper's true purpose is to summon a demon known as [[Leviathan]].

* In the [[Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion]], the player can visit a town called Hackdirt in a quest called "A Shadow Over Hackdirt," which is based on Innsmouth.

* The writer [[Neil Gaiman]] has written several short stories set in the town.

==Manuxet River==
The Manuxet River is a fictional river that runs through Massachusetts and empties into the sea at the town of Innsmouth. Although there is a Manuxet River in [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], Will Murray believes that Lovecraft based his fictional Manuxet on the [[Merrimack River]] and probably invented the name from root words of an [[Algonquian]] language.

To support his claim, Murray gives two reasons. First, even though Newburyport was the inspiration for Innsmouth, it is clearly a separate location since Lovecraft himself placed the real-life Newburyport to the north of Innsmouth in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Based on his research, Murray thinks that Lovecraft actually based Innsmouth on [[Gloucester, Massachusetts]],<ref>
In [[1987]], Will Murray took a field trip to Newburyport and Gloucester to research locales from Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". In Newburyport there is a State Street (the street where the narrator of the story boards a bus to Innsmouth) and a State Street [[YMCA]] (where the protagonist roomed and where Lovecraft himself may have stayed during his visit to the town). When he visited Gloucester, Murray found a Gilman House — more formally, the Sargeant-Murray-Gilman-Hough House — a hotel in the story but in real life a [[Georgian architecture|Georgian]]-era mansion turned into a public museum. He also found other landmarks mentioned in the story, including streets named Adams Church, Babson, Main, and Fish, and a building adorned with large, white wooden pillars on its front and side — the Legion Memorial Building — that looks remarkably like the story's [[freemasonry|Masonic]] Lodge (the meeting place for the Esoteric Order of Dagon). The Legion Building, built in [[1844]]–[[1845|45]], served as the Gloucester Town Hall until [[1867]] when it became the Forbes School. Saving it from demolition, the [[American Legion]] took over the building in [[1919]] and, a year later, added a columned [[portico]] to the Middle Street side to match the Washington Street frontage. It has never been a Masonic Lodge, however. (Murray, "I Found Innsmouth!", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #57''.)
</ref> which is located on [[Cape Ann]] on the coast. Secondly, Lovecraft is known to have come up with the name for his fictional [[Miskatonic River]] by combining Algonquin root words.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters III'', p. 432.</ref> Murray believes that Lovecraft used a similar method to come up with ''Manuxet''. In Algonquin, ''man'' means "island" and ''uxet'' translates to "at the large part of the river"; thus, when combined ''Manuxet'' means "Island at the large part of the river". Murray contends that this meaning is well suited to Innsmouth's placement at the mouth of the Manuxet. And Cape Ann itself (the alleged site of Innsmouth) is connected to the mainland by only a thin strip of land and might be thought of as an island.<ref>Murray, "Roots of the Manuxet", ''Crypt of Cthulhu #75''.</ref>

As stated earlier, the town was taken by the U.S. Treasury Department. During the assault, the Manuxet allowed the personnel to cross during February and take the town when it froze over.

==See also==
* [[Arkham]]
* [[Dunwich (Lovecraft)|Dunwich]]
* [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]]
* [[Lovecraft Country]]
* [[Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth]]

==References==
===Books===
*{{cite book|last=Harms|first=Daniel|chapter=Esoteric Order of Dagon|title=The Encyclopedia Cthulhiana|edition=2nd ed.|pages=pp. 103–4|year=1998|publisher=Chaosium|location=Oakland, CA|id=ISBN 1-56882-119-0}}
:—"Innsmouth", pp. 149–50. Ibid.

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1999|location=London, UK; New York, NY|publisher=Penguin Books|id=ISBN 0-14-118234-2}}

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|chapter=[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=74 The Shadow Over Innsmouth]|origyear=1936|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|edition=9th corrected printing|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.)|year=1984|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

*{{Cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters III|year=1998|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-032-7}}

*{{cite book|last=Lovecraft|first=Howard P.|title=Selected Letters V|year=1976|location=Sauk City, WI|publisher=Arkham House|id=ISBN 0-87054-036-X}}

===Journals===
*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=St. John's Eve 1988|title=I Found Innsmouth!|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #57: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 7|issue=No. 7|pages=pp. 10–14}} [[Robert M. Price]] (ed.), Mount Olive, NC: Cryptic Publications.

*{{cite journal|last=Murray|first=Will|year=Michaelmas 1990|title=Roots of the Manuxet|journal=Crypt of Cthulhu #75: A Pulp Thriller and Theological Journal|volume=Vol. 9|issue=No. 8|pages=p. 34}} Robert M. Price (ed.), Upper Montclair, NJ: Cryptic Publications.

===Notes===
<references/>

==External links==
*[http://www.mythostomes.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61&Itemid=75 "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," by H. P. Lovecraft.] The original story which brought Innsmouth into the Cthulhu Mythos.
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmap.htm Map of Innsmouth and Environs], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.baharna.com/cmythos/innsmth.htm Tourist's Guide to Innsmouth], from ''The Cthulhu Mythos: A Guide''
*[http://www.andylogam.com/Pictures/Maps/map_innsmouth.gif Land Map of Innsmouth], from [http://www.andylogam.com/maps_main.html Maps of Non-Existent Places]

[[Category:Mythos:locations]]

Dagon

2007-08-23T23:08:22Z

Dagon:

'''"Dagon"''' is a [[short story]] by [[H. P. Lovecraft]], written in July [[1917 in literature|1917]], one of the first stories he wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November [[1919 in literature|1919]] edition of ''The Vagrant'' (issue #11).

==Inspiration==
After reading Lovecraft's juvenalia in 1917, W. Paul Cook, editor of the amateur press journal ''The Vagrant'', encouraged Lovecraft to resume writing fiction. That summer, Lovecraft wrote two stories: "[[The Tomb (short story)|The Tomb]]" and "Dagon".

The story was inspired in part by a dream he had. "I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!" he later wrote.<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "In Defence of Dagon", ''Miscellaneous Writings'', p. 150; cited in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Dagon", ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'', p. 58.</ref>

Critic William Fulwiler indicates that Lovecraft may have been influenced by [[Irvin S. Cobb]]'s "Fishhead", a story about a strange fish-like human.<ref>Joshi and Schultz, p. 58.</ref> Fulwiler has also suggested that Lovecraft took the story's theme of "an ancient prehuman race that will someday rise to conquer humanity" from [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' ''[[At the Earth's Core]]'' (1914).

==Synopsis==
The story is the testament of a tortured, [[morphine]]-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in [[World War I]] when he was a [[merchant marine]] officer.

In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by a German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad [[Pacific Ocean|Pacific]]".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "Dagon", ''Dagon and Other Macabre Tales'', p. 14.</ref> He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly across the sea "somewhat south of the [[equator]]" until he eventually finds himself inexplicably stranded on "a slimy expanse of [[hell]]ish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see.... The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain." He theorizes that this area was formerly "a portion of the [[ocean]] floor... thrown to the surface" by a volcanic upheaval, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 15.</ref>

After waiting three days for the seafloor to dry out sufficiently to walk on, he strikes out on foot to find the sea and possible rescue. After two days of walking, he reaches his goal, a "hummock" that turns out to be a mound on the edge of an "immeasurable pit or canyon".<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 16.</ref> Descending the slope, he sees a gigantic white stone object that he soon perceives to be a "well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 17.</ref>

The monolith, situated next to a channel of water in the bottom of the chasm, is covered in unfamiliar [[logogram|hieroglyphs]] "consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopuses, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 17.</ref> There are also "crude sculptures" depicting

:men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well... [T]hey were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref>

As the narrator looks on the monolith, a creature emerges from the water:

:With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, [[Polyphemus]]-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous [[monster]] of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref>

Insane with fear, the mariner flees back to his stranded boat, and vaguely recalls a "great storm".<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref> His next memory is of a [[San Francisco]] hospital, where he was taken after being rescued in mid-ocean by a U.S. ship. There are no reports of any Pacific upheavals, and he does not expect anyone to believe his incredible story. He mentions one abortive attempt to gain understanding of his experience:

:Once I sought out a celebrated [[ethnologist]], and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient [[Philistine]] legend of [[Dagon]], the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19.</ref>

Haunted by visions of the creature, "especially when the moon is gibbous and waning", he describes his fears for the future of humanity:

:I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone [[idolatry|idols]] and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine [[obelisks]] of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, [[war]]-exhausted [[human|mankind]] --of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19.</ref>

With the drug that has given him "transient surcease" running out, he declares himself ready to do himself in; the narrative is revealed to be a [[suicide]] note. The story ends with the narrator rushing to the window as he hears "a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19. There's some dispute over what actually happens at the end of the story; Joshi and Schultz in the ''H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'' (p. 58) describe as "preposterous" the interpretation that an undersea creature has actually arrived at the narrator's room to finish him off. They note that Lovecraft described the story as "involving hallucinations of the most hideous sort" in an August 27, 1917 letter to Reinhart Kleiner.</ref>

==Cthulhu Mythos==
"Dagon" is often not counted as one of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories<ref>Of four lists of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories cited by [[Lin Carter]]—including his own and [[August Derleth]]'s—none include "Dagon." Lin Carter, ''Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos'', pp. 25-26, 191.</ref>, but it is the first of Lovecraft's stories to introduce a Cthulhu Mythos element--the sea deity Dagon itself.

The creature that appears in the story is often identified with the deity Dagon, but the creature is not identified by that name in the story "Dagon", and seems to be depicted as a typical member of his species, a worshipper rather than an object of worship. Nor is it likely that Lovecraft intends "Dagon" to be the name used by the deity's nonhuman worshippers; as Robert M. Price points out, "When Lovecraft wanted to convey something like the indigenous name of one of the Old Ones, he coined some unpronounceable jumble."<ref>Robert M. Price, ''The Innsmouth Cycle'', p. ix.</ref>

Price suggests that readers of "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]" may be mistaken as to the identity of the "Dagon" worshipped by that story's [[Deep Ones]]: In contrast to the Old Ones' alien-sounding names, "the name 'Dagon' is a direct borrowing from familiar sources, and implies that [[The Shadow Over Innsmouth#Obed Marsh|<nowiki>[</nowiki>Obed<nowiki>]</nowiki> Marsh]] and his confederates had chosen the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the deep ones, namely Great Cthulhu."<ref>Price, p. ix.</ref>

Lin Carter, who thought "Dagon" an "excellent" story, remarked that it was "an interesting prefiguring of themes later to emerge in [Lovecraft's] Cthulhu stories. The volcanic upheaval that temporarily exposes long-drowned horrors above the waves, for example, reappears in "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]" (1926)".<ref>Carter, p. 10.</ref> Other parallels between the two stories include a horrifying tale told by a sailor rescued at sea; a gigantic, sea-dwelling monster (compared to [[Polyphemus]] in each tale); an apocalyptic vision of humanity's destruction at the hands of ancient nonhuman intelligences; and a narrator who fears he is doomed to die because of the knowledge he has gained. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz call the latter story "manifestly an exhaustive reworking of 'Dagon'".<ref>Joshi and Schultz, "Call of Cthulhu, The", p. 29.</ref>

In "The Call of Cthulhu", one of the newspaper clipping collected by the late [[The Call of Cthulhu#George Gammell Angell|Professor Angell]] mentions a suicide from a window that may correspond to the death of the narrator of "Dagon".

==Other presentations==

*A reference to Dagon appears again in Lovecraft's "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]" (1936), one of Lovecraft's best-known stories. The tale concerns a Massachusetts town that has been taken over by the [[Deep One (Cthulhu mythos)|Deep Ones]], a race of water-breathing humanoids. A center of the Deep Ones' power in Innsmouth is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, ostensibly a [[Masonic]]-style fraternal order. Other Cthulhu Mythos stories refer to the creature as Father Dagon, depicting him as having a similar being, [[Mother Hydra]], as a mate.

*Director [[Stuart Gordon]] and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who worked together on ''[[Re-Animator]],'' made a movie called ''[[Dagon (2001 movie)|Dagon]]'' in 2001. Though the film credits both Lovecraft's "Dagon" and his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," much more of the plot is (loosely) adapted from the latter story.

*[[Fred Chappell]], considered a literary writer, wrote a novel called ''Dagon'', which attempted to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic [[Southern literature|Southern]] [[Gothic novel]]. The novel was awarded the Best Foreign Novel Prize by the [[French Academy]] in 1972.

*In [[Mahou Sentai Magiranger]], the leader of the [[The Infershia Pantheon]] Gods is named '''Dagon''', who is based on the Lovecraft character and the [[Creature from the Black Lagoon]].

*In the [[roleplaying game]] ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', [[Dagon (Dungeons & Dragons)|Dagon]] is the name shared by both a [[Demon lord (Dungeons & Dragons)|demon prince]] of the [[Abyss (plane)|Abyss]] and an outcast [[Devil (Dungeons & Dragons)|devil]]. The former maintains a similar flavor to the Lovecraftian version.

*A song by symphonic metal band ''[[Therion (band)|Therion]]'', "Call of Dagon", is probably based on Lovecraft's stories, as far as chorus includes the strings: ''"Call of Dagon!/The Deep One is calling you"''.

== Trivia ==
*The story mentions [[Piltdown Man]], which had not been exposed by the scientific community as a fraud and hoax at the time of writing.

==References==
{{Wikisourcepar|Dagon}}
*{{cite book|chapter=Dagon|first=Howard P. <nowiki>[</nowiki>1923<nowiki>]</nowiki>|last=Lovecraft|year=1986|title=Dagon and Other Macabre Tales|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-039-4}} Definitive version.

===Notes===
<references/>

==External link==
* [http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/d.asp "H. P. Lovecraft's 'Dagon'"], The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dagon}}

[[Category:Mythos: Tales]]

[[fr:Dagon (Mythe de Cthulhu)]]
[[it:Dagon (racconto)]]
[[ru:Дагон (рассказ)]]
[[sv:Dagon (novell)]]

Dagon

2007-08-23T23:08:03Z

Dagon:

{{Infobox short story | 
| name = Dagon
| author = [[H. P. Lovecraft]]
| country = {{flag|USA}}
| language = [[English language|English]]
| genre = [[Horror fiction|Horror]] [[short story]]
| published_in = ''The Vagrant''
| publisher =
| media_type =
| pub_date = November, 1919
}}

'''"Dagon"''' is a [[short story]] by [[H. P. Lovecraft]], written in July [[1917 in literature|1917]], one of the first stories he wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November [[1919 in literature|1919]] edition of ''The Vagrant'' (issue #11).

==Inspiration==
After reading Lovecraft's juvenalia in 1917, W. Paul Cook, editor of the amateur press journal ''The Vagrant'', encouraged Lovecraft to resume writing fiction. That summer, Lovecraft wrote two stories: "[[The Tomb (short story)|The Tomb]]" and "Dagon".

The story was inspired in part by a dream he had. "I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down!" he later wrote.<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "In Defence of Dagon", ''Miscellaneous Writings'', p. 150; cited in S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Dagon", ''An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'', p. 58.</ref>

Critic William Fulwiler indicates that Lovecraft may have been influenced by [[Irvin S. Cobb]]'s "Fishhead", a story about a strange fish-like human.<ref>Joshi and Schultz, p. 58.</ref> Fulwiler has also suggested that Lovecraft took the story's theme of "an ancient prehuman race that will someday rise to conquer humanity" from [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]' ''[[At the Earth's Core]]'' (1914).

==Synopsis==
The story is the testament of a tortured, [[morphine]]-addicted man who plans to commit suicide over an incident that occurred early on in [[World War I]] when he was a [[merchant marine]] officer.

In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by a German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad [[Pacific Ocean|Pacific]]".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, "Dagon", ''Dagon and Other Macabre Tales'', p. 14.</ref> He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly across the sea "somewhat south of the [[equator]]" until he eventually finds himself inexplicably stranded on "a slimy expanse of [[hell]]ish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see.... The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain." He theorizes that this area was formerly "a portion of the [[ocean]] floor... thrown to the surface" by a volcanic upheaval, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 15.</ref>

After waiting three days for the seafloor to dry out sufficiently to walk on, he strikes out on foot to find the sea and possible rescue. After two days of walking, he reaches his goal, a "hummock" that turns out to be a mound on the edge of an "immeasurable pit or canyon".<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 16.</ref> Descending the slope, he sees a gigantic white stone object that he soon perceives to be a "well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 17.</ref>

The monolith, situated next to a channel of water in the bottom of the chasm, is covered in unfamiliar [[logogram|hieroglyphs]] "consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopuses, crustaceans, molluscs, whales and the like."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 17.</ref> There are also "crude sculptures" depicting

:men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well... [T]hey were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref>

As the narrator looks on the monolith, a creature emerges from the water:

:With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, [[Polyphemus]]-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous [[monster]] of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref>

Insane with fear, the mariner flees back to his stranded boat, and vaguely recalls a "great storm".<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 18.</ref> His next memory is of a [[San Francisco]] hospital, where he was taken after being rescued in mid-ocean by a U.S. ship. There are no reports of any Pacific upheavals, and he does not expect anyone to believe his incredible story. He mentions one abortive attempt to gain understanding of his experience:

:Once I sought out a celebrated [[ethnologist]], and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient [[Philistine]] legend of [[Dagon]], the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19.</ref>

Haunted by visions of the creature, "especially when the moon is gibbous and waning", he describes his fears for the future of humanity:

:I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone [[idolatry|idols]] and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine [[obelisks]] of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, [[war]]-exhausted [[human|mankind]] --of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19.</ref>

With the drug that has given him "transient surcease" running out, he declares himself ready to do himself in; the narrative is revealed to be a [[suicide]] note. The story ends with the narrator rushing to the window as he hears "a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it."<ref>Lovecraft, "Dagon", p. 19. There's some dispute over what actually happens at the end of the story; Joshi and Schultz in the ''H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia'' (p. 58) describe as "preposterous" the interpretation that an undersea creature has actually arrived at the narrator's room to finish him off. They note that Lovecraft described the story as "involving hallucinations of the most hideous sort" in an August 27, 1917 letter to Reinhart Kleiner.</ref>

==Cthulhu Mythos==
"Dagon" is often not counted as one of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories<ref>Of four lists of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories cited by [[Lin Carter]]—including his own and [[August Derleth]]'s—none include "Dagon." Lin Carter, ''Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos'', pp. 25-26, 191.</ref>, but it is the first of Lovecraft's stories to introduce a Cthulhu Mythos element--the sea deity Dagon itself.

The creature that appears in the story is often identified with the deity Dagon, but the creature is not identified by that name in the story "Dagon", and seems to be depicted as a typical member of his species, a worshipper rather than an object of worship. Nor is it likely that Lovecraft intends "Dagon" to be the name used by the deity's nonhuman worshippers; as Robert M. Price points out, "When Lovecraft wanted to convey something like the indigenous name of one of the Old Ones, he coined some unpronounceable jumble."<ref>Robert M. Price, ''The Innsmouth Cycle'', p. ix.</ref>

Price suggests that readers of "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]" may be mistaken as to the identity of the "Dagon" worshipped by that story's [[Deep Ones]]: In contrast to the Old Ones' alien-sounding names, "the name 'Dagon' is a direct borrowing from familiar sources, and implies that [[The Shadow Over Innsmouth#Obed Marsh|<nowiki>[</nowiki>Obed<nowiki>]</nowiki> Marsh]] and his confederates had chosen the closest biblical analogy to the real object of worship of the deep ones, namely Great Cthulhu."<ref>Price, p. ix.</ref>

Lin Carter, who thought "Dagon" an "excellent" story, remarked that it was "an interesting prefiguring of themes later to emerge in [Lovecraft's] Cthulhu stories. The volcanic upheaval that temporarily exposes long-drowned horrors above the waves, for example, reappears in "[[The Call of Cthulhu]]" (1926)".<ref>Carter, p. 10.</ref> Other parallels between the two stories include a horrifying tale told by a sailor rescued at sea; a gigantic, sea-dwelling monster (compared to [[Polyphemus]] in each tale); an apocalyptic vision of humanity's destruction at the hands of ancient nonhuman intelligences; and a narrator who fears he is doomed to die because of the knowledge he has gained. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz call the latter story "manifestly an exhaustive reworking of 'Dagon'".<ref>Joshi and Schultz, "Call of Cthulhu, The", p. 29.</ref>

In "The Call of Cthulhu", one of the newspaper clipping collected by the late [[The Call of Cthulhu#George Gammell Angell|Professor Angell]] mentions a suicide from a window that may correspond to the death of the narrator of "Dagon".

==Other presentations==

*A reference to Dagon appears again in Lovecraft's "[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]" (1936), one of Lovecraft's best-known stories. The tale concerns a Massachusetts town that has been taken over by the [[Deep One (Cthulhu mythos)|Deep Ones]], a race of water-breathing humanoids. A center of the Deep Ones' power in Innsmouth is the Esoteric Order of Dagon, ostensibly a [[Masonic]]-style fraternal order. Other Cthulhu Mythos stories refer to the creature as Father Dagon, depicting him as having a similar being, [[Mother Hydra]], as a mate.

*Director [[Stuart Gordon]] and screenwriter Dennis Paoli, who worked together on ''[[Re-Animator]],'' made a movie called ''[[Dagon (2001 movie)|Dagon]]'' in 2001. Though the film credits both Lovecraft's "Dagon" and his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," much more of the plot is (loosely) adapted from the latter story.

*[[Fred Chappell]], considered a literary writer, wrote a novel called ''Dagon'', which attempted to tell a Cthulhu Mythos story as a psychologically realistic [[Southern literature|Southern]] [[Gothic novel]]. The novel was awarded the Best Foreign Novel Prize by the [[French Academy]] in 1972.

*In [[Mahou Sentai Magiranger]], the leader of the [[The Infershia Pantheon]] Gods is named '''Dagon''', who is based on the Lovecraft character and the [[Creature from the Black Lagoon]].

*In the [[roleplaying game]] ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', [[Dagon (Dungeons & Dragons)|Dagon]] is the name shared by both a [[Demon lord (Dungeons & Dragons)|demon prince]] of the [[Abyss (plane)|Abyss]] and an outcast [[Devil (Dungeons & Dragons)|devil]]. The former maintains a similar flavor to the Lovecraftian version.

*A song by symphonic metal band ''[[Therion (band)|Therion]]'', "Call of Dagon", is probably based on Lovecraft's stories, as far as chorus includes the strings: ''"Call of Dagon!/The Deep One is calling you"''.

== Trivia ==
*The story mentions [[Piltdown Man]], which had not been exposed by the scientific community as a fraud and hoax at the time of writing.

==References==
{{Wikisourcepar|Dagon}}
*{{cite book|chapter=Dagon|first=Howard P. <nowiki>[</nowiki>1923<nowiki>]</nowiki>|last=Lovecraft|year=1986|title=Dagon and Other Macabre Tales|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-039-4}} Definitive version.

===Notes===
<references/>

==External link==
* [http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/d.asp "H. P. Lovecraft's 'Dagon'"], The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dagon}}

[[Category:Mythos: Tales]]

[[fr:Dagon (Mythe de Cthulhu)]]
[[it:Dagon (racconto)]]
[[ru:Дагон (рассказ)]]
[[sv:Dagon (novell)]]

Category:Mythos: Tales

2007-08-23T23:06:15Z

Dagon:

[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos]]

The Dunwich Horror (fiction)

2007-08-23T23:05:56Z

Dagon:

{{Infobox short story | 
| name = The Dunwich Horror
| author = [[H. P. Lovecraft]]
| country = {{flag|USA}}
| language = [[English language|English]]
| genre = [[Horror fiction|Horror]] [[short story]]
| publication_type = [[Periodical]]
| published_in = ''[[Weird Tales]]''
| publisher =
| media_type = Print ([[Magazine]])
| pub_date = April, 1929
}}

"'''The Dunwich Horror"''' is a [[short story]] by [[H. P. Lovecraft]]. Written in [[1928 in literature|1928]], it was first published in the April [[1929 in literature|1929]] issue of ''[[Weird Tales]]'' (pp. 481-508). It takes place in [[Dunwich (H. P. Lovecraft)|Dunwich]], a fictional town in [[Massachusetts]]. It is considered one of the core stories of the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].

==Inspiration==
===Geographical===

In a letter to [[August Derleth]], Lovecraft wrote that "The Dunwich Horror" "takes place amongst the wild domed hills of the upper [[Miskatonic River|Miskatonic Valley]], far northwest of [[Arkham]], & is based on several old New England legends--one of which I heard only last month during my sojourn in [[Wilbraham, Massachusetts|Wilbraham]]," a town in south-central Massachusetts. <ref>Lovecraft, letter to August Derleth, August 4, 1928, cited in Joshi, p. 101.</ref> (One such legend is the notion that [[whippoorwill]]s can capture the departing soul.)<ref>Joshi, p. 113.</ref>

In another letter, Lovecraft wrote that Dunwich is "a vague echo of the decadent Massachusetts countryside around [[Springfield, Massachusetts|Springfield]]--say Wilbraham, [[Monson, Massachusetts|Monson]] and [[Hampden, Massachusetts|Hampden]]."<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters'' Vol. III, pp. 432-433; cited in Joshi, p. 108.</ref> Robert M. Price notes that "much of the physical description of the Dunwich countryside is a faithful sketch of Wilbraham," citing a passage from a letter from Lovecraft to Zealia Bishop that "sounds like a passage from 'The Dunwich Horror' itself":

:When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bullfrogs.<ref>Cited in Robert M. Price, ''The Dunwich Cycle'', p. 82.</ref>

The physical model for Dunwich's Sentinel Hill is thought to be Wilbraham Mountain near Wilbraham.<ref>Joshi, p. 114.</ref>

But researchers have pointed out the story's apparent connections to another Massachusetts region: the area around [[Athol, Massachusetts|Athol]] and points south, in the north-central part of the state (which is where Lovecraft indicates that Dunwich is located). It has been suggested that the name "Dunwich," was inspired by the town of Greenwich, which was deliberately flooded to create the [[Quabbin Reservoir]]<ref>Charles P. Mtchell, The Complete H.P.Lovecraft Filmography p.9 (2001)</ref>, although Greenwich and the nearby towns of Dana, Enfield and Prescott actually weren't submerged until 1938. Donald R. Burleson points out that several names included in the story--including Bishop, Frye, Sawyer, Rice and Morgan--are either prominent Athol names or have a connection to the town's history.<ref>Donald R. Burleson, "Humour Beneath Horror: Some Sources for 'The Dunwich Horror' and 'The Whisperer in Darkness'", ''Lovecraft Studies'', No. 2 (Spring 1980), pp. 5-15, cited in Joshi, pp. 105, 111, 138; Price, p. 82.</ref>

Athol's Sentinel Elm Farm seems to be the source for the name Sentinel Hill.<ref>Joshi, p. 114.</ref> The Bear's Den mentioned in the story resembles an actual cave of the same name visited by Lovecraft in North New Salem, southwest of Athol.<ref>Joshi, p. 147.</ref> (New Salem, like Dunwich, was founded by settlers from Salem--though in 1737, not 1692.<ref>Will Murray, "In Search of Arkham Country Revisited", ''Lovecraft Studies'', Nos. 19/20 (Fall 1989), ppp. 65-69; cited in Joshi, p. 110.</ref>)

The book ''Myths and Legends of Our Own Land'', by Charles M. Skinner, mentions a "Devil's Hop Yard" near [[Haddam, Connecticut]] as a gathering place for witches. The book, which Lovecraft seems to have read, also describes noises emanating from the earth near [[Moodus, Connecticut]], which are similar to the Dunwich sounds decried by Rev. Abijah Hoadley.<ref>Joshi, p. 112.</ref>

===Literary===

Lovecraft's main literary sources for "The Dunwich Horror" are the stories of British horror writer [[Arthur Machen]], particularly ''[[The Great God Pan]]'' (which is mentioned in the text of "The Dunwich Horror") and "[[The Novel of the Black Seal]]". Both Machen stories concern individuals whose death throes reveal them to be only half-human in their parentage. According to [[Robert M. Price]], "'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and even a [[pastiche]]. There is little in Lovecraft's wonderful story that does not come directly out of Machen's fiction."<ref>Price, pp. ix-x.</ref>

The name ''Dunwich'' itself may come from Machen's ''The Terror'', where the name refers to an English town where the titular entity is seen hovering as "a black cloud with sparks of fire in it".<ref>Price, p. 1.</ref> Lovecraft also takes Wilbur Whateley's occult terms "Aklo" and "Voorish" from Machen's "The White People".<ref>Price, p. 48.</ref>

Lovecraft also seems to have found inspiration in Anthony M. Rud's story "Ooze" (published in ''Weird Tales'', March 1923), which also involved a monster being secretly kept and fed in a house that it subsequently bursts out of and destroys.<ref>Joshi, pp. 118, 152.</ref>

The tracks of Wilbur's brother recall those seen in [[Algernon Blackwood]]'s "The Wendigo", one of Lovecraft's favorite horror stories,<ref>Joshi, pp. 144-145.</ref>

==Reaction==

Lovecraft took pride in "The Dunwich Horror", calling it "so fiendish that [''Weird Tales''] editor [[Farnsworth Wright]] may not dare to print it." Wright, however, snapped it up, sending Lovecraft a check for $240, the largest single payment for his fiction he had received up to that point.<ref>Lovecraft, ''Selected Letters'' Vol. II, p. 240; cited in Joshi, p. 101.</ref>

Lovecraft biographer [[Lin Carter]] calls the story "an excellent tale.... A mood of tension and gathering horror permeates the story, which culminates in a shattering climax".<ref>Lin Carter, ''Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos'', pp. 71-72.</ref> [[Robert M. Price]] declares that "among the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Dunwich Horror' remains my favorite."<ref>Robert M. Price, "What Roodmas Horror", ''The Dunwich Cycle'', p. ix.</ref>

[[S. T. Joshi]], on the other hand, regards "Dunwich" as "simply an aesthetic mistake on Lovecraft's part", citing its "stock good-versus-evil scenario".<ref>Joshi, pp. 16-17.</ref>

==Plot summary==

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"The Dunwich Horror" is one of the few tales Lovecraft wrote where the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story, although the Horror itself is only the remainder of a far more fiendish plan thwarted by Wilbur's premature death.

"The Dunwich Horror" tells the story of Wilbur Whateley, the son of a deformed albino mother and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by the mad Old Whateley as "[[Yog-Sothoth]]"), and the strange events surrounding his birth and unprecedentedly precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft.

The plot revolves around the desire of Wilbur to acquire an unabridged Latin version of the ''[[Necronomicon]]'' — his imperfect English copy ill-suited for his dark purpose — so that he may open the way for the return of the mysterious (eldritch) "Old Ones", whose forerunner is the Lovecraftian [[Outer God]] [[Yog-Sothoth]]. Furthermore, Wilbur and his grandfather have sequestered an unseen presence at their farmhouse; this being is connected somehow to Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, this unseen entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring Wilbur and his patriarch to make frequent modifications to their residence. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Eventually, Wilbur's mother also disappears. By the time Wilbur's grandfather passes away, the colossal entity occupies the whole interior of the farmhouse.

Wilbur ventures to [[Miskatonic University]] in [[Arkham]] to procure a copy of the dreaded ''Necronomicon'' – Miskatonic's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock an original print of the frightful tome. The ''[[Necronomicon]]'' has certain spells that Wilbur can use to summon the ''Old Ones'' for dark purposes unfathomable to men. When the librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, refuses to release the university's copy to him, Wilbur breaks into the library that night to steal the loathsome book. Unfortunately (for Wilbur rather than for humankind), he is killed by the guard dog, which attacks him with a most unusual ferocity. When Dr. Armitage and two other professors arrive on the scene and see Wilbur Whateley's partly non-human corpse, they realize that the youth was not wholly of this earth.

The story culminates with the actual Dunwich horror: With Wilbur Whateley now dead, no one can attend to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the Whateley farmhouse explodes as the thing, an invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, cutting a path through fields, trees, and ravines, leaving huge "prints" the size of tree trunks. The frightened town is terrorized by the invisible creature for several days, until Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan, all of Miskatonic University, arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to defeat the creature. In the end, its nature is revealed: it is the twin brother of Wilbur Whateley, though it "looked more like the father than [Wilbur] did."
The actual death of the Horror is a [[Surrealism|surrealistic]] mockery of the crucifixion of Christ and His last cry upon crucifixion in Mark 15:34 "And at the ninth hour, Jesus shouted in a loud voice, "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?" (which is translated from [[Aramaic]], "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") The Horror's final words are ''"Eh-y-ya-ya-yahaah - e'yayayaaaa... ngh'aaaaa... ngh'aaa... h'yuh... h'yuh... HELP! HELP! ...ff - ff - ff - FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH!..."''.

==Characters==
===Old Whateley===

Lavinia Whateley's "aged and half-insane father, about whom the most frightful tales of magic had been whispered in his youth".<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 159.</ref> Dunwich gossips recall that "the hills once shook when he shrieked the dreadful name of ''Yog-Sothoth'' in the midst of a circle of stones with a great book open in his arms before him."<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 162.</ref> He has a large collection of "rotting ancient books and parts of books" which he uses to "instruct[s] and catechise" his grandson Wilbur.<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 163.</ref> He dies of natural causes on August 2, 1924.<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 166.</ref>

He is given no first name by Lovecraft; he is referred to as "Noah Whateley" in the [[Call of Cthulhu role-playing game]].

According to S. T. Joshi, "It is not certain where Lovecraft got the name Whateley," though there is a small town called [[Whately, Massachusetts|Whately]] in northwestern Massachusetts near the [[Mohawk Trail]], which Lovecraft hiked several times, including in the summer of 1928.<ref>Joshi, p. 115.</ref> Robert M. Price's short story "Wilbur Whateley Waiting" emphasizes the obvious pun in the name.<ref>Robert M. Price, “Wilbur Whateley Waiting”, ''The Dunwich Cycle'', Robert M. Price, ed., pp. 236-252.</ref>

===Lavinia Whateley===

Born circa 1878, Lavinia Whateley is the daughter of Old Whateley and a mother who met an "unexplained death by violence" when Lavinia was 12. She is described as a

:somewhat deformed, unattractive [[albino]] woman...a lone creature given to wandering amidst thunderstorms in the hills and trying to read the great odorous books which her father had inherited through two centuries of Whateleys.... She had never been to school, but was filled with disjointed scraps of ancient lore that Old Whateley had taught her.... Isolated among strange influences, Lavinia was fond of wild and grandiose day-dreams and singular occupations.

Elsewhere, she is called "slatternly [and] crinkly-haired".

In [[1913]], she gave birth to Wilbur Whately by an unknown father. On [[Halloween]] night in [[1926]], she disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Lavinia Whateley is one of Lovecraft's very few female characters. S. T. Joshi notes that Lovecraft's mother, like Lavinia, was in her mid-30s when she gave birth to her son.<ref>Joshi, p. 115.</ref>

===Wilbur Whateley===

Born [[February 2]], [[1913]] at 5 a.m. to Lavinia Whateley and an unknown father. Described as a "dark, goatish-looking infant"<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 159.</ref>--neighbors refer to him as "Lavinny's black brat"<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 162.</ref>--he shows extreme precocity: "Within three months of his birth, he had attained a size and muscular power not usually found in infants under a full year of age.... At seven months, he began to walk unassisted,"<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 161.</ref> and he "commenced to talk...at the age of only eleven months."<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 162.</ref> At three years of age, "he looked like a boy of ten,"<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 164.</ref> while at four and a half, he "looked like a lad of fifteen. His lips and cheeks were fuzzy with a coarse dark down, and his voice had begun to break."<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 165.</ref>

"Though he shared his mother's and grandfather's chinlessness, his firm and precociously shaped nose united with the expression of his large, dark, almost Latin eyes to give him an air of..well-nigh preternatural intelligence," Lovecraft writes, though at the same time he is "exceedingly ugly...there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears."<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", p. 162.</ref>

He dies at the age of fifteen after being mauled by a guard dog while breaking in to the Miskatonic library on [[August 3, 1928]]. His death scene allows Lovecraft to provide a detailed description of Wilbur's partly nonhuman anatomy:

:The thing that lay half-bent on its side in a foetid pool of greenish-yellow ichor and tarry stickiness was almost nine feet tall, and the dog had torn off all the clothing and some of the skin.... It was partly human, beyond a doubt, with very manlike hands and head, and the goatish, chinless face had the stamp of the Whateleys upon it. But the torso and lower parts of the body were teratologically fabulous, so that only generous clothing could ever have enabled it to walk on earth unchallenged or uneradicated.

:Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest...had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply.

:Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth's giant [[dinosaur|saurians]], and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were neither hooves nor claws.<ref>Lovecraft, "The Dunwich Horror", pp. 174-175.</ref>

This death scene bears a marked resemblance to that of Jervase Cradock, a similarly half-human character in Arthur Machen's "The Novel of the Black Seal": "Something pushed out from the body there on the floor, and stretched forth, a slimy, wavering tentacle," Machen writes.<ref>Cited in Joshi, p. 140.</ref> Will Murray notes that the goatish, partly reptilian Wilbur Whateley resembles a [[chimera (mythology)|chimera]], a mythological creature referred to in Charles Lamb's epigraph to "The Dunwich Horror".<ref>Will Murray, "The Dunwich Chimera and Others: Correlating the Cthulhu Mythos", ''Lovecraft Studies'' No. 8 (Spring 1984), pp. 10-24; cited in Joshi, pp. 104, 140.</ref>

Robert M. Price points out that Wilbur Whateley is in some respects an autobiographical figure for Lovecraft: "Wilbur's being raised by a grandfather instead of a father, his home education from his grandfather's library, his insane mother, his stigma of ugliness (in Lovecraft's case untrue, but a self-image imposed on him by his mother), and his sense of being an outsider all echo Lovecraft himself."<ref>Price, ''The Dunwich Cycle'', p. 236.</ref>

===Henry Armitage===
(1855–1939/1946?)

The head librarian at [[Miskatonic University]].  As a young man, he graduated from Miskatonic in [[1881]] and went on to obtain his [[doctorate]] from [[Princeton University]] and his Doctor of Letters degree at [[Johns Hopkins University]]. 


Lovecraft noted that while writing "The Dunwich Horror", "[I] found myself identifying with one of the characters (an aged scholar who finally combats the menace) toward the end".<ref>H. P. Lovecraft, letter to [[August Derleth]], September 1928; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 81.</ref> [[S. T. Joshi]] writes that Armitage "would make a very good parody of the pompous and valiant 'hero' of hackneyed adventure fiction were it not so obvious that Lovecraft intends us to take him seriously."<ref>S. T. Joshi, ''The Annotated Lovecraft'', p. 16.</ref>


===Francis Morgan===
Professor of [[Medicine]] and [[Comparative Anatomy]] (or [[Archaeology]]) at [[Miskatonic University]]. The story refers to him as "youngish".

In [[Fritz Leiber]]'s "To Arkham and the Stars"--written in 1966 and apparently set at about that time--Morgan is described as "the sole living survivor of the brave trio who had slain the Dunwich Horror". According to Leiber, Morgan's "research in [[mescaline]] and [[LSD]]" produced "clever anti-hallucinogens" that were instrumental in curing [[At the Mountains of Madness#Danforth|Danforth]]'s mental illness.<ref>Fritz Leiber, "To Arkham and the Stars", ''Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos'', pp. 320-321.</ref>

===Warren Rice===
Professor of [[Classical language|Classical Languages]] at [[Miskatonic University]]. He is called "stocky" and "iron-grey".

==Cthulhu Mythos==

Although Lovecraft first mentioned "Yog-Sothoth" in the novel ''[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]'', it was in "The Dunwich Horror" that he introduced the entity as one of his extra-dimensional [[Old Ones]]. It is also the tale in which the [[Necronomicon]] makes the most significant appearance, and the longest direct quote from it appears in the text. Many of the other standards of the Cthulhu Mythos, such as [[Miskatonic]] University, [[Arkham]] and [[Dunwich]] also form integral parts of the tale.

==Adaptations==

A movie version of ''The Dunwich Horror'' appeared in 1970. It starred [[Dean Stockwell]] as Wilbur Whateley, and also starred [[Ed Begley]] and [[Sandra Dee]] with a soundtrack by [[Les Baxter]]. While the script borrowed some elements from Lovecraft, the final film bears little resemblance to the short story.

==Anthology==

'''''The Dunwich Horror and Others''''' is the name of a collection of H. P. Lovecraft short stories published by [[Arkham House]], containing what [[August Derleth]] considered to be the best of Lovecraft's shorter fiction. Originally published in 1963, the 6th printing in 1985 included extensive corrections by [[S. T. Joshi]] in order to produce the definitive edition of Lovecraft's works. The collection has an introduction by [[Robert Bloch]], titled "Heritage of Horror", reprinted from the 1982 Ballantine collection, ''Blood Curdling Tales of Supernatural Horror: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft''.

The stories included in ''The Dunwich Horror and Others'' are:

*"[[In the Vault]]"
*"[[Pickman's Model]]"
*"[[The Rats in the Walls]]"
*"[[The Outsider (short story)|The Outsider]]"
*"[[The Colour Out of Space]]"
*"[[The Music of Erich Zann]]"
*"[[The Haunter of the Dark]]"
*"[[The Picture in the House]]"
*"[[The Call of Cthulhu]]"
*"[[#Synopsis|The Dunwich Horror]]"
*"[[Cool Air]]"
*"[[The Whisperer in Darkness]]"
*"[[The Terrible Old Man]]"
*"[[The Thing on the Doorstep]]"
*"[[The Shadow Over Innsmouth]]"
*"[[The Shadow Out of Time]]"

==References==
*{{cite book|chapter=The Dunwich Horror|first=Howard P.|origyear=1928|last=Lovecraft|year=1984|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

==Footnotes==
<references/>

[[Category:Mythos: Tales]]

The Dunwich Horror (fiction)

2007-08-23T23:04:53Z

Dagon:

The Dunwich Horror (fiction)

2007-08-23T23:03:02Z

Dagon:

Dunwich

2007-08-23T23:02:12Z

Dagon:

'''Dunwich''' is a fictional town that appeared in the [[H. P. Lovecraft]] [[short story]] "[[The Dunwich Horror]]" ([[1929 in literature|1929]]). Dunwich is found in the fictional [[Miskatonic River]] Valley of [[Massachusetts]], part of the imaginary region sometimes called [[Lovecraft Country]]. The inhabitants are depicted as inbred, uneducated, and very superstitious, while the town itself is described as economically poor with many decrepit and abandoned buildings.

==Origin==

Lovecraft may have named the town after the lost port of [[Dunwich]] in [[Suffolk]], [[England]]. This town was the subject (though not mentioned by name) of [[Algernon Swinburne]]'s poem "By the North Sea", which was in an anthology owned by Lovecraft. This Dunwich also appears in [[Arthur Machen]]'s [[novella]] ''The Terror'' ([[1917 in literature|1917]]), which Lovecraft is known to have read.

Lovecraft also could have been inspired by other [[New England]] towns with names ending in ''-wich'', such as [[Ipswich, Massachusetts|Ipswich]] near [[Salem, Massachusetts]], East and West Greenwich in [[Rhode Island]], and [[Greenwich, Massachusetts]], a decaying rural village that has since been flooded to create the [[Quabbin Reservoir]]. Although the English town is pronounced "DUN-nich" (similar to the New England Greenwiches), Lovecraft never specified how he preferred his ''Dunwich'' be pronounced. <ref>Joshi, ''The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft'', note #14, p. 108.</ref>

Lovecraft is said to have based Dunwich on [[Athol, Massachusetts]], and other towns in Western Massachusetts. <ref>Books and Writers, [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lovecraf.htm "H(oward) P(hillip) Lovecraft"], accessed July 13, 2006.</ref>

==Description==

Lovecraft locates Dunwich in "north central Massachusetts", found by travellers "tak[ing] the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners." Aylesbury and Dean's Corners are both Lovecraft creations, neither of which appears in any other of his stories, though Aylesbury is mentioned in his poem sequence ''Fungi From Yuggoth''. <ref>Joshi, ''Index to the Fiction & Poetry of H. P. Lovecraft, pp. 11, 17</ref>

"The Dunwich Horror" describes the region around Dunwich as "a lonely and curious country," broken up with "ravines of problematical depth" and "stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes". There is dense natural growth and abundant wildlife such as whippoorwills, fireflies and bullfrogs, though "the planted fields appear singularly few and barren." The "sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation," while the "gnarled, solitary" inhabitants are "silent and furtive".

Lovecraft describes the village of Dunwich itself:

:Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.

==Connections==

After "The Dunwich Horror", Lovecraft did not mention Dunwich in his fiction again, though the town does appear in his poem "The Ancient Track" (1929).

The town was used as a setting by [[August Derleth]] in his posthumous "collaborations" with Lovecraft, notably in "The Shuttered Room" (1959).

Many [[Cthulhu Mythos]] stories by other writers have also been set in Dunwich, some of which are collected in ''The Dunwich Cycle''.

==Other appearances==

The town is also the setting of the loose film adaptation of Lovecraft's story, also called ''The Dunwich Horror'', starring [[Dean Stockwell]] and [[Sandra Dee]].

The [[horror film]] ''[[City of the Living Dead]]'', directed by the late [[Lucio Fulci]], features a town called Dunwich, named as a [[tribute]] to Lovecraft.

[[Chaosium]]'s Call of Cthulhu [[role-playing game]] uses Dunwich as a setting, notably in ''H.P. Lovecraft's Dunwich: Return to the Forgotten Village''.

The video game ''The Bard's Tale'' features a town named Dunwich in which many occult events occur.

''The Sundog'', a novella by [[Stephen King]] that appears in his collection ''[[Four Past Midnight]]'', refers to

:a fellow in Dunwich, MA, to whom Pop had once sold a so-called spirit trumpet for ninety dollars; the fellow had taken the spirit trumpet to the Dunwich cemetery and must have heard something exceedingly unpleasant, because he had been raving in a padded cell in [[Arkham]] for almost six years now, totally insane.

==See also==

Other fictional settings from the stories of H. P. Lovecraft:

* [[Arkham]], Massachusetts
* [[Innsmouth]], Massachusetts
* [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]], Massachusetts

==References==
*{{Cite book|first=Howard P.|last=Lovecraft|chapter=The Dunwich Horror|origyear=1929|year=1984|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

*{{cite book|first=Howard P.|last=Lovecraft|chapter=The Dunwich Horror|editor=[[S. T. Joshi]] (ed.)|title=The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft|month=August|year=1997|location=New York, NY|publisher=Dell|id=ISBN 0-440-50660-3 (trade paper)}}

===Notes===
<references/>

[[it:Dunwich (H. P. Lovecraft)]]
[[ja:ダニッチ]]
[[ru:Данвич]]
[[sv:Dunwich]]

==External link==

Original Wiki source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/ Wikipedia]

[[Category:Mythos:Locations]]

Dunwich

2007-08-23T23:01:26Z

Dagon:

Dunwich

2007-08-23T23:00:46Z

Dagon:

'''Dunwich''' is a fictional town that appeared in the [[H. P. Lovecraft]] [[short story]] "[[The Dunwich Horror]]" ([[1929 in literature|1929]]). Dunwich is found in the fictional [[Miskatonic River]] Valley of [[Massachusetts]], part of the imaginary region sometimes called [[Lovecraft Country]]. The inhabitants are depicted as inbred, uneducated, and very superstitious, while the town itself is described as economically poor with many decrepit and abandoned buildings.

==Origin==

Lovecraft may have named the town after the lost port of [[Dunwich]] in [[Suffolk]], [[England]]. This town was the subject (though not mentioned by name) of [[Algernon Swinburne]]'s poem "By the North Sea", which was in an anthology owned by Lovecraft. This Dunwich also appears in [[Arthur Machen]]'s [[novella]] ''The Terror'' ([[1917 in literature|1917]]), which Lovecraft is known to have read.

Lovecraft also could have been inspired by other [[New England]] towns with names ending in ''-wich'', such as [[Ipswich, Massachusetts|Ipswich]] near [[Salem, Massachusetts]], East and West Greenwich in [[Rhode Island]], and [[Greenwich, Massachusetts]], a decaying rural village that has since been flooded to create the [[Quabbin Reservoir]]. Although the English town is pronounced "DUN-nich" (similar to the New England Greenwiches), Lovecraft never specified how he preferred his ''Dunwich'' be pronounced. <ref>Joshi, ''The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft'', note #14, p. 108.</ref>

Lovecraft is said to have based Dunwich on [[Athol, Massachusetts]], and other towns in Western Massachusetts. <ref>Books and Writers, [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lovecraf.htm "H(oward) P(hillip) Lovecraft"], accessed July 13, 2006.</ref>

==Description==

Lovecraft locates Dunwich in "north central Massachusetts", found by travellers "tak[ing] the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners." Aylesbury and Dean's Corners are both Lovecraft creations, neither of which appears in any other of his stories, though Aylesbury is mentioned in his poem sequence ''Fungi From Yuggoth''. <ref>Joshi, ''Index to the Fiction & Poetry of H. P. Lovecraft, pp. 11, 17</ref>

"The Dunwich Horror" describes the region around Dunwich as "a lonely and curious country," broken up with "ravines of problematical depth" and "stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes". There is dense natural growth and abundant wildlife such as whippoorwills, fireflies and bullfrogs, though "the planted fields appear singularly few and barren." The "sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation," while the "gnarled, solitary" inhabitants are "silent and furtive".

Lovecraft describes the village of Dunwich itself:

:Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.

==Connections==

After "The Dunwich Horror", Lovecraft did not mention Dunwich in his fiction again, though the town does appear in his poem "The Ancient Track" (1929).

The town was used as a setting by [[August Derleth]] in his posthumous "collaborations" with Lovecraft, notably in "The Shuttered Room" (1959).

Many [[Cthulhu Mythos]] stories by other writers have also been set in Dunwich, some of which are collected in ''The Dunwich Cycle''.

==Other appearances==

The town is also the setting of the loose film adaptation of Lovecraft's story, also called ''The Dunwich Horror'', starring [[Dean Stockwell]] and [[Sandra Dee]].

The [[horror film]] ''[[City of the Living Dead]]'', directed by the late [[Lucio Fulci]], features a town called Dunwich, named as a [[tribute]] to Lovecraft.

[[Chaosium]]'s Call of Cthulhu [[role-playing game]] uses Dunwich as a setting, notably in ''H.P. Lovecraft's Dunwich: Return to the Forgotten Village''.

The video game ''The Bard's Tale'' features a town named Dunwich in which many occult events occur.

''The Sundog'', a novella by [[Stephen King]] that appears in his collection ''[[Four Past Midnight]]'', refers to

:a fellow in Dunwich, MA, to whom Pop had once sold a so-called spirit trumpet for ninety dollars; the fellow had taken the spirit trumpet to the Dunwich cemetery and must have heard something exceedingly unpleasant, because he had been raving in a padded cell in [[Arkham]] for almost six years now, totally insane.

==See also==

Other fictional settings from the stories of H. P. Lovecraft:

* [[Arkham]], Massachusetts
* [[Innsmouth]], Massachusetts
* [[Kingsport (Lovecraft)|Kingsport]], Massachusetts

==References==
*{{Cite book|first=Howard P.|last=Lovecraft|chapter=The Dunwich Horror|origyear=1929|year=1984|title=The Dunwich Horror and Others|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-037-8}} Definitive version.

*{{cite book|first=Howard P.|last=Lovecraft|chapter=The Dunwich Horror|editor=[[S. T. Joshi]] (ed.)|title=The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft|month=August|year=1997|location=New York, NY|publisher=Dell|id=ISBN 0-440-50660-3 (trade paper)}}

===Notes===
<references/>

[[Category:Cthulhu Mythos locations]]
[[Category:Fictional towns and cities in Massachusetts]]

[[it:Dunwich (H. P. Lovecraft)]]
[[ja:ダニッチ]]
[[ru:Данвич]]
[[sv:Dunwich]]

==External link==
{{Wikisource}}