The Shadow Over Innsmouth
Synopsis
H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth is heralded as one of his best works and an essential work of gothic literature. In this piece, Lovecraft utilizes a combination of cosmicism, the uncanny, and horror to convey the haunting story of an isolated seaside town in Massachusetts. We begin with an anonymous narrator, who travels to Innsmouth in order to investigate some rumors about the inhabitants' strange appearance and behavior. He observes that the population of Innsmouth has an unsettling look about them, with their protruding eyes, gill-like appendages and scales. He discovers that the strangeness of their features is a product of interbreeding with fish, and refers to them as the "deep ones." Through his investigative work, his unease increases as he learns more about the cultish, supernatural history of the town and how these people came to be. Beneath the decay and claustrophobic feeling Lovecraft injects into his writing is a story about racial degeneracy, cosmic indifference and the terror of losing ones connection to the self.
Review
This was my introduction to Lovcraft's work. I appreciate its ingenuity and connections to ancient mythology. The racial components of horror are well-executed by the strange characters the narrator meets along the way. This story is timeless, haunting, and a quintessential piece of cosmic horror. The plot serves as a vessel to convey Lovecraft's greatest fears, namely miscegenation or mixing between racial groups. Although much of his writing has aged poorly and is overtly racist, the piece says a lot about universal human concerns like xenophobia and the self-destructing nature of humans. The book is a sort of documentation of eugenicist sentiments that were common in that time period. I found the narration, which is composed of increasingly dreadful monologues, to be the most compelling aspect of this piece. Anyone who is interested in horror and social theories would enjoy this book.