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The most effective element of fright in
Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" is the building mood of impending
doom to come upon the whole human race. The prospect of Cthulhu's advent
inspires the dread once evoked by the medieval expectation of
"Doomsday" when Christ would return to destroy sinners. That the story
should have this effect is far from accidental, for it is constructed, whether
purposely or not, on the model of such apocalyptic tracts as Hal Lindsey's The
Late Great Planet Earth, Tim LaHaye's The Beginning of the End, and
John Wesley White's Re-Entry.
Headlines and Deadlines
Apocalyptic enthusiasts commonly amass
newspaper clippings, current events, and out-of-context quotes in order to
buttress their claims that the world is coming to an end. There are two distinct
rationales for this. One is that current happenings are believed to fulfill
.biblical, astrological or other prophetic predictions. Lindsey and LaHaye have
lists of biblical prooftexts arbitrarily matched to newspaper articles (e.g.,
the Common Market = the "Revived Roman Empire" thought to be predicted
in the books of Daniel and Revelation). Lovecraft's Cthulhu cultists likewise
quote a passage from the Necronomicon ("That is not dead", etc.) out
of context, reading into it a prediction of Cthulhu's advent. "There were
double meanings . . . which the initiated might read as they chose. . . ."
And if modern cultists expect the Age of Aquarius to dawn because of the
aligning of the planets in "The Jupiter Effect", so did Cthulhu
cultists expect their god to rise "when the stars were right".
The other reason for collecting
clippings and articles is to show a downward trend in social and natural events.
"Things can't get much worse", or so it is imagined, and the
conclusion remains that the world is soon to end. Or at least, something big
must be in the offing. For instance, a 1973 pamphlet by the Children of God
sect, entitled What Will the Christmas Monster Bring?, predicted that the
imminent appearance of Comet Kohoutek would signal the collapse of the West, or
some such mishap. (Even they weren't too sure what it would be.)
Corresponding to all this, Lovecraft
has his narrator refer to a file full of unusual events collected by his late
uncle, who had deduced that Cthulhu must soon return. There are accounts of
strange dreams, odd crimes, outbursts of insanity and religious mania. It all
must add up to something, and Angell found out to what, to his own
misfortune. One of these news items is "a dispatch from California [which]
describes a theosophist colony donning white robes en masse for some 'glorious
fulfillment' which never arrives." Actually, the eschatological expectation
of Theosophy was different. Theosophists expected the arrival of a new
"World Teacher", but he was to be more like the founder of a new
religion than a messianic savior descending from the skies. The "white
robes" are derived from the millenarian revival of the Adventists, or
Millerites, in the 1840s. But in any case, this item concerned apocalyptic
expectation in explicit terms, the very thing we are discussing.
Supernatural Sin
Closely related to the above,
apocalyptic literature, both ancient and modern, has the notion that "in
the last days, perilous times will come" (II Timothy 3:1), not alone
because of natural catastrophes and disasters, but also because of an epidemic
of savage lawlessness and perverse hate. "People will be lovers of
themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their
parents, ungrateful, unholy," etc. (II Timothy 3:2). "At that time
many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other"
(Matthew 24:10). "Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his
child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to
death" (Mark 13:12). The upshot of all this? "When you see these
things happening, you know the Kingdom of God is near" (Luke 21;31). The
opening floodgate of perversity and supernaturally inspired evil is a clue to
the time of the end, because it will be unmistakable as the darkness before the
dawn.
Lovecraft echoes the same ideas, and
even the same language: "The time would be easy to know, for then mankind
would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil,
with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling
in joy. "
Resurrection in R'lyeh
Finally, we must draw attention to the
overtly religious language used by Lovecraft to describe the anticipated return
of Cthulhu and his attendant "Old Ones" (apparently the same as either
the "Deep Ones" of "The Shadow over Innsmouth" or the
"Cthulhu-spawn" of At the Mountains of Madness). He speaks of
"the prophecy of their return". It will be a "glorious
resurrection". Cthulhu himself will rise first, and then reawaken his
minions; "the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to
revive his subjects and resume His rule of earth."
The idea is the same as in primitive
Christian eschatology, preserved most clearly in the letters of the Apostle
Paul, wherein Christ's resurrection is seen as the "first-fruits" of
the general resurrection. In other words, the resurrection of Jesus was a
foretaste, or a preview, of the deliverance from death awaiting all believers at
the end of the world, when Christ would return. "We believe that Jesus died
and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have
fallen asleep in him. . . . For the Lord himself will come down from heaven,
with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call
of God, and the dead in Christ will rise. . . ." (I Thessalonians 4:14,
16). The main difference is that in "The Call of Cthulhu", CthuIhu's
own resurrection precedes the resuscitation of his subjects by only a very short
interval.
In making use of the apocalyptic
expectation motif Lovecraft achieved much of the same atmosphere of tension and
dread that works so well in The Omen. He may have intended "The Call
of Cthulhu" as a satire on real apocalyptic faith. As an atheist Lovecraft
would surely have found such belief one of the most implausible aspects of
religion.
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