to the history of insanity that tainted Lovecraft’s own ancestry, it is obvious from Lovecraft’s letters that his personal search for truth resulted in the belief of human insignificance in the universe, a philosophy that brought him great personal pain.
“The Shadow over Innsmouth” highlights this theme of human insignificance, a perspective Lovecraft gained through his extensive interest in astronomy and science. In this story, the universe is symbolized by the ocean, a cold, dark region similar to the cosmos, and harboring deep and terrible mysteries. This theme is the by-product of the myth cycle, which is specifically designed to highlight human inferiority and unimportance in the university. Or, as Lynn has said: “Lovecraft was among the earliest science fiction writers to fully appreciate the existential significance of Copernicus. The earth is not the center of the universe, hence, neither is man” (15).
To read Lovecraft is to enter into the shadows, to explore the forbidden worlds of the “dreaded Necronomicon” and to discover that humankind is little more than a microbe in a cosmic Petri dish. Lovecraft brings us into these shadows and shows us things we may not wish to see, for hidden away in his fantastic, impossible worlds there lurks a realistic, scientific view of the universe in which we live. It is a cold, unforgiving view of a cosmos guided strictly by natural laws, with no hope of a deity or of salvation. In Lovecraft’s world, even humankind is a mistake, a by-product of alien genetic engineering gone wrong. It is not the happy ending fantasy world of Tolkien’s Hobbits or the Mars men of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but rather the naturalism of a Hemingway taken to the N-th degree.
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