Weird Fiction discussion

We are starting slow and easy. This is just a five page story. You do not necessarily need to purchase it for Kindle, or anything else. It's available here, to provide one possible free source: https://hplovecraft.com/writings/text...

Here is the first paragraph, a wonderful beginning in my opinion, if you think you might be interested:

"I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death."

I recommend reading the story before reading further in this thread since anything anyone says about a five page story could easily enter spoiler territory. See you here when you finish!

I really liked this story. I've always been fascinated by the shipwrecks and being lost at sea and in need of rescue theme. This story reminds me greatly of another that's on our group bookshelf, by Bernanos. Bernanos gives us more to hold on to in term's of the protagonist's character than does Lovecraft. We know Bernanos's protagonist, but virtually nothing about Lovecraft's. On the other hand, I find Lovecraft's depiction of what took place on the island to be a little more concrete and less dream-like.

I'm not sure what to make of Lovecraft's ending. I don't really understand why the protagonist felt so threatened when whatever it was he encountered was located on the opposite side of our planet.

The story's relationship to the historical Dagon is really informed by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagon. I suspect Lovecraft's interpretation came entirely from Milton's poem.

I reread the story "Dagon".

On the one hand, the story stuck me as influenced by one of Lovecraft's great predecessors, Edgar Allan Poe. "Dagon" is told by an emotionally/mentally disturbed narrator.

On the other hand, the story prefigured themes later to emerge in Lovecraft's fiction.

Dagon is a short story that keeps hopelessness as the central theme, which is established very well by the opening. We see the narrator describe his fall into madness, relying on morphine to make days bearable until his finances deplete and death seems his only release.

I wonder about the historical accuracy of one part of the tale. I know in 1917 Germany resolved to sink American merchant ships declared to be in war zones anywhere. But did that extend to the Pacific Ocean? I had thought American ships were only sunk in the Atlantic.

This is certainly a creepy story- the dark slimy plain, the mysterious monolith and finally the fearsome creature. It's enough to give anyone nightmares!

Rosemarie wrote: "This is certainly a creepy story- the dark slimy plain, the mysterious monolith and finally the fearsome creature. It's enough to give anyone nightmares!"

I am amazed at how little Lovecraft actually describes the monster that haunts his protagonist's dreams. There's really only one sentence of depiction: "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." I had to look up the Polyphemus reference. It's enough of a description, I suppose. Still, I do wonder why more description wasn't offered.

Maybe it's more mysterious this way.

Dagon is such a great short story, it's one of my favourites. I love the stark landscape and the monochromatic visuals, and how everything is pared right back to its starkest, most stripped-down form. The sun and moon and volcanic rock descriptive paragraphs create that sense of utter desolation but also of chaos and primeval creation, which links to the 'old god' name of the monster.

I think for me it falls a bit flatter at the end, because you get so much build up and then 4 sentences of the main event [only 1 of which is descriptive of Dagon itself] and then ...mAdNeSs... but that downward hurtling to the (literal) downward hurtle is more or less the point, so it still works.

I think Rosemarie's right: it is more mysterious without a full description, and the site of horror/terror is the unknown, which doesn't work quite as well if you're describing something like a gigantic cyclops mated with a dragon, because you're treading a fine line there of making it sound silly?? I think Lovecraft is probably right to draw broad strokes and focus instead on the affect/effect, because that keeps the reader unsettled rather than trying to picture something that binds them to a set image. Plus the artistic interpretations of Dagon are fun to browse, and they all vary and it's interesting to see how different people imagine him!

On the other hand, like Dan says - it's literally a line long and he's spent 4 whole pages building up to it, and like I said I felt this made it fall a little flat while I think he was aiming for punchy, but that's just me.

So far behind. I am beginning this just as the project is over :)

Dagon is the first Lovecraft story I read and I note that it's nearly always recommended as the first story to start on.

It sets itself up from the first line "I am writing this under appreciable mental strain as tonight I shall be no more". So from line one, we are the alert that something terrible is going to happen, something one hell of a lot worse than being captured by the hun and stranded at sea.

Then as described by Dan, Rosemaire and C.M. above the whole horror hangs on a one-sentence description of Dagon.

Personally, I find the technique of less is more in your monster description to be very effective, as my mind tends to try and fill in the gaps. What was it about this creature that drove the narrator so mad?

On another note.

"I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind.. "

This story was written in 1917 during the Great War. In a weird way, this sentence may explain why I find horror fiction to be relaxing. It takes an event like a world war and imagines something worse that cannot possibly be true... or is it...