The Outsider
"I know always that I am an
outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men."
These are the words spoken in the story The
Outsider and perhaps speak about Lovecraft's feelings of loneliness,
self-image, or even his feelings of appearance. He had heard his own mother
(who died right before the writing of this story) once tell someone that he had
a "hideous face". The power of appearance can be strong, and the
theme of this story can be seen in other works such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man
(which coincidently inspired the title of my own novel) as well as Frankenstein and other stories. HPL even
admitted that this story in particular was perhaps the height of his imitation
of Poe (and he didn't mean that as a positive), and a definite connection can
be made between this tale and the climax of The
Masque of the Red Death.
But this story is more than about the
physical appearance of a man. As the protagonist and narrator, suffers from the
malady of loneliness. He seeks contact with other people and to get out of the
castle he has found himself trapped in all his life. This reminded me so much
of the disturbing cloistered family members in Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast
novels.
We are stepping away from the mythos
stuff again, to look at the most Gothic, and strangely, the most successful
Lovecraft story. Though this story really owes a huge debt to Poe and his
style, this is still Lovecraft using his chosen style of writing to its
fullest. In this tale, HPL's love for dense atmospheric language actually adds
to the story and helps it rather than hindering it.
As a gothic story, the plot is fairly
straight forward and a modern reader will easily guess the "twist" at
the end. Though I am sure the readers of the time were a bit less overwhelmed
with countless uses of this same plot device. The question comes in the
interpretation of the story. Who is this man that is telling the story? Is he
just some frightening monster too hideous to look at? Or are there hints that
lead us to believe he may actually be the long dead ancestor of the party-goers
finally seeking freedom from the loneliness of the grave. Or is it all perhaps
symbolism of the struggle to climb out of the pits of despair and loneliness
that come with being the downcast outsider.
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| Illustration copyright Jeff Powers © 2013 |
Though this is not a mythos story and
really stands alone from HPL's other works, there are some interesting
connections to some future stories here. So, what may have been intended as a
solitary story, may have provided some future inspiration and locales for other
stories. Namely among these are the connections with Lovecraft's Egypt where
the narrator flees to at the end of the story, which connects to two stories we
will discuss down the road, Imprisoned
with the Pharaohs and The Haunter of
the Dark.
If you want to read what horror fiction
historian, Les Daniels called Lovecraft's "finest work", you can
check out the full text here: HPL's The Outsider
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