Quick post as the weekend's Christmas festivities begin.
This has been a decent break so far. It could have been quite bad, but I'm thankful for the generosity of my friends. I really do feel that I just go about sort of living my life day to day doing what seems right, and what seems to be important priority wise. I don't know what inspires people to value me as they do, or what makes our mutual loyalty so great, but I'm very thankful for each day I get to spend with such amazing people.
It is my fond hope that all of these amazing people in my life are rewarded many times over for the kindness that I've been shown by their actions. If ever I have the opportunity to help others in such a way, then I will not hesitate to do so. I think that's what Christmas is about, and I think that's what my life is about. I always felt that it is my purpose on this earth to bring happiness to others by whatever means possible. Primarily I'm concerned with the future of my son, but my true hope is that his life is a legacy of kindness and generosity as he sees what a difference it has made in our lives. Paying forward is something I would very much like to do, and if I get the chance, I will, but if for some reason my plan to do so is curtailed, it is my hope that this will occur in the life of my son.
I really think I've already received the greatest present I could ever hope for.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
And so the Fall Semester Ends
Now that the Semester is over I turn to equally serious matters. My fond hope is that Keegan does well on his finals. He deserves great things, and what he is doing now will help him dramatically throughout his college career. I wish I could reward him with a vehicle and insurance, but I found out how much insurance is for a teenager. Wow! Yeah, it's a delicate balance, logistics become difficult as his activities increase and my free time will decrease, and I don't want him to have to work so he can concentrate on his studies and get the best grades possible. Still he needs to be able to have his own money, and learn more responsibilities. It's really hard to know what to do, and which way to nudge him to help him the most. He does have a paid Summer internship coming up in Oklahoma City this Summer, so hopefully that will all be the best possible thing for him. As a matter of fact, it is a coveted internship, and it may be more important and influential than anything else he does in the next year aside from his final GPA. It's all a very exciting time. There's so much going on.
I assume that I will be getting at least one A this Semester, possibly two. That will help my GPA, but not as much as the Springs semester will help it. I still have an old grade from 7 or 8 years ago dragging my GPA way lower than it should be. I'll be close to a 3.25 GPA after this Semester, but back when I first started taking classes I did well in a Math class, but due to illness, I was unable to get to the final, so rather than withdraw me from the class, I was given an actual F. Yup... Hadn't seen one of those since High School. That one grade over 6 other semesters of decent work has held my GPA hostage a little bit. I get to finally replace that grade in the Spring semester. My GPA should jump, and I'll start qualifying for all sorts of scholarship money.
Now on to the Apartment / House rental search, and job search, and enjoying the lack of homework for the next 4 weeks. Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent!
I assume that I will be getting at least one A this Semester, possibly two. That will help my GPA, but not as much as the Springs semester will help it. I still have an old grade from 7 or 8 years ago dragging my GPA way lower than it should be. I'll be close to a 3.25 GPA after this Semester, but back when I first started taking classes I did well in a Math class, but due to illness, I was unable to get to the final, so rather than withdraw me from the class, I was given an actual F. Yup... Hadn't seen one of those since High School. That one grade over 6 other semesters of decent work has held my GPA hostage a little bit. I get to finally replace that grade in the Spring semester. My GPA should jump, and I'll start qualifying for all sorts of scholarship money.
Now on to the Apartment / House rental search, and job search, and enjoying the lack of homework for the next 4 weeks. Ain't nothin' goin' on but the rent!
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Final Essay - At The Mountains Of Madness
Fear Is The Mind Killer – It Is The Little Death
At The Mountains Of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
I contend that H.P. Lovecraft used the psychology of fear of the unknown on the mind, to make his short stories and books into popular fiction. Lovecraft used the strange attraction of fear and drew the average person to his works. I will illustrate the method of the creation of fear is as important as the psychology of the fear in how it affects our brain. It was H.P. Lovecraft himself who said; “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” (Lovecraft 1) Lovecraft may not have completely understood the psychological forces as we understand it today, but with mental illnesses throughout his family, he understood the power of fear, and how it affected the human mind on the surface. Lovecraft created the themes that are used constantly in modern Horror Fiction through subtle use of language, and the creation of an entire mythos using a combination of mythologies. The wonder and unknown of the ancient civilizations and myths are used as a force or a universe that is vast, making the reader feel small in a large unknown and unfamiliar place.
Fear and memory have a special relationship. Lovecraft keys on this relationship in his text by examining things on the scientific expedition through a historical perspective and suggesting that we are actually delving into the memory of the earth itself. G. Stanley Hall talks about fear of this kind in “A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear” when referring to the memory y of a child. Being thrown into the air as an infant is not unlike a teenager on a rollercoaster, the fear is exciting and fun, and it stays in our memory as such. It can set up a desire for more of the same, but in some cases, given the right circumstance, this excitement becomes real fear, and has the opposite effect. Hall says; “It is always exciting and nearly all children love it up to a point (varying greatly with the extent of movement, who is responsible for it, a trusted friend or stranger, and especially with the diathesis of the child), beyond which it becomes a fear or perhaps a terror, causing shrieks and even convulsions, making the child forever after hate or fly and hide from those who toss it.” (Hall 322). In this one example we can see both the thrill of something fearful, and how it can easily turn to dread. Placed in our memories in this way, Lovecraft seeks to extract that same emotion from his readers by evoking the immensity of the unknown, and make the reader feel as though they are falling into a place where there is no familiarity. Lovecraft eases the reader into the unknown almost without them knowing by using a 2nd person perspective; “He spoke of the ineffable majesty of the whole scene, and the queer state of his sensations at being in the lee of vast silent pinnacles whose ranks shot up like a wall reaching the sky at the world’s rim. Atwood’s theodolite observations had placed the height of the five tallest peaks at from 30,000 to 34,000 feet.” Lovecraft goes on to describe a 700 mile long glacial void. These numbers were beyond imagining for most during the time period in which it was written. Pleasure becomes terror as the reader, who was previously wrapped in the comfort of scientific explanation and the known world is thrust into a new world where science and logic give way to true horrors both ancient and unfamiliar in landscapes vast and uncharitable, and ancient beyond comprehension. Part of the way H.P. Lovecraft does this is to mention previous explorers who had previously explored Antarctica.
It is entirely possible that Lovecraft use G. Stanley Hall’s aforementioned work to great effect in his own writings. Having been published in 1914 it would have been a book readily available in the large library Lovecraft had access to growing up. This representation of the psychology of fear is not dissimilar. Hall compared our experience before birth in the uterus to our development as a species from other forms of life through evolution saying; “Our ancestors floated and swam long before they had limbs, and they breathed by gill slits, which the foetus reproduces long before the development of lungs,” he then goes on to imply some are actually born with these vestiges as abnormalities, and says; “Although we cannot demonstrate rudimentary organs, we may not in fact have before us here some of the very oldest elements of our psychic life, reminiscent echoes of the primeval sea, on the other hand, and vestiges of dendritic life on the other, a pristine outcrop of the factor of the space sense itself.” (Hall 325) This explanation and description is not at all dissimilar to the language used by Lovecraft to explain the unknown “old ones” and creatures in his stories. Furthermore we can look at the way in which Hall describes the movement of an infant; “it creeps in many ways, forward, backward, sideways, also hitches, rolls and crawled, and even after it has just learned to walk may, if in a hurry, revert to creeping, or if in a great hurry, to the still more primitive and still faster method of rolling.” In this we can see more similarities in the way Lovecraft describes the movements of these ancient creatures who once ruled over the Earth in “At The Mountains Of Madness”. This grotesque description of growth, movement, and later, the psychological effects, could have had a great influence on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and helped him create fear on a base level that he hoped would strike a chord in our ancestral memory in some sort of psychic fashion as described in the work of Hall. Considering how his work was received since shortly after his death, the analysis holds true for many fans of Lovecraft, and the fear he created through these perceived processes grew into an entire Historical Society celebrating his works, and embracing the ideal.
As a father figure to modern Science Fiction and Horror, we can see Lovecraft begin with a premise of known facts and quantifiable data in order to create a viable reality in which to set a story of things unbelievable. Andrew Leman, in his work “In The Time Of H.P. Lovecraft” that Lovecraft spent time in the; “British Museum, diligently combing through science journals, magazines, and newspapers going back as far as 1779, collecting stories of strange occurrences for which there was no satisfactory scientific explanation, making cryptic notes to himself on thousands of small slips of paper.” (Leman 1) This was a genesis of the unexplained for Lovecraft. It was the establishment of the unexplained in the midst of what was plainly normal that allowed for great contrast. The Royal Society authors tell us; “The neuropsychological findings often show differentially severe impairment of fear recognition after amygdala damage, but it is seldom only fear that is affected.” (The Royal Society 1) The authors go on to imply that indeed the amygdala is part of the brain that responds to fear, and also allows coping with trauma. A good example is in the television show “Firefly”. Viewers see the character River Tam who has had her amygdala stripped as an experiment, this fact was first revealed in the episode Ariel. Her inability to cope is apparent, and her fear reactions are unstable at best because she was altered to the point where she was able to feel everything all at once including an empathic sense to those around her. She was built as a weapon because she had no fear once her coping mechanism was resolved later in the feature film “Serenity”.
It is further knowledge from other psychological research throughout history that explains the activation of fear of the unknown that causes human fight or flight in a crisis. The sheer scale used in Lovecraft’s work is part of what made mankind feel like a very tiny piece of a vast unlimited universe filled with mystery and the unknown. There was a sudden realization that even the alien Old Ones in Lovecraft’s work, who by their own right are most unnatural in appearance and composition, had a fear of an even more terrifying assortment of creatures that were even more frightening. This gives “At The Mountains Of Madness” many layers of the fear of the unknown. The fear of the unknown is still the same today as it was at the time At The Mountains Of Madness was released. Otto Brandt tells us of the unreasonable fears humans have over research, the location of biology labs, and even the tilt of the earth’s axis. It is just as much a fear of what may happen based on experience, as it is fear of true unknown things that compels mankind to both pursue the unknown, and run from it. Even with the advent of scientific discovery, there is always a theorist who imagines how the new discovery could destroy mankind. Even technology that has not been invented yet, such as nanotechnology were the center of discussion on a possible apocalyptic scenario involving out of control procreation of nanites resulting in the Grey Ooze Theory. (Phoenix, Drexler Briefing). It’s no surprise that Lovecraft is able to go the opposite direction and use things from prehistoric time and bring them into his literature as the unknown in the present. The sheer scale used in Lovecraft’s work is part of what made mankind feel like a very tiny piece of a vast unlimited universe filled with mystery and the unknown.
To see how the fear Lovecraft creates in At The Mountains Of Madness is attractive to a broad audience, we need look no further than the ongoing sales of both this book, and his related works. There is also the matter of the film attempts at the story that are the same or similar. Currently James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro are working on the film for a 2013 release that is sure to rake in over 100 Million dollars. Just about every film involving ancient astronauts owes their inception to At The Mountains Of Madness. Films, horror and sci-fi alike, owe a great deal to Lovecraft as they reap the unknown in their exploration of the unknown in Antarctica. Films like John Carpenter’s The Thing and the 2011 sequel rely heavily on At The Mountains Of Madness. Ridley Scott, Neill Gaiman, and countless other film makers and writers have used the same type of fear to attract millions of audience members and hundreds of millions of dollars.
There remains a good question based on all of the attraction in literature, film and other media. The love and attraction of fear and horror can be explained by the same fight or flight part of the brain, the amygdala. Leslie Fink of Live Science talks about this very attraction and also quotes New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux; “So far, though, the amygdala has the upper hand in the fear response. "This may explain why, once an emotion is aroused, it is so hard for us to turn it off," he says. If we like that sort of thing, it may account for why we’re so eager to turn it back on again.” In the Fink article, LeDoux also says; “If you have a good imagination, you can connect to your hardwired fears simply by thinking about a scary situation.” It seems that memory allows humans to replay scary situations, or scenes in their heads to get the same emotional response. It is also easy to see that the attraction to get the same emotional stimulus is what drives people to read, or re-read the same types of material, or use other media for the same response.
The final thing that ties Lovecraft’s creation of fear together in his novel is word choice and descriptive terminology for all senses and emotions. For example Lovecraft writes; “I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the pass and saw what lay beyond.” (Lovecraft 245) All of these very descriptive emotions simultaneously by two characters illustrate how Lovecraft pulls out all the stops in an attempt to create a heightened sense of things. In the same paragraph; “…as our eyes swept that limitless, tempest-scarred plateau and grasped the almost endless labyrinth of colossal, regular, and geometrically eurhythmic stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet not more than forty or fifty feet deep at its thickets and in places obviously thinner.” The sheer amount of descriptors per page is a lot to take in as a reader, and while many readers are engrossed in the story and absorb them properly, the ability to take these in as they were intended wanes over time as the reader is overloaded with adjectives. That being said, it is interesting how Lovecraft’s choice of words give real scope and meaning to the objects, places, or emotions involved in any given part of the story. It is a tactic used by so many authors who came after him, but so few authors before him. This color of literature has a genesis, and that beginning in the genres of Horror and Science Fiction lies primarily with Lovecraft. His idol and inspiration, Edgar Allan Poe was a schoolmaster in the creation of mood. Lovecraft stood on his shoulders and generated an extraordinary display of language arts, imagination, and brilliant story-telling that resulted in a master of Horror. Lovecraft’s legacy will live on for centuries as his stories are expanded on, retold, role-played, revered, worshipped, and parodied. A brilliant success that he never lived to see, the billions of dollars generated by his genius is a good testament to those of us who have the pleasure to delve into the world of H.P. Lovecraft. The addictive fear of an unimaginable universe is ours to share, and it is easy to see why that fear is made so potent through the pen of the original Master of Horror.
Bibliography
Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. New York: Abramson, 1945. Print.
"General: Stanley Hall. A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXV, April and July 1914, Pp. 149, 321." PEP Web. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.003.0335a>.
Phillips, Adam. Terrors and Experts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996. Print.
Navarette, Susan J. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin De Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998. Print.
Morse, Josiah. The Psychology and Neurology of Fear. Worcester, MA: Clark UP, 1907. Print.
Hull, Thomas. "H.P. Lovecraft: A Horror In Higher Dimensions." Mathematical Association of America 13.3 (2006): 1+. JSTOR. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http:// http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678597>.
Leman, Andrew. "In The Time Of Lovecraft." Cthulhulives.org. H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, 1999. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://www.cthulhulives.org/ITTOL/ITTOL8.pdf>.
Reiner Sprengelmeyer, Andrew W. Young, Ulrike Schroeder, Peter G. Grossenbacher, Jens Federlein, Thomas Büttner and Horst Przuntek Proceedings: Biological Sciences , Vol. 266, No. 1437 (Dec. 22, 1999), pp. 2451-2456 Published by: The Royal Society Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1353811
Whedon, Joss. "Firefly." Firefly. Fox. Fox, 15 Nov. 2002. Television.
Serenity. Dir. Joss Whedon. By Joss Whedon. Prod. Barry Mendel. Perf. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, and Morena Baccarin. Universal Pictures, 2005.
“Fear of the Unknown?” Otto A. Brandt Science News , Vol. 133, No. 20 (May 14, 1988), p. 307 Published by: Society for Science & the Public Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3972384
Phoenix, Chris, and Eric Drexler. "Nanotechnology: Grey Goo Is a Small Issue."Nanotechnology Research. Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, Aug. 2004. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.crnano.org/BD-Goo.htm>.
The Thing. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Kurt Russell. MCA Universal, 1982. Film.
Fink, Leslie. "Horror Movies: Why People Love Them | LiveScience." Science News – Science Articles and Current Events | LiveScience. Live Science, 6 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.livescience.com/7949-horror-movies-people-love.html>.
Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness: and Other Weird Tales. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009. Print.
At The Mountains Of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
I contend that H.P. Lovecraft used the psychology of fear of the unknown on the mind, to make his short stories and books into popular fiction. Lovecraft used the strange attraction of fear and drew the average person to his works. I will illustrate the method of the creation of fear is as important as the psychology of the fear in how it affects our brain. It was H.P. Lovecraft himself who said; “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” (Lovecraft 1) Lovecraft may not have completely understood the psychological forces as we understand it today, but with mental illnesses throughout his family, he understood the power of fear, and how it affected the human mind on the surface. Lovecraft created the themes that are used constantly in modern Horror Fiction through subtle use of language, and the creation of an entire mythos using a combination of mythologies. The wonder and unknown of the ancient civilizations and myths are used as a force or a universe that is vast, making the reader feel small in a large unknown and unfamiliar place.
Fear and memory have a special relationship. Lovecraft keys on this relationship in his text by examining things on the scientific expedition through a historical perspective and suggesting that we are actually delving into the memory of the earth itself. G. Stanley Hall talks about fear of this kind in “A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear” when referring to the memory y of a child. Being thrown into the air as an infant is not unlike a teenager on a rollercoaster, the fear is exciting and fun, and it stays in our memory as such. It can set up a desire for more of the same, but in some cases, given the right circumstance, this excitement becomes real fear, and has the opposite effect. Hall says; “It is always exciting and nearly all children love it up to a point (varying greatly with the extent of movement, who is responsible for it, a trusted friend or stranger, and especially with the diathesis of the child), beyond which it becomes a fear or perhaps a terror, causing shrieks and even convulsions, making the child forever after hate or fly and hide from those who toss it.” (Hall 322). In this one example we can see both the thrill of something fearful, and how it can easily turn to dread. Placed in our memories in this way, Lovecraft seeks to extract that same emotion from his readers by evoking the immensity of the unknown, and make the reader feel as though they are falling into a place where there is no familiarity. Lovecraft eases the reader into the unknown almost without them knowing by using a 2nd person perspective; “He spoke of the ineffable majesty of the whole scene, and the queer state of his sensations at being in the lee of vast silent pinnacles whose ranks shot up like a wall reaching the sky at the world’s rim. Atwood’s theodolite observations had placed the height of the five tallest peaks at from 30,000 to 34,000 feet.” Lovecraft goes on to describe a 700 mile long glacial void. These numbers were beyond imagining for most during the time period in which it was written. Pleasure becomes terror as the reader, who was previously wrapped in the comfort of scientific explanation and the known world is thrust into a new world where science and logic give way to true horrors both ancient and unfamiliar in landscapes vast and uncharitable, and ancient beyond comprehension. Part of the way H.P. Lovecraft does this is to mention previous explorers who had previously explored Antarctica.
It is entirely possible that Lovecraft use G. Stanley Hall’s aforementioned work to great effect in his own writings. Having been published in 1914 it would have been a book readily available in the large library Lovecraft had access to growing up. This representation of the psychology of fear is not dissimilar. Hall compared our experience before birth in the uterus to our development as a species from other forms of life through evolution saying; “Our ancestors floated and swam long before they had limbs, and they breathed by gill slits, which the foetus reproduces long before the development of lungs,” he then goes on to imply some are actually born with these vestiges as abnormalities, and says; “Although we cannot demonstrate rudimentary organs, we may not in fact have before us here some of the very oldest elements of our psychic life, reminiscent echoes of the primeval sea, on the other hand, and vestiges of dendritic life on the other, a pristine outcrop of the factor of the space sense itself.” (Hall 325) This explanation and description is not at all dissimilar to the language used by Lovecraft to explain the unknown “old ones” and creatures in his stories. Furthermore we can look at the way in which Hall describes the movement of an infant; “it creeps in many ways, forward, backward, sideways, also hitches, rolls and crawled, and even after it has just learned to walk may, if in a hurry, revert to creeping, or if in a great hurry, to the still more primitive and still faster method of rolling.” In this we can see more similarities in the way Lovecraft describes the movements of these ancient creatures who once ruled over the Earth in “At The Mountains Of Madness”. This grotesque description of growth, movement, and later, the psychological effects, could have had a great influence on the works of H.P. Lovecraft and helped him create fear on a base level that he hoped would strike a chord in our ancestral memory in some sort of psychic fashion as described in the work of Hall. Considering how his work was received since shortly after his death, the analysis holds true for many fans of Lovecraft, and the fear he created through these perceived processes grew into an entire Historical Society celebrating his works, and embracing the ideal.
As a father figure to modern Science Fiction and Horror, we can see Lovecraft begin with a premise of known facts and quantifiable data in order to create a viable reality in which to set a story of things unbelievable. Andrew Leman, in his work “In The Time Of H.P. Lovecraft” that Lovecraft spent time in the; “British Museum, diligently combing through science journals, magazines, and newspapers going back as far as 1779, collecting stories of strange occurrences for which there was no satisfactory scientific explanation, making cryptic notes to himself on thousands of small slips of paper.” (Leman 1) This was a genesis of the unexplained for Lovecraft. It was the establishment of the unexplained in the midst of what was plainly normal that allowed for great contrast. The Royal Society authors tell us; “The neuropsychological findings often show differentially severe impairment of fear recognition after amygdala damage, but it is seldom only fear that is affected.” (The Royal Society 1) The authors go on to imply that indeed the amygdala is part of the brain that responds to fear, and also allows coping with trauma. A good example is in the television show “Firefly”. Viewers see the character River Tam who has had her amygdala stripped as an experiment, this fact was first revealed in the episode Ariel. Her inability to cope is apparent, and her fear reactions are unstable at best because she was altered to the point where she was able to feel everything all at once including an empathic sense to those around her. She was built as a weapon because she had no fear once her coping mechanism was resolved later in the feature film “Serenity”.
It is further knowledge from other psychological research throughout history that explains the activation of fear of the unknown that causes human fight or flight in a crisis. The sheer scale used in Lovecraft’s work is part of what made mankind feel like a very tiny piece of a vast unlimited universe filled with mystery and the unknown. There was a sudden realization that even the alien Old Ones in Lovecraft’s work, who by their own right are most unnatural in appearance and composition, had a fear of an even more terrifying assortment of creatures that were even more frightening. This gives “At The Mountains Of Madness” many layers of the fear of the unknown. The fear of the unknown is still the same today as it was at the time At The Mountains Of Madness was released. Otto Brandt tells us of the unreasonable fears humans have over research, the location of biology labs, and even the tilt of the earth’s axis. It is just as much a fear of what may happen based on experience, as it is fear of true unknown things that compels mankind to both pursue the unknown, and run from it. Even with the advent of scientific discovery, there is always a theorist who imagines how the new discovery could destroy mankind. Even technology that has not been invented yet, such as nanotechnology were the center of discussion on a possible apocalyptic scenario involving out of control procreation of nanites resulting in the Grey Ooze Theory. (Phoenix, Drexler Briefing). It’s no surprise that Lovecraft is able to go the opposite direction and use things from prehistoric time and bring them into his literature as the unknown in the present. The sheer scale used in Lovecraft’s work is part of what made mankind feel like a very tiny piece of a vast unlimited universe filled with mystery and the unknown.
To see how the fear Lovecraft creates in At The Mountains Of Madness is attractive to a broad audience, we need look no further than the ongoing sales of both this book, and his related works. There is also the matter of the film attempts at the story that are the same or similar. Currently James Cameron and Guillermo del Toro are working on the film for a 2013 release that is sure to rake in over 100 Million dollars. Just about every film involving ancient astronauts owes their inception to At The Mountains Of Madness. Films, horror and sci-fi alike, owe a great deal to Lovecraft as they reap the unknown in their exploration of the unknown in Antarctica. Films like John Carpenter’s The Thing and the 2011 sequel rely heavily on At The Mountains Of Madness. Ridley Scott, Neill Gaiman, and countless other film makers and writers have used the same type of fear to attract millions of audience members and hundreds of millions of dollars.
There remains a good question based on all of the attraction in literature, film and other media. The love and attraction of fear and horror can be explained by the same fight or flight part of the brain, the amygdala. Leslie Fink of Live Science talks about this very attraction and also quotes New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux; “So far, though, the amygdala has the upper hand in the fear response. "This may explain why, once an emotion is aroused, it is so hard for us to turn it off," he says. If we like that sort of thing, it may account for why we’re so eager to turn it back on again.” In the Fink article, LeDoux also says; “If you have a good imagination, you can connect to your hardwired fears simply by thinking about a scary situation.” It seems that memory allows humans to replay scary situations, or scenes in their heads to get the same emotional response. It is also easy to see that the attraction to get the same emotional stimulus is what drives people to read, or re-read the same types of material, or use other media for the same response.
The final thing that ties Lovecraft’s creation of fear together in his novel is word choice and descriptive terminology for all senses and emotions. For example Lovecraft writes; “I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the pass and saw what lay beyond.” (Lovecraft 245) All of these very descriptive emotions simultaneously by two characters illustrate how Lovecraft pulls out all the stops in an attempt to create a heightened sense of things. In the same paragraph; “…as our eyes swept that limitless, tempest-scarred plateau and grasped the almost endless labyrinth of colossal, regular, and geometrically eurhythmic stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet not more than forty or fifty feet deep at its thickets and in places obviously thinner.” The sheer amount of descriptors per page is a lot to take in as a reader, and while many readers are engrossed in the story and absorb them properly, the ability to take these in as they were intended wanes over time as the reader is overloaded with adjectives. That being said, it is interesting how Lovecraft’s choice of words give real scope and meaning to the objects, places, or emotions involved in any given part of the story. It is a tactic used by so many authors who came after him, but so few authors before him. This color of literature has a genesis, and that beginning in the genres of Horror and Science Fiction lies primarily with Lovecraft. His idol and inspiration, Edgar Allan Poe was a schoolmaster in the creation of mood. Lovecraft stood on his shoulders and generated an extraordinary display of language arts, imagination, and brilliant story-telling that resulted in a master of Horror. Lovecraft’s legacy will live on for centuries as his stories are expanded on, retold, role-played, revered, worshipped, and parodied. A brilliant success that he never lived to see, the billions of dollars generated by his genius is a good testament to those of us who have the pleasure to delve into the world of H.P. Lovecraft. The addictive fear of an unimaginable universe is ours to share, and it is easy to see why that fear is made so potent through the pen of the original Master of Horror.
Bibliography
Lovecraft, H. P. Supernatural Horror in Literature. New York: Abramson, 1945. Print.
"General: Stanley Hall. A Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear. American Journal of Psychology, Vol. XXV, April and July 1914, Pp. 149, 321." PEP Web. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ijp.003.0335a>.
Phillips, Adam. Terrors and Experts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996. Print.
Navarette, Susan J. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin De Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998. Print.
Morse, Josiah. The Psychology and Neurology of Fear. Worcester, MA: Clark UP, 1907. Print.
Hull, Thomas. "H.P. Lovecraft: A Horror In Higher Dimensions." Mathematical Association of America 13.3 (2006): 1+. JSTOR. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http:// http://www.jstor.org/stable/25678597>.
Leman, Andrew. "In The Time Of Lovecraft." Cthulhulives.org. H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, 1999. Web. 13 Dec. 2011. <http://www.cthulhulives.org/ITTOL/ITTOL8.pdf>.
Reiner Sprengelmeyer, Andrew W. Young, Ulrike Schroeder, Peter G. Grossenbacher, Jens Federlein, Thomas Büttner and Horst Przuntek Proceedings: Biological Sciences , Vol. 266, No. 1437 (Dec. 22, 1999), pp. 2451-2456 Published by: The Royal Society Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1353811
Whedon, Joss. "Firefly." Firefly. Fox. Fox, 15 Nov. 2002. Television.
Serenity. Dir. Joss Whedon. By Joss Whedon. Prod. Barry Mendel. Perf. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, and Morena Baccarin. Universal Pictures, 2005.
“Fear of the Unknown?” Otto A. Brandt Science News , Vol. 133, No. 20 (May 14, 1988), p. 307 Published by: Society for Science & the Public Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3972384
Phoenix, Chris, and Eric Drexler. "Nanotechnology: Grey Goo Is a Small Issue."Nanotechnology Research. Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, Aug. 2004. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.crnano.org/BD-Goo.htm>.
The Thing. Dir. John Carpenter. Perf. Kurt Russell. MCA Universal, 1982. Film.
Fink, Leslie. "Horror Movies: Why People Love Them | LiveScience." Science News – Science Articles and Current Events | LiveScience. Live Science, 6 Nov. 2009. Web. 14 Dec. 2011. <http://www.livescience.com/7949-horror-movies-people-love.html>.
Lovecraft, H. P. At the Mountains of Madness: and Other Weird Tales. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2009. Print.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
My Lovecraft Annotated Bibliography
Fear: The Mind Killer, The Little Death
H.P. Lovecraft: At The Mountains Of Madness
Annotated Bibliography
Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. Print..
Freeland examines what the possible nature of evil is in relation to horror. She examines the complexity of fear, how we cope with death in relation to horror, and the various and interesting depths achieved emotionally by horror when it comes to our human limitations. She looks at the flesh vs. the soul and examines whether or not horror is simply a shallow depiction of evil, or something more. She examines the question of beauty in evil, and the question of whether it is concieved in a way that we can cognitively engage in an intellectual way. Freeland examines the asthetic appeal registered in our brain versus the physical response as part of a natural process. This will give a framework of horror and fear from which to work.
Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. Print.
Phillips examines fear as something having value, possibly even an ultimate or supreme value. There is a discussion in relation to fear that can validate our own life. There is an analysis from an existential point of view from Sartre, as well as a search for truth in the text Phillips conveys. He uses direct psychoanalysis done by Freud and Klein. I will use this text to show how Lovecraft creates fear through repetition of certain words in his literature to imply something is recognizable and how it separates the familiar from the unfamiliar as well as the effect of fear on the human psyche.
Morse, Josiah. "Emotional States Allied To Fear. Page 108." The Psychology and Neurology of Fear. Worcester, MA: Clark UP, 1907. Print.
This was published before Lovecraft’s work, so I hope to use the excerpt listed to examine fear from the point of view available to Lovecraft at the time he wrote his literature. Morse defines Horror as an altruistic fear and how it is strong in those who are particularly sensitive or sympathetic. There are other definitions in the book that might have been examined by Lovecraft. This will help me to see what Lovecraft may have been aiming for when it comes to fear at the time he wrote At The Mountains Of Madness. The psychological point of view of several emotions examined by Morse and used in Lovecraft’s literature could be used to intensify the feeling of fear. I will relate these in the essay to the other pieces of psychoanalysis.
Navarette, Susan J. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin De Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998. Print.
Navarette proposes that in order to write about decadence, one must imitate Lovecraft just as he imitated fin de siècle horror. She goes on to talk about constructing fear in a way where our natural human instincts are connected to memories of fright. She talks about fear being the richest source of evidence of the human instinct. This will be a good book to use to explain how fear affects us from a mind altering instinctual standpoint, and how it affects our thought process. I will use this to examine Lovecraft’s use of fear to queue our instinct.
H.P. Lovecraft: At The Mountains Of Madness
Annotated Bibliography
Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. Print..
Freeland examines what the possible nature of evil is in relation to horror. She examines the complexity of fear, how we cope with death in relation to horror, and the various and interesting depths achieved emotionally by horror when it comes to our human limitations. She looks at the flesh vs. the soul and examines whether or not horror is simply a shallow depiction of evil, or something more. She examines the question of beauty in evil, and the question of whether it is concieved in a way that we can cognitively engage in an intellectual way. Freeland examines the asthetic appeal registered in our brain versus the physical response as part of a natural process. This will give a framework of horror and fear from which to work.
Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000. Print.
Phillips examines fear as something having value, possibly even an ultimate or supreme value. There is a discussion in relation to fear that can validate our own life. There is an analysis from an existential point of view from Sartre, as well as a search for truth in the text Phillips conveys. He uses direct psychoanalysis done by Freud and Klein. I will use this text to show how Lovecraft creates fear through repetition of certain words in his literature to imply something is recognizable and how it separates the familiar from the unfamiliar as well as the effect of fear on the human psyche.
Morse, Josiah. "Emotional States Allied To Fear. Page 108." The Psychology and Neurology of Fear. Worcester, MA: Clark UP, 1907. Print.
This was published before Lovecraft’s work, so I hope to use the excerpt listed to examine fear from the point of view available to Lovecraft at the time he wrote his literature. Morse defines Horror as an altruistic fear and how it is strong in those who are particularly sensitive or sympathetic. There are other definitions in the book that might have been examined by Lovecraft. This will help me to see what Lovecraft may have been aiming for when it comes to fear at the time he wrote At The Mountains Of Madness. The psychological point of view of several emotions examined by Morse and used in Lovecraft’s literature could be used to intensify the feeling of fear. I will relate these in the essay to the other pieces of psychoanalysis.
Navarette, Susan J. The Shape of Fear: Horror and the Fin De Siècle Culture of Decadence. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1998. Print.
Navarette proposes that in order to write about decadence, one must imitate Lovecraft just as he imitated fin de siècle horror. She goes on to talk about constructing fear in a way where our natural human instincts are connected to memories of fright. She talks about fear being the richest source of evidence of the human instinct. This will be a good book to use to explain how fear affects us from a mind altering instinctual standpoint, and how it affects our thought process. I will use this to examine Lovecraft’s use of fear to queue our instinct.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Too Much Information
Making it through the past couple of weeks has been a bit more difficult than I anticipated. Our family friend Dan passed away very close to the anniversary of my own Father's death, and the demands of school in combination with my own state of being has been difficult to handle. When you combine those issues with increasing financial pressure, and my inability to meet basic needs of our little household in that regard, it simply makes things very difficult. I need to finish a semester, start a new one, and find a new apartment and move in short order.
I think that unless you live it, it's very hard to explain the decisions you have to make as a single parent that have nothing to do with the self. They are sometimes characterized as sacrifice, but how can that be when it is your duty? I am not the innocent life that needs someone to nurture, and love them, and meet all of their needs. It's my sacred duty to take care of my son, and to do otherwise or waver from that for selfish reasons seems an abhorrent idea to me. How anyone could walk away from such a responsibility is beyond anything I can imagine. I think that this profound duty is why it weighs so heavily on me when I cannot do the things that I need to do for my son. He has needs that are not being met at all, and there are things he deserves because he is such an amazing kid, and I cannot provide those things either. How is it that such a responsible, intelligent, amazing kid, who works so hard, is required to go through this part of his life with such a difficult path? Granted when compared to the world, he has it pretty good, but it all teeters on the edge of a knife, and despite popular belief, there is ridicule for those less fortunate, he doesn't bring those concerns to me anymore, but he used to, and I know they still go on. He needs simple things like a medical checkup and dental work, or lunch money, or hangars for his closet. He deserves things like a better flute, a yearbook, a car with insurance, and guitar strings just to name a few things in both categories. Some are things I had when I was his age, and some are things that he really deserves above and beyond what I was given or had an ability to use, because he is a better kid than I ever was. I don't know any other teenagers that pay for their lunch out of their own pocket, but there it is. After fuel and car insurance we're living on about $30 per week give or take. I just found out yesterday that unless Congress passes an extension of the current unemployment policy, my unemployment will run out the first week of January. I've been job hunting in earnest for a bit now, and it's escalating even more, but I was hoping to get something a little better than a minimum wage grease pit. If that's what I have to do though, I'll make that happen.
I've had things to be very thankful for though, so it's not all bad. Thanks to the kindness of a good friend, and action by my Mom, I am now back on a CPAP machine. I was getting much more concerned than I let on about my health in that regard as I was constantly very sleepy, my mental acuity was slipping, I believe it affected my grades for a time, I was getting migraines, and the minor headaches were daily. I think the effects were also counteracting any benefit I was getting from my blood pressure medicine. Health is a huge concern going forward, and I have a plan in place to deal with that and the plan is a lifestyle change with nutrition and an exercise regimen in mind. I don't know if people really understand why I need to build up to it mentally and why I don't just do it... today... I think it's very important for long term success if I spend some time in preparation. This method worked well the only other time I attempted anything remotely like it, and I understand why it stopped. It won't happen again. In the next 3 years I plan to reach a much more ideal weight. Hopefully the exercise and the process will not destroy my knees, but also hopefully, I'll be insured and making enough money by then to afford any corrective action in that realm.
I guess I'm just putting all of this on my blog because unless I link a post to facebook, I don't think people really read this stuff, so I feel like these thoughts will remain in a place where I can go back and reference them, and they will still be somewhat private. I needed to kind of type it all out as a way of well... putting things in black and white so I can see where I stand, and see what needs to be done. I think it's clear that things are so precarious that it is pointless to even begin thinking about the loneliness that permeates my existence. I do not have anyone close enough on a daily basis to be able to express these things or talk about them. If I did it would be a bad thing to bring them down by just laying all of this stuff out there. It's just too negative and stressful to utter really, even if there was a someone. Honestly I'm not sure if I would want to put anyone through this stuff along with me. That would be a selfish act. I'm not into those.
I would like to think that things aren't as unstable as they appear, and that things will be fine. I always used to say to myself; "things will turn out well", or "things will turn out as they should". I can't do that this time. Keegan's school and his future, and my future depend on what I do in the next few weeks, and at the most the next couple of months. It's such a critical time, and there has never been so much at stake as there is now. It's so strange to think that I have (with help) supported myself and my son for the past 16 months on less than $10k (If you don't count income tax returns and student loans and grants). That in itself is quite a trick considering car insurance and fuel alone was around $3,350.00.
This is the climax of the story, and everything else will be looked back at as rising or falling action. A push in either direction could influence things to be triumphant or disaster. If things do push through, and my every intense effort makes headway, and things turn out positive, then I imagine there will be a great sense of satisfaction, and it will push me into a good place I've never been before. That being said, I'm already feeling worn slick, and if things go the other direction... I hate to even think it. I couldn't even have gotten this far without the help of others, some of the help has even been well beyond what I could hope for or deserve. I think that if things went badly it would take a very long time to pick up the pieces, and the path would be just that much harder.
Y'know... I'm a smart guy. I'm very stable and laid back. I'm not a bad person. I'm a good Dad. Maybe better than good. I respect people, and appreciate the things I have and I am thankful for each day, and all of my friends. I relate well with everyone, and I could be so very successful given the right opportunity. People on at least one side of my family have ridiculed me for concentrating on my schoolwork and getting along without a job as long as I could. I couldn't have gotten this far as well as I have without doing what I did. More valuable than that, I've been able to really be there for my son in an important time in his life. I was able to be there for him, and that means a lot, and was worth the sacrifice to this point.
I will find somewhere flexible to work full time, and go to school full time, and try my best to get my son where he needs to be. The logistics alone should be quite an adventure. I think in terms of a big picture, and I may change my mind down the road one day, but for now, I think I've made good decisions. As long as they don't come back and bite me, this is all for a brighter future in my book. The best part about the whole thing is that one day I will be able to help others... and when that day comes, each day after that will be the same. I will teach and I will inspire young people to better themselves and give them the confidence that they can achieve and go further in life than they suspect. I will even be there for some kids who don't have parents that care as much as I do. That is a worthy cause. A cause worth any risk I've taken so far. We are happy despite the stress, and despite the future unknown. To this point things have gone according to plan, and life is good. I appreciate every day so very much. I did stop to smell the flowers, and it was worth every second. I'm not changing now except to preserve what we have, and move forward. Words can never express my thanks to those who have helped us get this far.
I think that unless you live it, it's very hard to explain the decisions you have to make as a single parent that have nothing to do with the self. They are sometimes characterized as sacrifice, but how can that be when it is your duty? I am not the innocent life that needs someone to nurture, and love them, and meet all of their needs. It's my sacred duty to take care of my son, and to do otherwise or waver from that for selfish reasons seems an abhorrent idea to me. How anyone could walk away from such a responsibility is beyond anything I can imagine. I think that this profound duty is why it weighs so heavily on me when I cannot do the things that I need to do for my son. He has needs that are not being met at all, and there are things he deserves because he is such an amazing kid, and I cannot provide those things either. How is it that such a responsible, intelligent, amazing kid, who works so hard, is required to go through this part of his life with such a difficult path? Granted when compared to the world, he has it pretty good, but it all teeters on the edge of a knife, and despite popular belief, there is ridicule for those less fortunate, he doesn't bring those concerns to me anymore, but he used to, and I know they still go on. He needs simple things like a medical checkup and dental work, or lunch money, or hangars for his closet. He deserves things like a better flute, a yearbook, a car with insurance, and guitar strings just to name a few things in both categories. Some are things I had when I was his age, and some are things that he really deserves above and beyond what I was given or had an ability to use, because he is a better kid than I ever was. I don't know any other teenagers that pay for their lunch out of their own pocket, but there it is. After fuel and car insurance we're living on about $30 per week give or take. I just found out yesterday that unless Congress passes an extension of the current unemployment policy, my unemployment will run out the first week of January. I've been job hunting in earnest for a bit now, and it's escalating even more, but I was hoping to get something a little better than a minimum wage grease pit. If that's what I have to do though, I'll make that happen.
I've had things to be very thankful for though, so it's not all bad. Thanks to the kindness of a good friend, and action by my Mom, I am now back on a CPAP machine. I was getting much more concerned than I let on about my health in that regard as I was constantly very sleepy, my mental acuity was slipping, I believe it affected my grades for a time, I was getting migraines, and the minor headaches were daily. I think the effects were also counteracting any benefit I was getting from my blood pressure medicine. Health is a huge concern going forward, and I have a plan in place to deal with that and the plan is a lifestyle change with nutrition and an exercise regimen in mind. I don't know if people really understand why I need to build up to it mentally and why I don't just do it... today... I think it's very important for long term success if I spend some time in preparation. This method worked well the only other time I attempted anything remotely like it, and I understand why it stopped. It won't happen again. In the next 3 years I plan to reach a much more ideal weight. Hopefully the exercise and the process will not destroy my knees, but also hopefully, I'll be insured and making enough money by then to afford any corrective action in that realm.
I guess I'm just putting all of this on my blog because unless I link a post to facebook, I don't think people really read this stuff, so I feel like these thoughts will remain in a place where I can go back and reference them, and they will still be somewhat private. I needed to kind of type it all out as a way of well... putting things in black and white so I can see where I stand, and see what needs to be done. I think it's clear that things are so precarious that it is pointless to even begin thinking about the loneliness that permeates my existence. I do not have anyone close enough on a daily basis to be able to express these things or talk about them. If I did it would be a bad thing to bring them down by just laying all of this stuff out there. It's just too negative and stressful to utter really, even if there was a someone. Honestly I'm not sure if I would want to put anyone through this stuff along with me. That would be a selfish act. I'm not into those.
I would like to think that things aren't as unstable as they appear, and that things will be fine. I always used to say to myself; "things will turn out well", or "things will turn out as they should". I can't do that this time. Keegan's school and his future, and my future depend on what I do in the next few weeks, and at the most the next couple of months. It's such a critical time, and there has never been so much at stake as there is now. It's so strange to think that I have (with help) supported myself and my son for the past 16 months on less than $10k (If you don't count income tax returns and student loans and grants). That in itself is quite a trick considering car insurance and fuel alone was around $3,350.00.
This is the climax of the story, and everything else will be looked back at as rising or falling action. A push in either direction could influence things to be triumphant or disaster. If things do push through, and my every intense effort makes headway, and things turn out positive, then I imagine there will be a great sense of satisfaction, and it will push me into a good place I've never been before. That being said, I'm already feeling worn slick, and if things go the other direction... I hate to even think it. I couldn't even have gotten this far without the help of others, some of the help has even been well beyond what I could hope for or deserve. I think that if things went badly it would take a very long time to pick up the pieces, and the path would be just that much harder.
Y'know... I'm a smart guy. I'm very stable and laid back. I'm not a bad person. I'm a good Dad. Maybe better than good. I respect people, and appreciate the things I have and I am thankful for each day, and all of my friends. I relate well with everyone, and I could be so very successful given the right opportunity. People on at least one side of my family have ridiculed me for concentrating on my schoolwork and getting along without a job as long as I could. I couldn't have gotten this far as well as I have without doing what I did. More valuable than that, I've been able to really be there for my son in an important time in his life. I was able to be there for him, and that means a lot, and was worth the sacrifice to this point.
I will find somewhere flexible to work full time, and go to school full time, and try my best to get my son where he needs to be. The logistics alone should be quite an adventure. I think in terms of a big picture, and I may change my mind down the road one day, but for now, I think I've made good decisions. As long as they don't come back and bite me, this is all for a brighter future in my book. The best part about the whole thing is that one day I will be able to help others... and when that day comes, each day after that will be the same. I will teach and I will inspire young people to better themselves and give them the confidence that they can achieve and go further in life than they suspect. I will even be there for some kids who don't have parents that care as much as I do. That is a worthy cause. A cause worth any risk I've taken so far. We are happy despite the stress, and despite the future unknown. To this point things have gone according to plan, and life is good. I appreciate every day so very much. I did stop to smell the flowers, and it was worth every second. I'm not changing now except to preserve what we have, and move forward. Words can never express my thanks to those who have helped us get this far.
Friday, December 2, 2011
Literature Abstract for Essay #3
Fear Is The Mind Killer – It Is The Little Death
At The Mountains Of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
I contend that H.P. Lovecraft used the psychology of fear of the unknown on the mind, to make his short stories and books into popular fiction. Lovecraft used the strange attraction of fear and drew the average person to his works. I will illustrate the method of the creation of fear is as important as the psychology of the fear in how it affects our brain. It was H.P. Lovecraft himself who said; “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Lovecraft may not have completely understood the psychological forces as we understand it today, but with mental illnesses that permeated his family, he understood the power of fear, and how it affected the human mind on the surface. Lovecraft created the themes that are used constantly in modern Horror Fiction through subtle use of language, and the creation of an entire mythos using a combination of mythologies. The wonder and unknown of the ancient civilizations and myths are used as a force or a universe that is vast, making the reader feel small in a large unknown and unfamiliar place.
In order to understand the effect of fear on the brain, I will first examine how the phraseology and words in “At The Mountains of Madness” create fear. Lovecraft had an anachronistic way of life that fed the “unknowns” he was writing about. A fan of the macabre through the influence of Edgar Allen Poe, Lovecraft was able to set the mood efficiently, just like the works he came to love. Another of the most important aspects of creating fear was adding authenticity to his stories, and relating known and modern things to Lovecraft was considered an oddity during his life despite his growing fame, even among his colleagues, which added to the mystique of his works. Lovecraft’s technique of writing as though he was forced to write the Mountains of Madness, the first line in fact, immediately puts the reader into the mind … Baroque descriptions and carefully placed throughout the work is a key part of his ability to make the reader feel as though they are a small piece of the cosmos, and matter little to the monsters who lurk throughout the world. Subjective adjectives allow the reader’s mind to wander. The phrase “Rows of antique books” makes the reader think about the word antique, and when surrounded by the fear created elsewhere in the text, can draw the reader into imagining that the books themselves may have secret powers, secret words, or deep and forbidden knowledge. I will examine the literary tools used to create mood and different types of fear from a psychological point of view.
In addition to the method used to create fear, the psychological effects make us want to revisit that fear. I will examine the effect fear has on the brain, and why these tools of the literary trade stimulate fear in our minds, and why we want to return to that fear. I will answer the question of our desire to return to fear that gets under the skin of the average reader. I will use “The psychology of fear and stress” By Jeffrey Alan Gray to illustrate how fear effects the mind and mutates within our brain to keep us aware and alert. The parallel of real and imagined fear both affect the mind in powerful ways. Lovecraft uses many ways to amplify our fear of the unknown including completely alien pronunciations of mythical creatures and places.
I will conclude my paper with an examination of Lovecraft’s grasp of using the different types of fear, from the obvious, to the subtle, to trigger the fear region of the brain, and the existential method that Lovecraft uses throughout “At the Mountains of Madness” to bring his reader into the place of fear using the narration of the story. I will use an example and follow the path from the method of causing the fear, to the effect on the brain, to the outward perception, and inward examination that result in exposing the reader to fear. The attraction of fear will be examined through “Media entertainment: the psychology of its appeal” By Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer and other resources, and I will justify my original contention that these methods were used to create a popular fiction that people continue to be entertained by nearly a century later.
Friday, November 18, 2011
H.P. Lovecraft Proposal for Psychoanalysis Paper
Proposal
The thesis I plan to argue is the short story "Mountains of Madness" by H.P. Lovecraft shows the author's use of fear is a mechanism that is psychologically exciting and attractive to the human psyche. I will also illustrate his usage of this fear as a superior example of this in modern fiction. As many consider Lovecraft to be the inspriation of much post-modern horror literature (of which I will provide examples), it will be an interesting analysis in that it is a genesis of sorts, of this type of fear.
H.P. Lovecraft was unique in his encouragement toward other Authors to take up the gauntlet of his work where he leaves off, and thus an entire mythos was created based on his works and the world that ties his stories together. In this way, the brand of fear he created permeates the works of many other authors. I will explain the proliferation of the works of Lovecraft, and therefore the effect of the attraction of fear, throughout literature, pop culture, and other facets of our modern society.
It is my intent to show the popularity of fear throughout modern and post-modern times and how Lovecraft's work gives rise to parody, other branches of horror, and the desensitizing of the modern world through exposure. My research will include the psychology of fear and horror, and the effect on the human brain through psychological analysis and how through influence of the literature of Lovecraft, other media has had similar effects. I will show that his influence on modern horror was inevitable due to the strange attraction of Fear and Horror.
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