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The Shadow Over Innsmouth Sparknotes

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Was H. P. Lovecraft true to his time or a racist? H. P. Lovecraft was mainly known for his unique horror stories but today he is known for more. A review of his publications will shed light on the initial question. While Lovecraft lived and wrote in a time when the social environment oppressed those who were not white, his writing could reveal a more extreme view. For example, in “The Call of Cthulhu”, the main character of the story judges people who are not white and thinks less of them. Additionally, the underlying theme of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is judgment based on race. Lastly, Lovecraft’s story “The Outsider” has a theme of people fearing the main character who is different from them. Critical analyses that have been written on …show more content…

P. Lovecraft is “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Much like his work “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth” has themes and examples of racism. This story is about a young man who was touring around New England to visit the places his ancestors were from. While at a bus station trying to visit a town his maternal family had come from, he heard of an ominous, perilous town by the name of Innsmouth. Innsmouth had once been a prosperous fishing town before the War of 1812, but soon it had taken a turn for the worse. People started believing a local, Captain Marsh, brought devil worship and the devil himself to Innsmouth. This story also features a cult, much like the one in Cthulhu. The devil worship in this story is a local cult that has taken over the town, everyone in the town follows it, and it replaced all other religions in the town. In the year 1846, half of the town's population died due to what people thought was a disease from a foreign place that had been brought through the ports of the town. The overall town's history is quite ominous and frightening. Now the town’s people of Innsmouth look otherworldly, they have been described as, “Some of ‘em have queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, starry eyes that never seem to shut, and their skin ain’t quite right. Rough and scabby, and the sides of the necks are all shriveled or creased up. Get bald, too, very young,” (Lovecraft, 2021). Because of the weird looks of the locals, the main character starts to call it the “Innsmouth look,” (Lovecraft, 2021). The main character is repulsed by the looks and sounds of the locals and thinks of them as creatures, not humans. The thought of the locals being something different and foreign is a prominent theme throughout the story and the main character fears them. This theme is like a metaphor, Lovecraft fears people who are not like him and thinks of them as less than

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