The Call of Cthulhu (Lovecraft)
Short Summary
Providence, Rhode Island, 1926-1927. After the death of his great-uncle, Professor Angell, a man discovered a collection of documents that revealed a terrifying cosmic horror.
The documents detailed three interconnected events: a young sculptor's bizarre dreams of an ancient city, a police inspector's raid on a voodoo cult in New Orleans, and a Norwegian sailor's encounter with an otherworldly horror at sea. The sculptor had created a clay bas-relief of a monster called Cthulhu, which matched an idol found by the police inspector years earlier during the cult raid.
The police inspector's report revealed that the cult worshipped ancient beings who had come from the stars and were now sleeping in the sunken city of R'lyeh. Their leader, Cthulhu, would awaken when the stars were right. In 1925, during a worldwide outbreak of strange dreams and madness, a group of sailors accidentally discovered R'lyeh risen from the ocean.
The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled
The sailors inadvertently freed Cthulhu from his tomb. Most of them died instantly or went mad. The last survivor, a Norwegian sailor, escaped by ramming his ship into the monster, which temporarily dispersed its form. The sailor later died mysteriously in Oslo after recording his story. The narrator concluded that his uncle was murdered for knowing too much, and feared he would meet the same fate for uncovering this cosmic horror.
Detailed Chapter-by-Chapter Summary
Chapter 1. The Horror In Clay
The story began with the death of the narrator's great-uncle, Professor George Gammell Angell, who died under mysterious circumstances after being jostled by a sailor on a street in Providence.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality
While examining his uncle's papers, the narrator discovered a mysterious locked box containing a clay bas-relief and various documents. The bas-relief depicted a monster combining features of an octopus, dragon, and human caricature. The main document was titled 'CTHULHU CULT' and contained two sections: one about a young sculptor's dreams and another about a police inspector's investigation.
The first section detailed how Henry Anthony Wilcox, a young art student, had brought the bas-relief to Professor Angell in March 1925. Wilcox claimed to have created it based on strange dreams of cyclopean cities and incomprehensible hieroglyphics.
For several weeks, Wilcox reported increasingly disturbing dreams to Professor Angell, featuring vast alien cities and the words 'Cthulhu' and 'R'lyeh'. On March 23, he fell into a mysterious fever and delirium, speaking of a 'monster miles high.' He recovered on April 2, with no memory of his dreams.
Chapter 2. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse
The second section of the manuscript described events from 1908, when Inspector John Raymond Legrasse brought a strange statuette to an archaeological meeting in New Orleans. The statuette depicted the same monster as Wilcox's bas-relief.
Legrasse had obtained the statuette during a raid on a voodoo cult in the swamps. The cultists were performing horrific rituals and chanting in an unknown language. At the meeting, only Professor Webb recognized similarities between the statuette and a stone carving he had seen in Greenland, where he encountered Eskimos practicing a similar cult.
They worshipped, so they said, the Great Old Ones who lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea
The cultists' interrogation revealed their beliefs through the testimony of an elderly mestizo named Castro. They worshipped ancient beings called the Great Old Ones, who had come from the stars in earth's prehistoric past. Their leader, Cthulhu, lay sleeping in a sunken city called R'lyeh, waiting to rise again when the stars were right.
These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape... but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world
Chapter 3. The Madness from the Sea
The narrator's investigation led him to a newspaper clipping about a derelict ship, the Alert, found with only one survivor, Second Mate Gustaf Johansen. The ship had been involved in a battle with a mysterious yacht whose crew appeared to be cultists. After defeating them, Johansen and his men had discovered a strange island with cyclopean architecture.
The geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing whilst gazing at the terrible reality
Traveling to Oslo, the narrator found Johansen's widow, who gave him her husband's manuscript. The document revealed that the island was actually the risen city of R'lyeh, where Johansen and his crew encountered Cthulhu himself. The creature emerged from a massive stone tomb, killing several crew members.
In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming... That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die
Johansen and Briden escaped in the yacht, but Cthulhu pursued them. In desperation, Johansen turned the ship around and rammed it directly into the monster's head. The creature burst apart, but immediately began reforming. The sailors escaped while it was temporarily disrupted. Briden later died insane, and Johansen passed away shortly after returning to Oslo.
The narrator concluded that his uncle was likely murdered by cult members who feared his investigations. He realized that the worldwide dreams and disturbances reported during March 1925 corresponded to Cthulhu's brief awakening when R'lyeh rose above the waves. Though the city had sunk again, the narrator feared that it would eventually rise once more.
Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that... it meets no other eye