Chambers' story concerns the discovery of "the remnants of the last race of amphibious human beings," living in a five-mile deep chasm just off the Atlantic coast. English In the 2005 first-person action-adventure video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth the town of Innsmouth is the backdrop, the opening plot of which follows the second, third and fourth chapters of the novella with a great degree of accuracy (with a different protagonist). The 2007 film Cthulhu is loosely based on The Shadow over Innsmouth. Over the years that pass, he researches his family tree and discovers that he is a descendant of Obed Marsh, and realizes that he is changing into one of the Deep Ones. Analysis - The Shadow over Innsmouth. "But I don't know just what I can do with it. It mentions a connection between the Marsh family of Innsmouth and the Whateley family of Dunwich from ". The story is divided into five chapters. Language
The Harbour-Master!!!
The character, unnamed in "The Shadow over Innsmouth", is called "Robert Olmstead" in Lovecraft's notes for the story, published in Arkham House's Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949). The narrator hears repeatedly that outsiders are never welcomed in Innsmouth, and that strangers, particularly government investigators, have disappeared when they pry too deeply into the town. Publisher
He plans to break out his cousin from an asylum, who is even further transformed than he, and take him to the Deep Ones' city beneath the sea. "The Shuttered Room" is another short story started by Lovecraft, and finished by Derleth, which also involves the Deep Ones. (EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia). Can't shet his eyes no more, an' is all aout o' shape. The narrator gathers much information from the clerk, including a map of the town and the name of Zadok Allen, an elderly local who might give him information when plied with drink. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, "Olmstead, Robert". During the winter of 1927–28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. Born in 1831, Allen disappears and dies in 1927 after being taken and sacrificed by the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Cthulhu, an entity from previous Lo… (EXP: An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia), Barnabas Marsh, known as Old Man Marsh, is the grandson of Obed Marsh and the owner of the Marsh refinery at the time of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. "At the Mountains of Madness" [5] Cthulhu, an entity from previous Lovecraft stories, is the overlord of the sea creatures. "The Shuttered Room" is another short story started by Lovecraft and finished by Derleth that involves the deep ones. Create your own unique website with customizable templates. I love this one. While attempting to sleep, he hears noises at his door like someone trying to enter. He cannot keep them closed, however, and upon seeing the fish-frog creatures in full light for the first time, faints in his hiding spot. The Harbour-Master!!!" Against his judgment, he opens his eyes to see the creatures and faints at his hiding spot. Over the years that pass, he begins doing research into his family tree, discovering some disturbing information along the way. Chambers' story concerns the discovery of "the remnants of the last race of amphibious human beings," living in a five-mile deep chasm just off the Atlantic coast. However, Obed and his minions were apprehended by the authorities and the remaining Innsmouth residents balked at the idea of sacrificing humans to the Deep Ones. Wasting no time, he escapes out a window and through the streets while a town-wide hunt for him occurs, forcing him at times to imitate the peculiar walk of the Innsmouth locals as he walks past search parties in the darkness. The book was the only bound hardcover to appear during Lovecraft's lifetime and became one of the true rarities in the collecting field. [7], The description of the Deep Ones has similarities to the sea creature described in H.G. It also shares some themes with his earlier story, "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family". August Derleth called The Shadow over Innsmouth "a dark, brooding story, typical of Lovecraft at his best. He travelled to Hollywood in 1975 to sell it to Roger Corman, alongside his adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's The Nameless Offspring, but failed in his purpose. The narrator is a student conducting an antiquarian tour of New England.
"[13] Price points out the resemblance in names between the Deep One city of Y'ha-nthlei and Yoharneth-Lahai, a fictional deity in Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana, who "sendeth little dreams out of Pegana to please the people of Earth"—a precursor to Lovecraft's fictional deity Cthulhu, who sends less pleasant dreams from R'lyeh. Learn how and when to remove this template message, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Shadow over Innsmouth, "Unfilmable.com: Pickman's Models: Shadow over Innsmouth", "The Lovecraft Ezine.com: Coming soon: A new film adaption of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"!
The short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" (Smoke and Mirrors, 1998) by Neil Gaiman contains many similarities to "The Shadow over Innsmouth": a student visits the coastal town of Innsmouth (in England rather than New England), he gets to talking to two drunks (parodies of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore), he sees horrors in the water, he passes out.
He further explains that these ocean-dwellers have designs on the surface world and have been planning the use of shoggoths to conquer or transform it.
The characteristic features of Innsmouth's townspeople are:
[7] The real Newburyport features as a neighboring town in the narrative. In the first chapter, the narrator begins by recounting to the reader of a secret investigation that was undertaken by the government at the ruined town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, and that the story told to them by the narrator himself is the reason for this investigation. Creepy tiara-wearing priests still lurk in dark corners, and several are seen among the narrator's pursuers toward … He sees a piece of exotic jewelry in a museum, and learns that its source is the nearby decrepit seaport of Innsmouth. A peculiar driver of a run-down bus in Innsmouth with such large feet the narrator wondered how he was able to find shoes that fit.
It is hard to break a story of this kind into two parts, and it is too long to run complete in one part. He proceeds to describe in detail the events surrounding his initial interest in the town (antiquarian and architectural), which lies along the route of his tour across New England, taken when he was twenty-one. (HPL: Selected Letters 3.514), The story was rejected by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright when Derleth surreptitiously submitted it for publication in 1933. The subtext here is twofold: first, the rusty and abandoned state of the railway implies how technology has been abandoned before, and should not be taken up again, and second, escaping from Innsmouth does not actually save him in the end. Sinister Minister: Zadok Allen recalls how the Esoteric Order of Dagon took over the town and Captain Marsh's crewmen were promoted as priests of the new religion. And then there’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” which ends in a manic, even ecstatic, surrender to the weird. This is a central tenet of Cosmicism, which Lovecraft emphasizes in the opening sentence of "The Call of Cthulhu": "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.".
The colour of the creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a phosphorescent grey. Robert Weinberg, "Science Fiction Specialty Publishers" in Hall, Hal W. (ed). Farnsworth Wright, letter to August Derleth, January 17, 1933; cited in Joshi and Schultz, pp. He also has a cousin, even further transformed than he, being held in a mental hospital whom he plans to break free and take with him. "But I don't know just what I can do with it.
Male and female inhabitants were forced to breed with the Deep Ones, producing hybrid offspring which have the appearance of normal humans in early life but, in adulthood, slowly transform into Deep Ones themselves and leave the surface to live in ancient undersea cities for eternity. The narrator meets Zadok, who explains that an Innsmouth merchant named Obed Marsh discovered a race of fish-like humanoids known as the Deep Ones. [12], After Lovecraft's death (and Wright's), the story appeared in an unauthorized abridged version in the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales.