C
This is the first of Lovecraft’s stories I would consider to be part of the “Cthulhu mythos”, despite Dagon being an actual religious deity. I say this because it has so many of the thematic elements in the mythos. Unlike his previous short stories, this one feels more like a lore dump than an actual story, as the character followed isn’t doing much more than exploring an uncharted island and witnessing events without active participation. This is the classic Lovecraft story structure and while I’m not a huge fan of it, the prose makes it far more compelling than it ought to be. Lovecraft was obsessed with revealing a world not meant for the human eye through mere glimpses, which was enough to drive any witness to it insane. There’s a fine line he had to walk with giving just enough detail to paint a vivid picture, but not enough to where the reader can understand what’s happening any better than the character. Dagon is in that sweet spot. I really like the aquatic nature of the story as well. To this day, the ocean is still as mysterious and alien as it was over a hundred years ago, making any kind of monster surfacing from it just as terrifying now. What I feel is missing from this story is the more detailed spiral of the narrator after he returned to civilization. I am always more interested in how characters react and cope with the things they experience in a horror story, but Lovecraft is just not interested in expanding on that here. Though I guess if I saw a giant fish person on a creepy deserted island, I would also lose my mind and there wouldn’t be much more to it either.
This is the first of Lovecraft’s stories I would consider to be part of the “Cthulhu mythos”, despite Dagon being an actual religious deity. I say this because it has so many of the thematic elements in the mythos. Unlike his previous short stories, this one feels more like a lore dump than an actual story, as the character followed isn’t doing much more than exploring an uncharted island and witnessing events without active participation. This is the classic Lovecraft story structure and while I’m not a huge fan of it, the prose makes it far more compelling than it ought to be. Lovecraft was obsessed with revealing a world not meant for the human eye through mere glimpses, which was enough to drive any witness to it insane. There’s a fine line he had to walk with giving just enough detail to paint a vivid picture, but not enough to where the reader can understand what’s happening any better than the character. Dagon is in that sweet spot. I really like the aquatic nature of the story as well. To this day, the ocean is still as mysterious and alien as it was over a hundred years ago, making any kind of monster surfacing from it just as terrifying now. What I feel is missing from this story is the more detailed spiral of the narrator after he returned to civilization. I am always more interested in how characters react and cope with the things they experience in a horror story, but Lovecraft is just not interested in expanding on that here. Though I guess if I saw a giant fish person on a creepy deserted island, I would also lose my mind and there wouldn’t be much more to it either.