What do we know about Cthulhu Descriptions amp technique weird People attracted to Cthulhu amp abjection Sense of vastness hyperobject What do we know about Cthulhu How do we know it 140141 ID: 775728
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Slide1
Today: “The Call of Cthulhu”
What do we know about Cthulhu?
Descriptions & technique weird
People attracted to Cthulhu & abjection
Sense of vastness
hyperobject
Slide2What do we know about Cthulhu? How do we know it?
140-141
146
148
Bottom 154-155
158
163
165
167
168
Slide3How do these passages “point off the page” in a Weird way? What feelings do these descriptions produce in the reader?
“Without knowing what futurism is like, Johansen achieved something very close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing any definite structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions of vast angles and stone surfaces—surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about
angles
because it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams. He had said that 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” (165).
“It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the
centre
, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the
croucher’s
elevated knees” (148).
“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” (167).
Slide4Types of people attracted to Cthulhu
145146147149Bottom 15—151153Description Wilcox 157-158
For your page, write down everything you can about the humans that are attracted to Cthulhu.
What patterns do we discern among these descriptions?
Slide5Weird descriptions Cthulu
“The figure…” (148).
Slide6Hyperobjects
The philosopher Timothy Morton posits that, contra the notion that humans have mastery over the world, there are things that exist that are vast in space and time but have real, unpredictable effects on humans.
His examples include:
All the petroleum that exists.
All the nuclear radiation that exists.
The Earth’s climate.
Black holes.
Humans engage with these vast entities often without being aware of it. When we start our cars, for example, we are putting carbon into the air. At some point, humans thought this was no problem. But of late, the carbon in the air has started acting very
Cthulu
-like.
Slide7How, then, do the accounts of
Cthulu
help readers think about a universe in which humans are inconsequential?
Slide8How does the text describe Cthulhu in terms of time and space?
Top 154
Bottom 155