All accounts of Lovecraft confirm that he was a sheltered child,
attached to his mother. Once his father died of syphilis, his relationship with
his mother became more complicated. Perhaps it was her fear of losing the boy
as well that led her to viciously attack his self-esteem. She reportedly called
him hideous and ugly forcing him to lock himself away in the attic of their
house on Angell Street. This is where he began to imagine macabre stories of
freakish, monstrous, grotesque creatures, who hide and lurk in the shadows.
He became an “Indifferentist” believing that things much older than
mankind, older than Earth, are looking down upon us with indifference. His work
was a departure from the traditional gothic horror and dealt more with a
maligned world where the creatures don’t really care about humans. He created “gods
on earth”, creatures that would haunt and terrorize the humans that Lovecraft
despised so much. These characters were his self manifestation, his desires,
him.
Through Astronomy he learned the boundlessness of the
universe and the insignificance of man. Cosmicism is a philosophy which asserts that there is no
divine being in the universe, no God. Humans are merely insignificant specs
existing inconsequentially in a vast, boundless galaxy. The insignificance of
the human race can be proven through the theory of Deep Time, the idea that there existed a time before man.
Man is self-involved and self-centered, only egotism exists. Therefore, a concept
such as deep time may be hard to come to terms with. This can be illustrated by
looking at a scene from the 1990’s TV show “Growing Pains.” During the sequence
Mike Seaver (Kirk Cameron) pretends to be sick and stays home from school. Everything
is going swimmingly until, while watching an episode of Gilligan’s Island, Mike hears the school bus outside. He becomes
incensed with the idea that school, or life, has continued without him. A real
turning point in the character’s life. The fear that the world doesn't start
and stop at your convenience (to quote Walter Sobchak) can be quite
demoralizing. But not for Lovecraft. He pointed to Man’s potential
inability to exist in the "infinite spaces" that science opens up,
the large emptiness of the cosmos to which Man is as insignificant as dust. Lovecraft’s feelings that human beings are not the most important
of beings on the planet, what’s called anti-anthropocentrism, is a central theme in all of his work. It is believed
that he held an overall disdain and mistrust of people in general. This misanthropy can be seen not only in his creative work but also in many of his
personal correspondences with friends and family members.
These themes are
worth noting if only for the uncanny parallels to Lovecraft’s life. Like most
writers he wrote what he knew, drawing from his own experience to create, and
most likely escape to, an imaginary world.
Truly studied horrorphiles
are all students of Lovecraft, whether they know it or not. They are all tiny
specs, creating art under his divine guidance. After all, he was Providence.
