The Unnamable (short story)

"The Unnamable" is a short story by science fiction and horror author H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in September of 1923 and was first published in the July 1925 issue of "Weird Tales".

ynopsis

Carter, a weird fiction writer, meets with his close friend, Joel Manton, in a cemetery near an old, dilapidated house on Meadow Hill in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. As the two sit upon a weathered tomb, Carter tells Manton the tale of an indescribable entity that allegedly haunts the house and surrounding area. He contends that because such an entity cannot be perceived by the five senses, it becomes impossible to quantify and accurately describe, thus earning itself the term "unnamable".

As the narration closes, this unnamable presence attacks both Carter and Manton. Both men survive and awaken later at St. Mary’s hospital. They suffer from various lacerations, including scarring from a large horn-shaped object and bruises in the shape of hoof-prints on their backs.

Manton describes the unnamable in the closing passage of the story:

It was everywhere — a gelatin — a slime — yet it had shapes, a thousand shapes of horror beyond all memory. There were eyes — and a blemish. It was the pit — the maelstrom — the ultimate abomination. Carter, it was the unnamable!

Characters

Carter

Carter is usually identified with Randolph Carter, a recurring, autobiographical character in Lovecraft's fiction. The incident in "The Unnamable" is alluded to in "The Silver Key" (1926), which records that Carter "went back to Arkham...and had experiences in the dark, amidst the hoary willows, and tottering gambrel roofs, which made him seal forever certain pages in the diary of a wild-minded ancestor." [Cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 283.]

Joel Manton

The character of Joel Manton is based on Lovecraft's friend Maurice W. Moe. Manton is principal of the "East High School", while Moe taught at Milwaukee's West Division High School; Moe, like Manton, is a religious believer, in contrast to Carter's (and Lovecraft's) skepticism. [Joshi and Schultz, pp. 283-284.]

The Unnamable

The Unnamable itself, from description, is most definitely a shoggoth, one of the most formidable, maddening and terrifying of creatures in Lovecraftian Mythos, created by the Elder Things as servants, who eventually turned on their masters. The shoggoth themselves are mentioned most prevalently in stories like At the Mountains of Madness, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and so on.

Adaptations

"The Unnamable" has been loosely adapted into two motion pictures. Both films were written and directed by Jean-Paul Ouellette and have only a tangential connection to the original short story:

* "The Unnamable" (1988)
* "The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter" (1993)

References

*cite book|first=Howard P.|last=Lovecraft|year=1986|title=Dagon and Other Macabre Tales|editor=S. T. Joshi (ed.) |edition=9th corrected printing|publisher=Arkham House|location=Sauk City, WI|id=ISBN 0-87054-039-4 Definitive version.

Notes

External links

* [http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/u.asp "H. P. Lovecraft's 'The Unnamable'"] , The H. P. Lovecraft Archive; publication history
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096344/ "The Unnamable" (1988)] at Internet Movie Database
* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108447/ "The Unnamable II: The Statement of Randolph Carter" (1993)] at Internet Movie Database