I’m reading the works of H. P. Lovecraft in order of publication, which of course is open to interpretation. In my case, it means I am reading Beyond the Wall of Sleep as story number 3, after The Alchemist and A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson. It’s fair to say that Beyond the Wall of Sleep is an enormous departure from these first two works.
In Beyond the Wall of Sleep, we find Lovecraft, who is now around age 29, delving into the area which would become his world. Lovecraft is no longer writing about creepy wizards in gothic halls or fantasizing of meeting famous writers. Here, Lovecraft is fascinated with the world of dreams compared with reality. What is a dream? What is reality? Is this reality we experience the “main plane”? Are there others out there different from us, others we could never possibly fully understand?
It’s also fair to say that Lovecraft’s soul-deep sense of superiority shines through on this piece. His main character is educated, intelligent, and worthy of appreciation. Compare that with the backwoods barely-human cretins of the mountain country which Lovecraft denigrates with every single nasty word he can come up with, including “white trash” (in 1919!) and “bovine”. Apparently nobody in such a realm could possibly have the tiniest hint of intelligence. Or common sense. They are barely above the level of a farm animal.
It’s interesting of course that Lovecraft goes into such detail about how awful these woods-folk are and then says they are indescribable. Somehow he managed to describe them.
And how does Lovecraft know that these people have NO stories or fables they share? Surely that is a quite typical way to pass the time without radio or books! If anything you would think these families would have MORE time to tell stories to each other.
In any case, Lovecraft realizes that a super-intelligent superior being hangs out in this dolt’s body and takes over at night. Sometimes when the dolt awakens, there’s still that glimmer of the super-being there because the vocabulary used changes (“improves”?). But doesn’t this mean that the super-being is the one who callously murdered a neighbor, for what reason? For trying to calm the dolt down? It’s not as if the super-being was going to “do” anything in the dolt’s body. The super-being has far more important things to care about, involving a far-off star.
Speaking of which, that star is a real one. And the “new star” created by the super-being is also real. However, light moves at a certain speed. It’s not as if the super-being could create the new star and instantly we would see it. We would have to wait a LONG time before the light of that new star reached us. Did the super-being jump back in time just to give a ‘hello there’ message to his Earth-bound friend?
All in all, this probably perfectly encapsulates much of how I feel about Lovecraft. I like the descriptive unsettled horror of the unknown. I’m unhappy with how this MUST involved ‘stupid’ dull throwaway people who are not deserving of respect because of their group.
Let me know your thoughts!
Read Beyond the Wall of Sleep –
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/bws.aspx
Video Review of Beyond the Wall of Sleep –
