The Tomb by H. P. Lovecraft was written by him in 1917 and published in 1922. I’m reading it ‘out of order’ in that sense because I’m reading in publishing order. He was writing much better than this in 1922. So I have to be lenient with this.
The Tomb is a fairly simple story. We are first told that the young man is in a mental institution and he’ll tell us how he got there. I dislike this habit of Lovecraft’s to tell us how the story is going to end up right at the beginning. It takes away the suspense for me.
So we then go back in time to when Jervas was a ten-year-old boy from a wealthy family. Jervas was completely neglected by his parents. So much that he spent every day and every night sleeping outside a local tomb, near a burned-down mansion. Nobody ever noticed. Jervas feels he is brilliant and wise, even though he has no friends and doesn’t go to school. He reads old books. He is obsessed by this tomb but comes to accept that he’ll get into the tomb when he’s older.
Finally, when he turns 21, he falls asleep and feels he’s discovered the key to the tomb. Then he goes in at night and does things he isn’t willing to discuss. Many readers take this to mean he is pleasuring himself amongst the dead bodies. Hmmm. He keeps doing this. At some point his father sends a watcher to see why his young adult son isn’t attending balls or going to salons or doing other normal things a wealthy lad would be doing. The watcher says that the boy just sleeps outside the tomb all night.
The boy takes this to mean his secret activities are shielded by magic and he keeps doing them.
A week later, the boy ‘sees’ that the burned-down mansion is miraculously whole and he goes in to a huge party. The boy is the wildest, most party-happy person there. And then the big lightning strike which destroyed the mansion happens again, and the boy ‘wakes up’ and is now caught by some of his father’s men. The boy rails that he wants to be in the mansion and wants to be buried in the tomb. Hence the mental institution.
The boy’s father tries to tell him that the tomb is STILL locked with a rust-covered lock. Even the loyal servant explains that the lock had to be smashed open to get into the tomb, because it was so rusty, but that there was an empty tomb in there. So the boy is now obsessed with being buried in that tomb.
This is laid out to be a ghost / unsettled story, but the storyline is much simpler than Lovecraft’s other works. It’s just not that enthralling to me to hear about a ten-year-old boy’s obsession with a nearby tomb, and then a twenty-one-year-old young man’s obsession with doing unnatural things in that tomb. It’s more like a young Lovecraft working through his sadness at not having friends, not being in school, and feeling like he’s a misunderstood brilliant person who deserves more.
I do feel sorry for this kid who is being neglected by his parents. But that doesn’t make the kind of story being told here.
Read The Tomb by H. P. Lovecraft –
https://hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/t.aspx
My video review –