The Horror at Red Hook - ***SPOILERS***

[BeerClark]

Like most of Lovecraft's stories, I enjoyed reading this one. The story went along with the usual suspense and foreboding.

But I am used to a good wrap up. Even if there is some question remaining, its usually minor in the stories.

In Red Hook, I got to the end and felt like either there was a chapter missing or the story just lost steam. Maybe I missed something.. I have found myself re-reading pages sometimes to settle some confusing, but I think I'd have to read the story over.

The couple questions I was left with:

The detective's (Malone) fear of tall houses: Its such a big deal in the beginning of the story how he is terrified of certain types of structures. Yet, I never felt that there was any direct connection to seeing a type of house. I'd be more afraid of basements than anything if it were me!!

Suydam killing his bride: Was it even him? What was the point? To get himself to the ritual in his basement? Wasn't he already a part of them...so he could have gotten there anyway?

He knocked over the 'creature'??: What was the point of that? Would that really kill it? Destroy it? Obviously not by the end of the story... but it seemed like thats Suydam would have easily know.

Why DID he want to destroy it?: It seemed like he was either a part of the cult or at least interested on some level. It never seemed to come out what his ulterior motive he had much less why he seemed to turn on the cult.

Maybe I just didn't read this story close enough... but I thought it read like any other story. Its also the only one I ever had trouble understanding so much. Call of the Cthulthu I had a little trouble with the explanation of Cthulthu getting 'caught' underwater again.. but at least it was a reason.

Anyone else feel the same or can shed some light on this?

 

[j d worthington]

While "Red Hook" is not among HPL's best tales by far, most of this is dealt with in the text. And yes, often HPL does require close reading, as (even here, though much less than in other works) he deals largely in subtleties, shadings, adumbration, and nuance. I'll give you some of my thoughts on this one, and they might help a bit:

The couple questions I was left with:

The detective's (Malone) fear of tall houses: Its such a big deal in the beginning of the story how he is terrified of certain types of structures. Yet, I never felt that there was any direct connection to seeing a type of house. I'd be more afraid of basements than anything if it were me!!

Several points here: it wasn't tall houses, but houses of a specific type, represented by (in Pascoag) the urban, business district. It's a matter of association; and, since Suydam had given haven to the various unsavory ethnic types tied in with the secret worship in such buildings, they came to represent for Malone a locus of such horror as he experienced. Recall, for instance, that the entire buildings collapsed, killing many of his colleagues, as well as the greater number of the prisoners. For Malone (as for HPL), this type of architecture had become inextricably intertwined with the corruption of the supposedly solid Anglo-Saxon structure of the culture; it was a decaying, decadent, and cancerous blot. (Yes, the racist elements in HPL's character are very strong in this tale.) And, as in "He", and "The Street", there comes a point where the rot becomes too great, and the buildings -- built by the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, for their uses and purposes and initially a natural outgrowth of that culture, since "corrupted" to alien use by those with no roots to the soil of the area -- themselves collapse, rotted out from within, as it were. However, in the very tissue of their corruption, the evil, like maggots in a corpse (a simile he makes very plain in "He", written very shortly after) continues to thrive....

Suydam killing his bride: Was it even him? What was the point? To get himself to the ritual in his basement? Wasn't he already a part of them...so he could have gotten there anyway?

No, it wasn't Suydam... after all, he himself became a corpse, remember. And the text has the following:

It was murder -- strangulation -- but one need not say that the claw-mark on Mrs. Suydam's throat could not have come from her husband's or any other human hand, or that upon the white wall there flickered for an instant in hateful red a legend which, later copied from memory, seems to have been nothing less than the fearsome Chaldee letters of the word "LILITH".

As to the point... there are several, I think. One is that Mrs. Suydam -- if you put two and two together, the marriage was (likely) never consumated -- was a sacrifice; a virginal sacrifice. Recall that her blood was drained and taken away in bottles by the crew of the tramp that claimed Suydam's own corpse, for use in the ritual. Suydam himself would seem to have been aiming at gaining power -- recall the various claims that caused the hearing on his sanity -- as well as immortality; in this case, a life after death (though whether he was aware of that stipulation or not is uncertain).

He knocked over the 'creature'??: What was the point of that? Would that really kill it? Destroy it? Obviously not by the end of the story... but it seemed like thats Suydam would have easily know.

Why DID he want to destroy it?: It seemed like he was either a part of the cult or at least interested on some level. It never seemed to come out what his ulterior motive he had much less why he seemed to turn on the cult.

No, he pushed the altar -- which had a strong mystic significance and may have served the purpose of a key or portal -- into the well, breaking the thread that allowed or kept Lilith (or, rather, the actuality that lies behind the legend of Lilith) on this plane. So, not destruction, but (temporary) banishment; enough to free him from his infernal bargain, which obviously had some hidden clauses he found more horrible than even he had planned on. (A common idea in Lovecraft is the cultist or occult scholar who believes they control the forces they invoke, only to find that it is they who are actually being used... at best.)

Call of the Cthulthu I had a little trouble with the explanation of Cthulthu getting 'caught' underwater again.. but at least it was a reason.

The thing about the sinking of R'lyeh and and the trapping of Cthulhu is that it is entirely fortuitous... and only a temporary setback. "What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise", as the story says. In other words, sheer chance saves the human race from Cthulhu's reign; nothing we do can have any effect (something of an advance on "Red Hook", where Suydam's removal of the altar is the cause of the at least temporary derangement in things); we are, ultimately, powerless in the face of a cosmos so vast that the entire human race and its history is less than the blink of an eye.... Even here, though, the respite is only temporary; as Lovecraft puts it in the story:

Who are we to combat poisons older than history and mankind? Apes danced in Asia to these horrors, and the cancer lurks secure and spreading where furtiveness hides in rows of decaying brick.

 

[Lobolover]

Leting something sacred all into a well,Hmm,this sudenly rminds me of Shadow Over Innsmouth,you think there's a similar significance?

 

[j d worthington]

Hmmmm.... I rather doubt it, but it's worth considering. As this is the sort of speculation I'm always interested in, what would you say may be supporting evidence for such an idea?

 

[Lobolover]

Well,just a thing that it may have had some religious singiicanc or alegory-remember what Marsh was said to have thrown down the water at Devil's Reef?Some sort of-I cant find the word,but it was something religiously symbolic.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, I remember the reference. What I'm curious about is whether you might have some other connections in mind as well. It'd be interesting to see a development of your thesis here if you do....

 

[Lobolover]

Well,he threw it into a well-into water-and god knows how DEEP that well goes.

(though id have to re-read or at least listen to it (I actualy dont re-read his tales on the comp anymore,but listen to them being read) to refresh other ideas)