Harman Patil (Editor)

The Shadow over Innsmouth

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
8.4
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
8.4
1 Ratings
100
90
81
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Illustrator
  
Frank Utpatel

Language
  
English

OCLC
  
3920225

Author
  
H. P. Lovecraft

Genres
  
Novella, Horror fiction

4.2/5
Goodreads

Cover artist
  
Frank Utpatel

Publication date
  
April 1936

Originally published
  
April 1936

Country
  
United States of America

The Shadow over Innsmouth t2gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRoxiFnoDXNVYkjLg

Text
  
The Shadow over Innsmouth at Wikisource

Publisher
  
Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc.

Adaptations
  
Dagon (2001), Cthulhu (2007)

Similar
  
H P Lovecraft books, Horror fiction books

The Shadow over Innsmouth is a horror novella by H. P. Lovecraft, written in November–December 1931. It forms part of the Cthulhu Mythos, using its motif of a malign undersea civilization. It references several shared elements of the Mythos, including place-names, mythical creatures and invocations.

Contents

The narrator is a student on an antiquarian tour of New England. He sees a piece of exotic jewelry in a museum, and learns that its source is the nearby decrepit seaport of Innsmouth. He travels to Innsmouth and observes disturbing events and people.

It is the only Lovecraft story which was published in book form during his lifetime.

According to L Sprague de Camp, Lovecraft distrusted his ability to narrate action, and the story is unusual in that Lovecraft includes in chapter IV a sustained and effective piece of action writing.

Plot

The story is divided into five chapters. In the first chapter, the narrator begins by telling the reader of how he instigated a secret investigation of the ruined town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, by the U.S. government. He proceeds to describe in detail the events surrounding his initial interest in the town (antiquarian and architectural), which lies along the route of his tour across New England, taken when he was twenty-one. While he waits for the bus that will take him to Innsmouth, he busies himself in the neighboring town of Newburyport by gathering information on the town from local townsfolk; all of it having superstitious overtones.

The second chapter details his ride into Innsmouth, described in great detail as a crumbling, mostly deserted, seacoast fishing town full of dilapidated structures, and people who look just a bit odd and who tend to walk with a distinct shambling gait. All of this is unsettling to the narrator, who describes the citizens as having the "Innsmouth look", "queer narrow heads with flat noses and bulgy, stary eyes". Only one person in town appears normal, a young clerk at the local First National Grocery Store, who is a citizen from neighboring Arkham. The narrator gathers much information from the clerk, including a map of the town, and the name of a local who might be a good source of information: an ancient man named Zadok Allen, known to open up information about the town's history when plied with drink. The narrator hears repeatedly that non-natives are never welcomed by the native Innsmouthians, and that strangers, particularly government investigators, have disappeared when they pry too deeply into the town.

The majority of the third chapter is composed of the conversation between Zadok and the narrator. Zadok, who is very old, has seen much in the town and goes on at length, telling a tale of fish-like humanoids known as Deep Ones, who live beneath the sea. It seems they bring prosperity in the form of an excellent haul of fish for the fishermen, as well as fantastically wrought gold jewelry to those who offer them human sacrifices. These fish-frog men are amphibious, and have the ability to reproduce with humans. The hybrid offspring have the appearance of normal humans in early life but, in adulthood, slowly transform into Deep Ones. The completed transformation brings them eternal-life, which allows the individuals to live within ancient cities under the sea. These fish-frog men were first discovered in the West Indies, by a native island tribe, which was itself found by an Innsmouth merchant named Obed Marsh. When hard times befell Innsmouth, Obed and some followers did what they could to call up the fish-frog men in their New England town, causing an increase in the town's wealth. He also established an unholy "church" in honor of the Deep Ones' deity, called the Esoteric Order of Dagon. However, Obed and his minions were apprehended by the authorities and the remaining Innsmouth residents balked at the idea of sacrificing humans to the Deep Ones. Outraged, the Deep Ones attacked the entire town one night, and slaughtered more than half of its population; the survivors were left with no choice but to offer human sacrifices to the Deep Ones, and also men and women to mate with them. The countless deaths were soon blamed on an unknown plague. Zadok is at first angry that the narrator appears not to believe him. After seeing strange waves approaching the dock, he becomes frightened, and tells the narrator to leave town immediately, because they have been seen. When the story is over, the narrator is unnerved but thinks it the product of an overly fertile imagination. Once the narrator leaves, Zadok mysteriously disappears, and is never seen again.

Chapter four tells of the night that the narrator is forced to spend in town, after being told that the bus in which he came to town is experiencing engine trouble. The narrator has no choice but to spend the night in a musty hotel. While attempting to sleep, he hears noises at his door as if someone is trying to enter. Wasting no time, he escapes out a window and through the streets while a town-wide hunt for him occurs, forcing him at times to imitate the peculiar walk of the Innsmouth locals as he walks past search parties in the darkness. Eventually, he makes his way towards some railroad tracks where he hears a great many creatures passing in the road before him. He soon hides, and resolves to close his eyes, having at this point come to accept the idea that Zadok's story is true. He cannot keep them closed, however, and upon seeing the fish-frog creatures in full light for the first time, faints while in his hiding spot.

In the final chapter, we hear of how the narrator wakes up unharmed and quickly walks to the next town (Rowley). Over the years that pass, he begins doing research into his family tree, discovering some disturbing information along the way. Eventually it becomes clear that he is a descendant of Obed Marsh himself, and nightmares soon accompany the narrator's realization that he is changing into one of the creatures. As the story ends, the narrator, by then a student at Oberlin College, tells us that his horror at the idea is now changing into an acceptance, and that he will be quite happy living forever in the city of Y'ha-nthlei, deep beneath the sea. He also has a cousin, even further transformed than he, being held in a mental hospital whom he plans to break free and take with him. The narrator believes that Y'ha-nthlei has survived its apparent destruction by the authorities, but it is unclear whether this is the case or merely a by-product of his descent into madness.

Inspiration

Both of Lovecraft's parents died in a mental hospital, and some critics believe that a concern with having inherited a propensity for physical and mental degeneration—a common preoccupation among eugenecists of the time—is reflected in the plot of The Shadow over Innsmouth. It also shares some themes with his earlier story, "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family". Cthulhu, an entity from previous Lovecraft stories, is the overlord of the sea creatures. The mind of the narrator deteriorates when he is afforded a glimpse of what exists outside his perceived reality. This is a central tenet of Cosmicism, which Lovecraft emphasizes in the opening sentence of "The Call of Cthulhu": "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

Possible influences

Lovecraft based the town of Innsmouth on his impressions of Newburyport, Massachusetts, which he had visited in 1923 and fall 1931. The real Newburyport features as a neighbouring town in the narrative.

A likely influence on the plot is Lovecraft's horror of miscegenation, which is documented by Lovecraft biographer L. Sprage de Camp and others.

Robert M. Price cites two works as literary sources for The Shadow over Innsmouth: Robert W. Chambers' "The Harbor-Master" and Irvin S. Cobb's "Fishhead". Chambers' story concerns the discovery of "the remnants of the last race of amphibious human beings," living in a five-mile deep chasm just off the Atlantic coast. The creature of the title is described as "a man with round, fixed, fishy eyes, and soft, slaty skin. But the horror of the thing were the two gills that swelled and relaxed spasmodically." Lovecraft was evidently impressed by this tale, writing in a letter to Frank Belknap Long: "God! The Harbour-Master!!!" "Fishhead" is the story of a "human monstrosity" with an uncanny resemblance to a fish: his skull sloped back so abruptly that he could hardly be said to have a forehead at all; his chin slanted off right into nothing. His eyes were small and round with shallow, glazed, pink-yellow pupils, and they were set wide apart on his head, and they were unwinking and staring, like a fish's eyes. Lovecraft, in "Supernatural Horror in Literature," called Cobb's story "banefully effective in its portrayal of unnatural affinities between a hybrid idiot and the strange fish of an isolated lake".

Price notes that Fishhead, as the "son of a Negro father and a half-breed Indian mother," "embodies unambiguously the basic premise of The Shadow Over Innsmouth.... This, of course, is really what Lovecraft found revolting in the idea of interracial marriage...the subtextual hook of different ethnic races mating and 'polluting' the gene pool." Price points out the resemblance in names between the Deep One city of Y'ha-nthlei and Yoharneth-Lahai, a fictional deity in Lord Dunsany's The Gods of Pegana, who "sendeth little dreams out of Pegana to please the people of Earth"—a precursor to Lovecraft's fictional deity Cthulhu, who sends less pleasant dreams from R'lyeh.

The description of the Deep Ones has similarities to the sea creature described in H.G. Wells' short story, "In the Abyss" (1896);

"Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its little nostrils. In the position of the ears were two huge gill-covers, and out of these floated a branching tree of coralline filaments, almost like the tree-like gills that very young rays and sharks possess. But the humanity of the face was not the most extraordinary thing about the creature. It was a biped; its almost globular body was poised on a tripod of two frog-like legs and a long, thick tail, and its fore limbs, which grotesquely caricatured the human hand, much as a frog’s do, carried a long shaft of bone, tipped with copper. The colour of the creature was variegated; its head, hands, and legs were purple; but its skin, which hung loosely upon it, even as clothes might do, was a phosphorescent grey."

Robert Olmstead

The narrator of the story, he discovers Innsmouth on a tour of New England seeking genealogical information, and finds more than he bargains for. The character, unnamed in "The Shadow over Innsmouth", is called "Robert Olmstead" in Lovecraft's notes for the story, published in Arkham House's Something About Cats and Other Pieces (1949).

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia points out that Olmstead's travel habits parallel Lovecraft's own—Lovecraft too would "seek the cheapest route", and Olmstead's dinner of "vegetable soup with crackers" is typical of Lovecraft's low-budget diet.

Obed Marsh

A wealthy sea captain, patriarch of the elite Marsh family, and the founder of the Esoteric Order of Dagon. He was referred to by Zadok Allen as being the man who first summoned the Deep Ones to Innsmouth. In 1846, he was jailed after the towns bordering Innsmouth became suspicious of his crew. He died in 1878.

According to Lovecraft's story notes, Marsh's daughter, Alice, is Robert Olmstead's great-grandmother.

Barnabas Marsh

Barnabas Marsh, known as Old Man Marsh, is the grandson of Obed Marsh and the owner of the Marsh refinery at the time of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Barnabas' father was Onesiphorus Marsh, Obed's son by his fully human wife; though Barnabas' mother, who was never seen in public, was apparently an actual Deep One. Zadok Allen says of him: "Right naow Barnabas is abaout changed. Can't shet his eyes no more, an' is all aout o' shape. They say he still wears clothes, but he'll take to the water soon."

Zadok Allen

One of the few completely human residents of Innsmouth, and an alcoholic. His drunken ramblings allow Lovecraft to convey much of the town's secret backstory to the story's protagonist. Born in 1831, Allen disappears, and dies in 1927, after being kidnapped and sacrificed by the Esoteric Order of Dagon.

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia notes that Allen resembles—and shares his years of birth and death with—Jonathan E. Hoag, an amateur poet of Lovecraft's acquaintance. A possible literary inspiration is the character of Dr. Humphrey Lathrop in Herbert Gorman's The Place Called Dagon (1927), who, like Allen, is a drinker who knows the secret history of his town.

Grocery Store Clerk

An unnamed youth of about seventeen who is a native resident of Arkham, and therefore completely human. His superiors transferred him to Innsmouth, and both he and his family loathe the idea of him working there, but he cannot afford to quit his job. He is only too happy to encounter the narrator, and describes the sinister goings-on within Innsmouth, but the boy is unaware of what is really happening in the town. He tells the narrator of the bizarre deformities afflicting the native townspeople, and how the older generation are almost never seen outdoors due to their monstrous appearance. He also briefly informs the narrator of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and what he knows of the town's society, and directs him to the drunkard, Zadok Allen, for more information.

Cthulhu Mythos

  • Towards the end, Cthulhu and R'lyeh are mentioned.
  • The creature known as Dagon is first introduced in Lovecraft's 1917 tale of the same name.
  • As related in "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937), Asenath Waite, the possessed victim of her father Ephraim Waite, is by implication one of the human/deep one hybrids, and was a resident of Innsmouth before attending Miskatonic University. The servants she brings into her marriage to Edward Derby are likewise Innsmouth natives. This occurs after The Shadow over Innsmouth and Asenath's father and she escaped the government raid mentioned in the original story.
  • The Waites, Gilmans, Eliots and Marshes are the "gently bred" families of Innsmouth. Despite his name, the protagonist of "The Dreams in the Witch House", Walter Gilman, is not established as having any links to Innsmouth or the deep ones.
  • August Derleth also used the deep ones in the short story "Innsmouth Clay", which he completed from Lovecraft's notes. "The Shuttered Room" is another short story started by Lovecraft, and finished by Derleth, which involves the deep ones. It mentions a connection between the Marsh family of Innsmouth, and the Whateley family of Dunwich from "The Dunwich Horror".
  • Publication

    Lovecraft was quite critical of The Shadow over Innsmouth, writing to August Derleth that the story "has all the defects I deplore—especially in point of style, where hackneyed phrases & rhythms have crept in despite all precautions.... No—I don't intend to offer 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' for publication, for it would stand no chance of acceptance."

    The story was rejected by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright when Derleth surreptitiously submitted it for publication in 1933. "I have read Lovecraft's story...and must confess that it fascinates me," he wrote to Derleth. "But I don't know just what I can do with it. It is hard to break a story of this kind into two parts, and it is too long to run complete in one part."

    In late 1935, William L. Crawford's Visionary Publishing Company began the process of issuing The Shadow Over Innsmouth as a book. The project came to fruition in November 1936 (although the copyright page declares the date of publication as April 1936), but the book had so many typographical errors that Lovecraft insisted on an errata sheet (which was also faulty). It had a bound run of 200 copies — the only book of Lovecraft's fiction distributed during his lifetime. Crawford had printed 400 copies but bound only 200; the others were destroyed later. Of this edition Robert Weinberg has written: "Only a few hundred copies of the book were printed, and even less than that were sold, even though it was available at the bargain price of $1 per copy. It featured good paper, black linen binding and four illustrations by Frank Utpatel. The book was the only bound hardcover to appear during Lovecraft's lifetime and became one of the true rarities in the collecting field. Its failure, and the poor sales of third non-fantasy book convinced William Crawford of the futility of his efforts."

    After Lovecraft's death (and Wright's), the story appeared in an unauthorized abridged version in the January 1942 issue of Weird Tales.

    Reception

    As L Sprague de Camp noted, the action sections of 'Innsmouth' are a departure for Lovecraft; the story's tense and memorable siege scene within the titular town's hotel reveals a flair in execution on a par with some of the most compelling chapters of R L Stevenson's 'Kidnapped'. August Derleth called The Shadow over Innsmouth "a dark, brooding story, typical of Lovecraft at his best." Robert Weinberg praised it as "a well-written story".

    Shadows over Innsmouth

    The Shadow over Innsmouth was republished in a 1994 anthology with stories by other authors based on Innsmouth and the Old Ones in Shadows over Innsmouth. The collection was edited by Stephen Jones, and included contributions by Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, David Sutton, Kim Newman (both as himself and Jack Yeovil), and other authors.

    Comics

  • Alberto Breccia adapted the story in 1973.
  • Ron Marz adapted the story for Dynamite Entertainment in 2014.
  • Several plot elements from "Shadow over Innsmouth" appear in two comics of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, namely in the Mirage comic "Men of Shadow" (TMNT Vol.1 #29) and the Archie comic "In the Dark" (TMNT Adventures #27).
  • Film and television

  • Colombian writer Andres Caicedo adapted The Shadow over Innsmouth into a screenplay in 1973. He travelled to Hollywood in 1975 to sell it to Roger Corman, alongside his adaptation of Clark Ashton Smith's The Nameless Offspring, but failed in his purpose. Neither of the screenplays were shot and remain as part of the Andres Caicedo Collection in the Luis Angel Arango Library in Bogota.
  • Chiaki J. Konaka adapted The Shadow over Innsmouth for Japanese television as Insmus wo Oou Kage in 1992.
  • The Shadow over Innsmouth forms the principal storyline in Stuart Gordon's 2001 film Dagon. Full Moon Entertainment was going to release Gordon's original adaptation (under the original novella's title) in 1991, using Bernie Wrightson's character designs, but the project was unrealized. Dagon uses some of Wrightson's designs from that project.
  • The 2007 film Cthulhu is loosely based on The Shadow over Innsmouth.
  • The 2014 short film Escape from Midwich Valley and the 2015 short film Innsmouth are also based upon The Shadow over Innsmouth.
  • The 2005 episode of The Mighty Boosh, "The Legend of Old Gregg", appears to draw inspiration from the story, including a town with strange residents surrounded by mystery, an elderly fisherman who tells the main characters the history of the town and Old Gregg himself, who is a human fish hybrid.
  • In late 2015 the production and eventual publication of a film named The Shadow over Innsmouth was announced on the website The Lovecraft Ezine. The film project, cited to be a very faithful adaptation of the novella, was directed by Bryan Moore, who worked on a previous cinematic conversion of the Lovecraft short story "Cool Air".
  • Video games

    "Shadow of the Comet" - Infogrames

    Innsmouth no Yakata (インスマウスの館, lit. "The Mansion of Innsmouth") was a 1995 3D first-person shooter video game for the Virtual Boy, released in Japan based on Chiaki J. Konaka's 1992 television series Insmus wo Oou Kage. It featured a branching level structure and four possible endings.

    In the 2005 first-person action-adventure video game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth the town of Innsmouth is the backdrop, the opening plot of which follows the second, third and fourth chapters of the novella with a great degree of accuracy (with a different protagonist). Dark Corners of the Earth was supposed to be followed by a sequel set in the 2000s, titled Call of Cthulhu: Destiny's End, now cancelled.

    Indie game Chronicle of Innsmouth (production started in 2015) is directly based on the plot of Shadow over Innsmouth.

    In the fictional universe of the 2013 fighting game Skullgirls, there's a neighborhood in the game's world known as "Little Innsmouth", which is inhabited by fish-like humanoids, and which also serves as the stage for Ms. Fortune, on the game's characters.

    A hamlet inhabited by gruesome fishermen in Bloodborne (2015) allegedly draw its inspiration from the accursed fishing village in The Shadow over Innsmouth. The game also features several deities which are referred to as "Great Ones".

    It is also under speculation that the "Far Harbor" expansion of the 2015 multi-platform game "Fallout 4" draws inspiration from the Lovecraft universe and particularly Shadow over Innsmouth.

    The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a quest named "A shadow over Hackdirt" .The quest follows roughly the same plot as the novel. E.g the player goes to the small mysterious town and finds out the townspeople are a part of a cult who worship beings who live under ground, the townspeople call these beings "The Deep Ones".

    The online video game "The Secret World" features a town called Kingsmouth in which many supernatural events occur. Additionally, the Innsmouth Academy is a part of the Solomon Island zone in which Kingsmouth may be found. The Secret World borrows heavily from Lovecraftian mythos as well as many other continuities.

    Card games

    Magic the Gathering's "Innistrad" block and its follow up, "Shadows over Innistrad", contain minor references to The Shadow over Innsmouth. Lore wise, "Shadows over Innistrad"'s story tells of the planeswalker Jace Beleren uncovering the source of madness that has been affecting the residents of Innistrad and its angelic host that protect the plane from monsters. The source of Innistrad's madness is revealed to be an ancient being called Emrakul who escaped from the plane Zendikar and arrived on Innistrad (due to the machinations of the vengeful Kor planeswalker Nahiri who harbored a grudge against the vampire Sorin Markov), turning the inhabitants into mutated monstrosities. The aforementioned "Zendikar" set contains a race of ancient beings called Eldrazi, who draw heavy influences from Lovecraft.

    Board games

    The board game Mansions of Madness Second Edition utilizes the story of The Shadow Over Innsmouth as one the scenario's players can choose from. Players begin the scenario in a hotel room in a rundown seaport town and take turns trying to uncover the mystery of what happened in Innsmouth before they find themselves stranded in a town flooded with supernatural problems. The companion app for the board game includes quotes from Lovecraft's original work and there are several miniature figures referred to as Deep Ones.

    Radio play

    The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society produced Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Shadow over Innsmouth, a Dark Adventure Radio Theatre adaptation of the story. In January 2012, the Cape Cod based Provincetown Theater announced a reading of a full-length play of the story, entitled HP Lovecraft's The Shadow over Innsmouth, adapted for the stage by Bragan Thomas.

    Parody

    The short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" (Smoke and Mirrors, 1998) by Neil Gaiman contains many similarities to "The Shadow over Innsmouth": a student visits the coastal town of Innsmouth (in England rather than New England), he gets to talking to two drunks (parodies of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore), he sees horrors in the water, and he passes out.

    References

    The Shadow over Innsmouth Wikipedia