Thalassophobia and the construction of evil in the Lovecraftian Lore

Abstract

Fear is a powerful emotion that may serve as inspiration when developing narratives of Horror Fiction. By acknowledging that, the main objective of the present article is to discuss how thalassophobia — the fear of the sea — may have served as inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft’s creation of evil in his narratives. The research was conducted by analyzing two of his most famous tales: The Call of Cthulhu (1928) and The Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936), short stories that used the sea as a background for the plot. Thus, some works from researchers such as J. S. Mackley (2013) and his telling of the Cthulhu Mythos’s representation as it is today have been taken into consideration, as well as the ones by John Engle (2014) and Joyce C. Oates (1998). Therefore, it may be assumed that some of his characters, such as the creatures Cthulhu and the Deep Ones, are placed in the story to replicate the feelings of fear brought by thalassophobia. Finally, we discussed how Weird Fiction and Cosmic Horror play an important role in Lovecraft’s way of creating fiction. Through these stories, it has been observed that several correlations are present when it comes to the Lovecraftian Lore and the fear of the sea.