Line #12 Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu


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6	->''"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either {{go mad from the revelation}} or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."''
7	-->-- Opening lines
8
9	"[[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales/Volume_11/Issue_2/The_Call_of_Cthulhu The Call of Cthulhu]]" is arguably the most famous short story by horror writer Creator/HPLovecraft. It is also the first story to refer to and the only piece written by Lovecraft himself to actually feature the famous EldritchAbomination who would later name the Franchise/CthulhuMythos as other writers took over. Written in the summer of 1926, the story was first published in the February 1928 issue of the ''Magazine/WeirdTales'' magazine.
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11	The story is presented as a manuscript found among the belongings of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, which is used as a narrative which joins together three short stories, each bigger, darker, bleaker, and more memorable than the last. The first part begins with a document found by Thurston among the belongings of his late granduncle Professor Angell, which describes a series of conversations with a young {{sculptor\|s}} named Henry Wilcox, who has been experiencing a series of strange dreams on March 1st 1925, which have inspired him to carve a disturbing bas-relief. Over the course of several weeks, Wilcox and Angell meet, and the former describes his bizarre dreams in which he [[EldritchLocation finds himself exploring the ruins of an unknown forgotten city]]. The next part reveals why this is of interest to Professor Angell.
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13	The second story tells of John Raymond Legrasse, a police officer in New Orleans whose investigation of a series of disappearances leads him to a rather sinister cult worshiping a strange idol. The cultists are immediately arrested and taken to prison and the idol is confiscated. Legrasse then shares the idol among various archaeologists, including Professor Angell, hoping to gain answers as to its nature. Eventually through one man's testimony and the questioning of some of the cultists, Legrasse learns that the idol is "Great Cthulhu", a being worshiped by this cult which has presumably lived for centuries.
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15	In the third and final part of the story, Thurston encounters a newspaper clipping describing the rescue of the lone survivor of the crew of ''Emma'', a Norwegian sailor named Gustaf Johansen. Thurston is eventually able to recover a journal Johansen wrote, which tells the tale of how he and his crew commandeered the yacht ''Alert'' from a particularly sinister crew of men (implied to be cultists), and their arrival at the sunken city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu himself is nearly released by mistake.
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17	[[Film/TheCallOfCthulhu Adapted in 2005 into a film]] by the Creator/HPLovecraftHistoricalSociety. There are also at least two radio adaptations; one by the Atlanta Radio Theater Company, and the other by Radio/DarkAdventureRadioTheatre. A modern SettingUpdate from BBC Radio 4 is scheduled to appear as the fifth installment of the ''[[Radio/PleasantGreenUniverse Lovecraft Investigations]]'' series. Dramatically read by [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwgXhUWt3Q Chilling Tales for Dark Nights]].
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19	Not to be confused with the roleplaying game ''TabletopGame/CallOfCthulhu'', or the Website/YouTube series ''WebVideo/CallsForCthulhu''. Or the Music/{{Metallica}} song "Call of Ktulu" on ''Music/RideTheLightning''.
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21
22	!!"The Call of Cthulhu" is the {{Trope Namer\|s}} for:
23	* CosmicHorrorStory
24	* DidYouJustIndexCthulhu
25	* GoMadFromTheRevelation
26	----
27	!!"The Tropes of Cthulhu":
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29	%%* AboveGoodAndEvil: Cthulhu's cultists seem to believe they will become this if the Great Old Ones return.
30	* ActionSurvivor: Johansen manages to escape from R'lyeh while his crewmates are unable to navigate its geometry and fall to their deaths, gets back to his ship, and [[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu rams Cthulhu himself]] ''[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu head on]].''
31	* AdaptationDistillation: [[WordOfGod Lovecraft himself]] [[http://lovecraftzine.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/hpl-cthulhu.jpg sketched Cthulhu in 1937]] with at least [[ExtraEyes six eyes]]. Nearly all illustrators have given it two eyes, [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman to allow facial expressions readable by humans]]. So we have [[http://matthershberger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cthulhu_rising_by_somniturne1.jpg aggressive Cthulhus]], [[http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120716045812/deadliestfiction/images/2/24/Cthulhu-rlyeh-rising.jpg furious Cthulhus]], [[http://api.ning.com/files/xXHgLq7d6QiToU9u3T0T09vMs2-nBEYXXTGkRKtjNpA0iJXxIoH*tpTktfDbqx5EqtoPBGL9xrLe9Z95OfGuYDLXFYjeWs/MichaelDashawCthulhuBoss.jpg comic Cthulhus]], but in the author's view the entity had no understandable expression and [[EldritchAbomination it's completely alien]].
32	* AlienGeometries: R'lyeh is said to defy any known dimensions, to the point where the sailors can't tell if a door is supposed to be a conventional door that opens horizontally, or a trapdoor that opens vertically, and a sailor somehow falls into an angle that should not have been there, and which appears to be acute but acts as if it was obtuse.
33	* AnachronicOrder: The three stories are presented in the order which Thurston finds them. Chronologically "The Tale of Inspector Legrasse" would actually come first, while "The Horror in Clay" and "The Madness From the Sea" happen around the same time.
34	* ApocalypticLog: The story itself could count, since it is implied that everything that the narrator is caught up in [[spoiler:leads to his murder by cultists]]. Gustaf Johansen's journal also comes close.
35	* ApocalypseCult: The cultists apparently want to raise Cthulhu from the depths.
36	* BadassNormal: Johanssen, the only survivor of the ''Emma'', the whaling crew that stumbled across R'lyeh and met a very horrible end. Not only was Johanssen able to retain his sanity despite facing Cthulhu himself, he managed to ''[[DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu ram him with a ship]]'', which disrupted him long enough for the ship to get away. He is possibly the only human to have ever encountered the dread Cthulhu and lived to tell the tale.
37	* BizarreAlienBiology: Cthulhu is said and hinted repeatedly to lack a skeleton. It's described as slimy, flabby, jelly, bursting like a balloon, dribbling like a cloven sunfish. No resistance from a skull, a spine or any other bony structure. A mountain-sized creature can't keep shape in air without a skeleton - unless it's made from something which is not terrestrial matter at all. This is just how the cultists describe the Great Old Ones: made from something which is not flesh and not quite matter either.
38	* BlackSpeech: The language spoken by the cult members, which are merely adaptations of a StarfishLanguage into the human vocal apparatus. A repeated phrase among them is ''"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn".'' [[note]] In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.[[/note]]
39	* BreakoutCharacter: Considering the title character of the story had ''an entire mythos'' named after him.
40	* BreakoutVillain: Cthulhu is the breakout character and a villain.
41	* BrokeYourArmPunchingOutCthulhu: [[spoiler:Gustaf Johansen manages to survive against all odds and presumably stops Cthulhu from bringing about the end of the world. However, Cthulhu is still very much alive, and Johansen dies not long after the experience and it is suggested that he was murdered by the same cultists that killed Professor Angell]].
42	* CosmicHorrorStory: One of the original examples and possible Trope Namer.
43	-->Was I tottering on the brink of cosmic horrors beyond man's power to bear?
44	* {{Cult}}: The second part of the story involves a group of police officers arresting a cult of Cthulhu while investigating a series of disappearances—[[spoiler: victims of said cult, sacrifices made for Cthulhu]]. It is strongly suggested that they are behind the murders of [[spoiler:Professor Angell, Johansen, and possibly the narrator]].
45	* {{Determinator}}: Inspector Legrasse, otherwise described in the story as a very mundane man and police officer, is so impressed with the cult's monstrosity that he invests a lot of time, energy and money to discover what lies behind it.
46	* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: Johansen literally punches out Cthulhu [[RammingAlwaysWorks with his ship]], preventing it from ending the world [[spoiler:though at the cost of his sanity and soon after his life]].
47	* DirectLineToTheAuthor: The introduction informs us that "Francis Wayland Thurston of Boston" is in fact the ''late'' Francis Wayland Thurston, and his account closes with the ominous suggestion that anyone who reads these documents is likely to end up dead. He obtained his information from his great-uncle, George Gammell Angell. Angell was reporting based on information from Inspector John Raymond Legrasse. The inspector narrates the account of a sailor and cultist named Castro. Castro claims to have spoken with immortal cult members in China, who, arguably, received their knowledge from ''Cthulhu himself''.
48	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The narrator finally understands what is really going on, but he also realizes that both the cult and Cthulhu himself are still alive, and realizes to his horror that he may die very soon]].
49	* DreamingOfThingsToCome: Sort of. Wilcox is influenced to create a disturbing bas-relief by a series of weird dreams. The dreams themselves don't actually predict the future, but the impact they have helps to foretell the inevitable rise of Cthulhu.
50	* EldritchAbomination: Cthulhu himself. A, if not the, TropeCodifier. The story also references Creator/ArthurMachen, whose stories of eldritch abominations inspired Lovecraft in turn.
51	* EldritchLocation: R'lyeh.
52	* EvenEvilHasStandards: Played with. The Cthulhu Cult is described as "infinitely more diabolic than the blackest of the African voodoo circles".
53	* ExtraEyes: Lovecraft originally sketched Cthulhu with six eyes, but most illustrations and adaptations give him two eyes to allow for better depiction of his moods. Which, as noted above, goes completely against Lovecraft's intent, as Cthulu (and the Old Ones) motivations are ''meant to be'' completely alien and unknowable
54	* ForegoneConclusion: When we hear the story of Johansen, we already know from the newspaper clipping found earlier that none of the other crew members will make it, though one other man survives the actual ordeal only to die of fear afterwards.
55	* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: The final lines of the story involve Thurston realizing [[spoiler: that he knows too much, and that it is very likely that he will meet his end by cultists]]. Then suddenly you realize [[spoiler: ''you'' now know too much]].
56	* GoMadFromTheRevelation: The Trope Namer. Two of Johansen's men (Rodriguez and Hawkins) outright die from seeing Cthulhu. Another one, William Briden goes insane and dies soon afterwards.
57	* HeKnowsTooMuch: Thurston notices that the cult apparently makes a habit of murdering those who get too close to the truth about Cthulhu, and he expresses fear that it might also happen to him too. The fact that he is listed as dead at the beginning of the story implies that it indeed did.
58	* HumansAreCthulhu: According to Old Castro, by the time the Great Old Ones awoke human beings would be very much like them, "free and wild and beyond good and evil", to the point that they'd welcome them as kindred spirits.
59	* HumanSacrifice: [[spoiler:The cultists in Louisiana kidnapped multiple women and children to sacrifice them to Cthulhu]]. Though the cultists swear ''something else'' was doing the actual sacrificing.
60	* IslandOfMystery: The island that pops up with R'lyeh on it.
61	* KarmaHoudini: While a number of its members were killed or arrested by Legrasse, the cult is still at large. It's also mentioned that the coroners examining both Professor Angell and [[spoiler: Gustaf Johansen]] couldn't determine a cause of death, removing any chance of convicting those responsible. Cthulhu himself is only temporarily stopped, and it is said to be inevitable that he will one day rise again.
62	* OctopoidAliens: Cthulhu has a face that resembles an octopus, albeit crossed with a human skull.
63	* PosthumousCharacter: Professor Angell, the narrator's uncle.
64	** The narrator himself, given the manuscript was simply found among his belongings.
65	** [[spoiler: Gustaf Johansen]] also turns out to be an example.
66	* RammingAlwaysWorks: Temporarily, at least. [[spoiler: Cthulhu regenerates seconds after being rammed by the ship, but he's definitely knocked out for the moment.]]
67	* RayOfHopeEnding: Cthulhu's eventual reawakening is inevitable, but Johansen survived long enough to get his story into circulation. Now humanity knows that [[spoiler: [[NotSoInvincibleAfterAll Cthulhu can be defeated.]] Perhaps not permanently, and with a dear cost, but if we've done it once we can do it again.]]
68	* ReligionOfEvil: The Cthulhu Cult is built up as such.
69	* SealedEvilInACan: Cthulhu.
70	* SharedDream: People all over the world have horrifying nightmares and visions of the sunken city of R'yleh. Artists and poets had the clearest and most terrifying visions while average working-class folk experienced none at all. Scientists suffered far more minor visions, but these dreams were enough to spark cults and mania across the globe.
71	* ShoutOut:
72	** Johansen's hair [[LockedIntoStrangeness turns white]] after a terrifying incident at sea, much like the protagonist in Creator/EdgarAllanPoe's "A Descent into the Maelström".
73	** Johansen's ApocalypticLog makes a clearer one, comparing Cthulhu to [[Literature/TheOdyssey Polyphemus cursing the escaping Odysseus]]. ''Then'' [[OhCrap it turns out Cthulhu can, in fact, swim]].
74	** The story also makes a reference to Creator/ArthurMachen, whose stories of eldritch horror inspired Lovecraft.
75	* SicklyGreenGlow: From Wilcox's dream, green ooze of horror:
76	--> great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror.
77	* SoleSurvivor: It's stated early on that Johansen was the only surviving crew member when the ''Alert'' was found. [[spoiler: Not that it lasted long]].
78	* SurprisinglySuddenDeath: When the sailors accidentally release Cthulhu himself. Two die of fright on the spot, three more are "swept up by the flabby claws before anyone turned", and another is swallowed up by "by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse".
79	* TheTamingOfTheGrue: You can buy Cthulhu plush toys, and there's a [[spoiler:meme]] with a Cthulhu carrying a bouquet of roses captioned "Cthulhu needs love too!" The video [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kQuMVffbWA Adventures of Li'l Cthulhu,]] the games "The Stars Are Right", "Munchkin Cthulhu", etc. [[PlayedForLaughs plays being driven insane by the touch of the Elder Things]] [[DudeNotFunny for laughs.]] There is now an entire line (several, in fact) of ''children's books'' introducing the unspeakably eldritch horrors. People are doing Creator/DrSeuss versions of HPL's most famous stories.
80	* ToCreateAPlaygroundForEvil: The cults goals are described thusly:
81	-->Then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.
82	* TheUnpronounceable: "Cthulhu" is an approximation of an alien language, that humanity lacks the necessary body components to pronounce.
83	* WouldHurtAChild: The cultists in Louisiana [[spoiler:sacrificed the children they kidnapped]].
84	* TheXOfY: One of the most famous examples; ''Call'' of ''Cthulhu''.
85	* YouAreInCommandNow: After Captain Collins and First Mate Green, die fighting the crew of the ''Alert,'' Johansen is promoted to leader.
86
87	!!The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company's adaptation adds examples of:
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89	* ArtisticLicenseHistory: Captain Collins claims that he fought the Kriegsmarine in the Great War. Assuming that he was referring to the First World War, this would be inaccurate since the Kriegsmarine (the navy of Nazi Germany) wouldn't exist until 1935, just a few years before the ''Second'' World War. Instead, he would have been fighting the Imperial German Navy.However the navy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was officially called the Kaiserliche und königliche Kriegsmarine, Literally the War-Navy of the Emperor and King.
90	* CompositeCharacter: Thurston plays the role in the story originally played by Gustaf Johansen.
91	* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: First Mate Green survives the battle against the ''Alert'', and is the one placed in charge of the crew when his captain is dead. He is then killed by Cthulhu later.
92	* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler:Castro]].
93	* GenderFlip: Castro. The nickname is changed from "Old Castro" to "Mother Castro".
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95	!!The ''Dark Adventure Radio Theatre'' adaptation adds examples of
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97	* AdaptationExpansion: This version adds a FramingDevice about two police officers who investigate Thurston's death.

Context Literature / TheCallOfCthulhu