The Outsider is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft and published in Weird Tales magazine in 1926. The story revolves around a nameless protagonist who has lived alone in a crumbling castle for as long as he can remember. He has no memory of who he is, how he came to live here, or of ever meeting anyone else. The entirety of his knowledge of the world outside comes from books he's found lying around the castle. One day he decides he's had enough of the isolation and tries to escape. One of Lovecraft's most famous stories, it has also become a major example of It Was His Sled.
Stuart Gordon, best known for his other Lovecraft adaptations Re-Animator and From Beyond, directed a film loosely inspired by the story in 1995 called Castle Freak. See that page for tropes relating specifically to the movie. Not to be confused with the 2018 novel by one of Lovecraft's biggest fans.
This short story provides examples of:
- The All-Concealing "I": Pretty much one of the defining examples in horror fiction with the first person narrator eventually being revealed as some kind of undead creature.
- Bittersweet Ending: Bordering on Downer Ending. The narrator is forever separated from the living world, with the sun and sky he yearned of for so long now just being a reminder of what he's lost. The only upside is that he now knows the truth, and he's found something resembling companionship among other undead ghouls such as himself, even if it's just a pale shadow of what he really wants.
- Dead All Along: Well, undead, in the narrator's case.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The very final line reveals that what the protagonist saw was a reflection and thus recontextualizes all the stories earlier parts with the knowledge that he was an undead.
- Ghost Amnesia: The real reason for why the narrator can't remember his past, he's long dead, and even the living world only offers a faint sense of deja vu.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: One of the protagonist's primary motivations is preventing this.
- First Time in the Sun: The Narrator desperately wants to see the sun and the moon, which he's only ever read about in books, because the forest outside the castle completely blocks off the sky. He finally gets his wish when he climbs the highest tower in the castle, eventually reaching a gate leading outside, and finds himself looking at the full moon. It's just as glorious as he had hoped... except the gate isn't a window to the tower, it's the door to a crypt in a cemetary...
- No Name Given: We never learn the protagonist's name. This is only natural, as the story is narrated from his perspective and he himself doesn't know his name.
- Tomato in the Mirror: After escaping from his castle, the narrator comes across a party at a different castle, one he finds "maddeningly familiar". Upon entering, he is surprised when all the guests start shrieking in terror and flee from the room as he enters it. He then sees a horrifying, decaying, undead humanoid figure standing in what he thinks is a doorway and realizes that must be what scared everyone off. In his fright, he loses his balance and stumbles toward the creature, but only touches a mirror.
- The Unreveal: Much of the protagonist's backstory remains a mystery. Who is he? How did he wind up in the castle and where is everybody else? How did he die and how did he come back?
- Wham Line: "I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass."
