When I was in six year of school, I played a game that is called Castlevania. Castlevania is a game that practically you have to defeat Dracula and his assistants. This game has a very gothic setting. The music commonly gives the listener an eerie mood: gothic instruments like harpsichords and violins are commonly used. The game’s plot is a fight between the bad and the evil, and you can use Holy weapons in order to extermine the hellish creatures. The main characters travel in a variety of places featured in Gothic Literature. For example, graveyards, cathedrals, laboratories, or swamps. This game was my first introduction to Gothic culture. In one of its games that is called Castlevania: Portrait of Ruins, one of the major bosses is called Dagon. My review for this blog will be Dagon, created by H.P. Lovecraft. I chose this story as a homeage for my school days in which my major worry was to kill this sea-creature. The story talks about a morphine-addict who is writing about his experiencie in the World War I. The vessel where he was in the ocean was trapped by German forces. He escaped through a little boat to the open Pacific Ocean. Then, he enters a “black mire”, or a swampy place. In this place, he landed his boat for three days. He investigated the place because he wanted to know where the ocean was. At the end of this sea-place, he found a monolith, or a massive rock. The monolith had some indistinguishable hieroglyphs with many sea-creatures. The narrator began to climb a hill and he realized that a monster was ascending from the waters. He escaped with a fear that he have never experienced in his life to his boat. Some days later, he woke up from a hospital in San Francisco. This encounter mad him a mad man, and he says that the end of mankind is close. He listens to a noise in his bedroom’s window, and he thinks it is the beast who is going to kill him. Later, it is implicit that he commits suicide. The suspense that the author gave to this story was phenomenal. The setting is unusual for gothic and mystery novels: The Open Sea. We know by the setting that something odd is going around. For example, the “black mire” description alludes that I liked this story for many factors. The first factor is the inclusion of mythological beasts. In this case, the narrator researched about the fish monster that he encountered. The beast is called Dagon, and it is a Babylonic “fertility god who evolved into a major Northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain (as symbol of fertility) and fish and/or fishing (as symbol of multiplying).” With this Wikipedia definition, now we know why there were a lot of fish carcasses in the “island.” We can find other allusions to mythological works. For example, “Paradise Lost,” that is based on the Christian myth of Adan and Eve. Another example of mythological works in this gothic short story is the Greek figure of Polyphemus, a gigant who had only one eye. All of these mythological figures may represent the theme that people still fear gods. Dagon is the classical representation of the “merman,” or the monster who is half-human, half fish. This merman motif can be found in many stories in Literature and Art. One of the most common mermen is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a classic horror monster of cinema.
I am a fan of J.J. Abrahams, the north American science fiction film director and his Bad Robot film company. Dagon reminds me of the monster and the several huge spider-like beings in "Cloverfield" movie. It cannot be compared with Godzilla. Cloverfield is far better. One character in the movie says that those monsters that are destroying New York might have come from an "Oceanic gap." Therefore, it makes a reference to an entire theory about unknown oceanic ecosystems separated from the ones that we have probably seem. Therefore, it arises the possibility of monsters that could emerge form the underworld. One might also think of the theory of the “Hollow Earth,” or the city of Atlantis. There are even some scientists that have said there is more life in the sea than in the whole universe. I highly recommend “Cloverfield” and “10 Cloverfield Lane,” BUT it would be better with high audio quality (volume.)
This short story calls my attention because of the implementation of mythologic creatures and the unusual setting as Eduardo said. The character began with a quest for survival, and ends trying to flee horrors he cannot escape. Lovecraft also makes fantasy a central aspect of his material. One might say he even moves beyond fantasy and into myth, so it is interesting to see how a short story that has as central topic the mythology can be part of the gothic literary genre.
When I was in six year of school, I played a game that is called Castlevania. Castlevania is a game that practically you have to defeat Dracula and his assistants. This game has a very gothic setting. The music commonly gives the listener an eerie mood: gothic instruments like harpsichords and violins are commonly used. The game’s plot is a fight between the bad and the evil, and you can use Holy weapons in order to extermine the hellish creatures. The main characters travel in a variety of places featured in Gothic Literature. For example, graveyards, cathedrals, laboratories, or swamps. This game was my first introduction to Gothic culture. In one of its games that is called Castlevania: Portrait of Ruins, one of the major bosses is called Dagon. My review for this blog will be Dagon, created by H.P. Lovecraft. I chose this story as a homeage for my school days in which my major worry was to kill this sea-creature.
ReplyDeleteThe story talks about a morphine-addict who is writing about his experiencie in the World War I. The vessel where he was in the ocean was trapped by German forces. He escaped through a little boat to the open Pacific Ocean. Then, he enters a “black mire”, or a swampy place. In this place, he landed his boat for three days. He investigated the place because he wanted to know where the ocean was. At the end of this sea-place, he found a monolith, or a massive rock. The monolith had some indistinguishable hieroglyphs with many sea-creatures. The narrator began to climb a hill and he realized that a monster was ascending from the waters. He escaped with a fear that he have never experienced in his life to his boat. Some days later, he woke up from a hospital in San Francisco. This encounter mad him a mad man, and he says that the end of mankind is close. He listens to a noise in his bedroom’s window, and he thinks it is the beast who is going to kill him. Later, it is implicit that he commits suicide.
The suspense that the author gave to this story was phenomenal. The setting is unusual for gothic and mystery novels: The Open Sea. We know by the setting that something odd is going around. For example, the “black mire” description alludes that
I liked this story for many factors. The first factor is the inclusion of mythological beasts. In this case, the narrator researched about the fish monster that he encountered. The beast is called Dagon, and it is a Babylonic “fertility god who evolved into a major Northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain (as symbol of fertility) and fish and/or fishing (as symbol of multiplying).” With this Wikipedia definition, now we know why there were a lot of fish carcasses in the “island.” We can find other allusions to mythological works. For example, “Paradise Lost,” that is based on the Christian myth of Adan and Eve. Another example of mythological works in this gothic short story is the Greek figure of Polyphemus, a gigant who had only one eye. All of these mythological figures may represent the theme that people still fear gods.
Dagon is the classical representation of the “merman,” or the monster who is half-human, half fish. This merman motif can be found in many stories in Literature and Art. One of the most common mermen is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, a classic horror monster of cinema.
I am a fan of J.J. Abrahams, the north American science fiction film director and his Bad Robot film company. Dagon reminds me of the monster and the several huge spider-like beings in "Cloverfield" movie. It cannot be compared with Godzilla. Cloverfield is far better. One character in the movie says that those monsters that are destroying New York might have come from an "Oceanic gap." Therefore, it makes a reference to an entire theory about unknown oceanic ecosystems separated from the ones that we have probably seem. Therefore, it arises the possibility of monsters that could emerge form the underworld. One might also think of the theory of the “Hollow Earth,” or the city of Atlantis. There are even some scientists that have said there is more life in the sea than in the whole universe. I highly recommend “Cloverfield” and “10 Cloverfield Lane,” BUT it would be better with high audio quality (volume.)
ReplyDeleteThis short story calls my attention because of the implementation of mythologic creatures and the unusual setting as Eduardo said. The character began with a quest for survival, and ends trying to flee horrors he cannot escape. Lovecraft also makes fantasy a central aspect of his material. One might say he even moves beyond fantasy and into myth, so it is interesting to see how a short story that has as central topic the mythology can be part of the gothic literary genre.
ReplyDelete