Thirty-One Days of Lovecraft: Day Six

I thought, given that the stories are getting longer that I might do a post on a single story. So, today, I'm looking at Herbert West - Reanimator after the jump.


Herbert West - Reanimator, which sounds more like a person running really bad ads on basic cable than a horror story, is kind of hard to get into. It has some classic Lovecraft twists and some scary images. But, it was serialized over six issues of Home Brew (which is honestly a great name for an amateur writing magazine). As a result, the story has a lot of repetitive information which gets annoying. This story probably works better if you don't read it in one go. Even then, you'll probably remember how the narrator knows Herbert West, what Herbert West's deal is, and that there's an undead body trail, so...

Herbert West is basically Victor Frankenstein who just won't stop. West is fixated on bringing people back to life. He gets "fresh" bodies through some unsavory means, and actually sees some success. Not Victor Frankenstein level of success, but success nonetheless. But, unlike Victor who is repulsed by his creation, West is like, "Cool, let's keep this going."

One of West's detractors is the dean of the medical school of Miskatonic University, which given it's blue link on Wikipedia indicates that it will factor into Lovecraft's lore later on. When the Dean succumbs to typhoid, West tries to reanimate him, because why not do that to the person who explicitly told you no over the years. West succeeds, but the dean goes on a murderous rampage and is eventually put in an asylum.

At this point, West has brought two people back, but they aren't human. No matter! Let's go! And hey, we might as well put this section in right here:

Is that racist?: Herbert West doesn't seem to discriminate against people, as long as they're dead. He even moves to a town and seemingly appreciates that the people there can speak multiple languages. (I read these people to be immigrants, though I could be mistaken). However, the third person featured in the Herbert West Comeback Tour is an African-American boxer. And instead of just leaving the description at that, we get nonsense like...

"He was a loathsome, gorilla-like thing, with abnormally long arms which I could not help calling fore legs, and a face that conjured up thoughts of unspeakable Congo secrets..." And then, keeping in mind this is talking about a dead person who was in an illegal boxing match, "The body must have looked even worse in life - but the world holds many ugly things."

Honestly, I was half expecting them to not take the body because Herbert West saw this man as less than human. But, why do that when you can have the serum work, see similar results with a more violent person, and then have the patient murder a child and be shot six times by Herbert West?

Jesus, Lovecraft.

On to the story...

Part Four sees West perfect an embalming solution that preserves the body. When the man is reanimated, it tells the narrator that West murdered him. Undeterred, the narrator joins World War One along with West mostly to get to all them dead bodies. This leads to the scariest moment of the book.

A Canadian pilot is brought in who is nearly decapitated. Wanting to test some theories about how the mind works, West completes the decapitation and places the head in a jar. Then, they inject the reanimation serum. It works, and the body, the narrator notes, is mimicking the actions of a person trying to get out of a falling plane. And that's when he hears, "Jump, Ronald, for God's sake, jump!" The voice came from the head in the jar.

All of this ends with the zombies that West has made over the years teaming up, led by the headless Canadian pilot, literally tearing West to pieces and incinerating his body. The narrator is questioned, but eventually the police decide he wasn't involved.

Madness Count: The narrator asks at the end of the story if he was mad, and thinks he might be. Going to go ahead and call Herbert West mad because as far as I can tell, all he ever accomplishes is creating overly violent zombies and he's like, "Yeah, going to keep at this."

Other Musings: Apparently,  S.T. Joshi called this Lovecraft's poorest work. I think one of the main reasons is because this is clearly a parody of Frankenstein. While I don't think we've entered the Cthullu Mythos yet, Lovecraft is already setting the foundation for his own universe. The lack of originality in this piece is disappointing.

Side note: I think I want to interview Joshi. Feel like that would be pretty cool.

I really do like this from the opening paragraph: "Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities."

Up next: Hypnos, What the Moon Brings, Azaroth, The Hound, The Lurking Fear, The Rats in the Walls.