“The Picture in the House” by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Hello! Today I want to tell you about another work by Howard Phillips Lovecraft, which I have recently read. This is The Picture in the House.

This story as well as “Dagon”, about which I told earlier, belongs to the genre of Lovecraft’s horror. This story is also classified as “Death stories”.

The main characters of the book are the old man and the narrator. Also the main character is Ebenezer Holt.

The story begins with a Manifesto in which Lovecraft describes an imaginary new England countryside that will become known as” Lovecraft’s Country”: in The Picture in the House , Lovecraft first set the fundamental standards for one of the most popular environments in fiction. In later works, Lovecraft will often use the environment from this paragraph. The writer relies on the description of his native region, and not Gothic, as is customary in horror stories.

The plot of the story is simple , but at the same time frighteningly exciting.

While riding on his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, a genealogist (The narrator) seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house. “Loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man,” speaking in “an extreme form of Yankee dialect” lives there. The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and old furniture. The old man is apparently harmless and ignorant, but shows a fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator that it made him hunger for “victuals I couldn’t raise nor buy”- human flesh. It is suggested that the old man in the house was murdering men who stumbled upon the shack to satisfy his “craving”, and that the old man extended his life through cannibalism. The narrator realizes the old man has been alive for over a century. The old man denies that he ever acted on his desire, but then a red drop of blood falls from the ceiling, clearly coming from the floor above, and splashes a page in the book. The narrator then looks up to see a spreading red stain on the ceiling; this belies the old man’s statement. At that moment, a bolt of lightning destroys the house, bringing oblivion to the narrator.

The plot develops slowly, but subtly, holds the attention and leads to an unexpected final. Story is strong psychologically. Despite the small number of characters and one location, the story is quite interesting, because Lovecraft had always been able to create a powerful horror story that evokes and holds the mood through a highly skilled use of language that focuses on the characters and locations of New England.

The old man’s dialect, the ending, which was also used by Edgar Allan Poe, mental training, new words, interesting reflections. This story is worth reading!

And of course, new words:

• dwelt — обитать
• merciful — милосердный
• time-battered edifice — потрепанное временем сооружение
• repellent — отталкивающий, пугающий
• hauntingly — навязчиво
• scruples — совесть
• trepidation — тревога, волнение, беспокойство
• hesitancy — нерешительность
• volubly — многословно