Lovecraft s Themes Lovecraft s stories are based on a set of supernatural, pre-human and extraterrestrial elements. He wrote about gothic architecture, dark foggy forests and old houses with rats scurrying1 in the walls and cities of alien creatures from the past, living on vast, subterranean plains. In Supernatural Horror in Literature (1925-26), he himself explains the main theme of weird2 tales: The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind3 fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear fear of the unknown. The fear he deals with4 is cosmic: he transmits the sensation that human life is only a thin shell5 in an immense and unknown reality. He was from rural New England and his stories are usually set in the environment he knew because he said that the unknown is closer to ordinary life than we imagine. People believed completely in the positive power and possibilities of Science at the beginning of the 20th century, but Lovecraft showed its dangers and its limits. In a letter to James F. Morton in 1923, Lovecraft talks about how Einstein s theory of relativity puts the world into chaos and makes the cosmos a joke6. In a 1929 letter to Woodburn Harris, he writes that technological comforts risk the collapse of Science. Consequently, the origin of fear in Lovecraft s stories is the unknown, a forbidden7 remote knowledge which man cannot explain. The unknown sometimes involves a non-human presence, or inhuman entities, semi-gelatinous substances, totally different from the classic blood, bones, or corpses of contemporary horror stories and more similar to the creatures described in sciencefiction novels. These non-human creatures need human followers to make contact with men. Only in this way can the protagonists win temporary victories and go on with the story. Another important theme in Lovecraft s literature is the threat8 to our civilization. In his stories, human beings must sometimes fight against more barbaric, primitive elements; civilized cultures are ruined by malevolent inhuman forces; lonely, highly educated protagonists gradually become corrupted by an evil influence. In this last case, the curse9, which usually falls on the main 1. scurrying: running. 2. weird: very strange and unusual, unexpected. 3. mankind: humanity. 4. deals with: speaks about. 5. shell: the hard external covering of something, especially nuts, eggs and some animals. 6. joke: funny story. 7. forbidden: prohibited. 8. threat: menace. 9. curse: a cause of trouble unhappiness, condemnation. 6 and