The Colour Out Of Space Lovecraft Summary

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Introduction In “The Colour Out of Space” by H.P. Lovecraft, the characters- much like frogs in gradually heating water- are caught unawares when the mundane slowly transforms into the macabre. It took a long time, months in fact, for things to go awry after the initial meteor strike, plants grew phenomenally and animals matured to immense sizes before both perished at the hands an unseen illness. Shortly after this the humans (the Gardeners) who lived closest to the crater suffered adverse effects from the extraterrestrial rock, these effects being insanity coupled with what at first could be brushed off as hallucinations of strange creatures within their well and, in later instances, death either by the same fate as their animals or at the …show more content…

It is at the point that the people began to suffer similar adverse effects as their animals. The first one to show noticeable signs of infection is Mrs. Gardner but “Nahum did not send her to the country asylum… Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and [her son] Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic” (Lovecraft, 1927, p. 8). Putting her in the attic works for a while but soon she “had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the boys were in a constant state of nervous tension” (Lovecraft, 1927, p. 9). Nerves become frayed as her screaming goes on for days with no end in sight. Soon her son begins to suffer from the same fate. “Thaddeus went mad in September after a visit to the well… Two in one family was pretty bad, but Nahum was very brave about it. He let the boy run about for a week until he began stumbling and hurting himself, and then he shut him in an attic room across the hall from his mother's” (Lovecraft, 1927, p. 9). With nowhere to go and nowhere to send his poor wife and son, Nahum is trapped in that wretched house with their screams and his own mounting

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