The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft

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Welcome to Echoes in the Dark, a podcast dedicated to the oral tradition of storytelling. If you're looking to enjoy more classic literature, struggle to find the time to read, hate reading, or just love listening to stories, then this podcast is for you. At the end of each story, I'll share my analysis on the story's deeper meanings. The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft is a short story that was originally published in 1926 in the pulp magazine Weird Tales. Lovecraft ushered in a new type of horror stories that were cosmic. However, this is a gothic tale. It is not going to be uh cosmic horror. The entire story is told in first person limited. If you want to follow along, you can get a copy on my website, betteressaywriting.com. The Outsider by HP Love. Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon odd watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic and vine encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me, to me, the days, the disappointed, the barren, the broken, and yet I am strangely content and cling desperately to those seer memories when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other. I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible, full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed almost hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere as of the piled up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief. Nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended save by a well nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall, stone by stone. I must have lived in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shriveled, and the king, like the castle. To me, there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strode some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated with these things with everyday events and thought them more natural than the colored pictures of living beings, which I found in many of the moldy books. From such books, I learned all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those years. Not even my own. For although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of, for there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little. Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark new trees, I would often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books, and would longingly picture myself amidst gray crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forest. Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle, the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding fear, so that I ran frantically back, least I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence. So, through endless twilights, I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then, in the shadowy solitude, my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands through the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might, since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish than to live without ever beholding day. In the dank twilight, I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached a level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds leaning upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock, black, ruined, and deserted and sinister with startled bats whose wings made no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress. For climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill, as of haunted and vernable mold, assailed me. I shivered as I wondered why I did not reach the light and would have looked down had I dared. I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me and vainly groped with one free hand for a window embracer that I might peer out and above and try to judge the height I had attained. All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless crawling up that concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the darkness, I raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable. Then came a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could give, till finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding, and I turned upward again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my fearful ascent. There was no light revealed above. And as my hands went higher, I knew that my climb was for the knots ended. Since the slab was the trapdoor of an aperture leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than the lower tower, no doubt the floor is some lofty and capacious observation chamber. I crawled through carefully and tried to prevent the heavy slab from falling back into place, but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted on the stone floor, I heard the eerie echoes of its fall, but hoped, when necessary, to pry it open again. Believing I was now at a progenus height, far above the accursed branches of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows that I might look for the first time upon the sky and the moon and stars of which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed, since all that I found were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size. More and more I reflected and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this high apartment, so many eons cut off from the castle below. Then, unexpectedly, my hands came upon a doorway where hung a portal of stone rough with strange chiseling. Trying it, I found it locked. But with a supreme burst of strength, I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward. As I did so, there came to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known, for shining tranquilly through an ornate grating of iron and down a short stone passageway of steps that ascended from the newly found doorway was the radiant full loom, which I had never before seen save in dreams and in vague visions I dared not call memories. Fancy now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door, but the sudden veiling of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the grating, which I tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which I had climbed. Then the moon came out. Most demonically of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in terror with what I now saw, with the bizarre marvels that sight implied. The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this. Instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on a level, through the grating, nothing less than the solid ground, decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns and overshadowed by an ancient stone church whose ruin spire gleamed spectrally in the moonlight. Half conscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light. And not even the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic, but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was or what I was or what my surroundings might be, though as I continued to stumble along, I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns and wandered through the open country, sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows, where only occasionally runes bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road. Once I swam across a swift river where crumbling, mossy masonry told of a bridge long vanished. Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my goal. A vulnerable ivy castle in a thickly wooded park. Maddenly familiar, yet full of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in and that some of the well-known towers were demolished, whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight were the open windows, grotesquely ablaze with light and sending forth sounds of the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these, I looked in and saw an oddly dressed company, indeed making merry and speaking brightly to one another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could guess only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections. Other were utterly alien. I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room, stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of the most terrifying demonstrations I have ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity, distorting every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat. Flight was universal, and in the clamor and panic, several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes with their hands and plunged blindly and awkwardly in their race to escape, overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls before they managed to reach one of the many doors. The cries were shocking. And as I stood in the brilliant apartment alone and daze, listening to their vanished echoes, I trembled at the thought of what might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection, the room seemed deserted, but when I moved toward one of the alcoves, I thought I detected a present there. A hint of motion beyond the golden arch doorway leaning to another, and then with the first and last sound I ever uttered, a ghastly elation that revolted me almost as pliantly as its noxious cause. I beheld in full frightful vividness, the inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had, by its simple appearance, changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives. I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation, the putrid dripping anelon of unwholesome revelation, the awful bearing of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world, or no longer of this world, yet to my horror I saw in its earthen away and bone revealing outlines, a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape, and in its moldy, disintegrating apparel and unspeakable quality that chilled me even more. I was almost paralyzed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort toward flight. A backward stummer which failed to break the spell in which the nameless, voiceless monster held me. My eyes, bewitched by the glassy orbs which stared loathsomely into them, refused to close. No, they were mercifully blurred and chewed the terrible object but indistinctly after the first shock. I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my nerves that my arm could not fully obey my will. The attempt, however, was enough to disturb my balance so that I had to stagger forward several steps to avoid falling. As I did so, I became suddenly and agonizingly aware of the nearest of the carry-on thing, whose hideous hollow breathing I had fancied I could hear. Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to throw out a hand to ward off the footed apparition which pressed so close when in one cataclysmic second of cosmic nightmarishness and hellish accident, my fingers touch the rotting, outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch. I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that writ the night wind shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a single and fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that second all that had been. But in the cosmos, there is balm as well as bitterness. And that balm is nepanthe. And the supreme horror of that second, I forgot what had horrified me. And the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images. In a dream, I fled from that haunted and accursed pile and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down the steps, I found the stone trap door immovable. But I was not sorry, for I had hated the antique castle and the catacombs of Nephrinka in the sealed and unknown valley of Habdolt by the Nile. I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Ned, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feast of Nictocris beneath the Great Pyramid. Yet in my new wildness and freedom, I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. For although Nephanthi has called me, I know always that I'm an outsider, a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since. I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame. Stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass. So that was The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft. And I love that this appeared in a magazine called Weird Tales because it was a weird tale, but for me, it really did not. Disappoint. It had all the elements that I look forward to in Gothic literature. We've got dark shadows and spooky old crypts and churches and graveyards and castles. Yum yum yum. Um it was did a really good job of being descriptive. And that's what we want in a good story is describing what is heard, what is seen, what's around. He really stretches it out. And even though it's a short story, I feel like uh Lovecraft really packed a lot in. Okay, so so many things came to my mind when reading this story. The first one, just the first part of the story, this idea of being young or of an unknown age. Like, I don't even know how old I am, but I must have been young at some point. And growing up in this environment where you don't even fully remember anybody, but you do remember that there were countless books. And so your way to escape was to just read. Your entertainment was reading. And there must have been somebody there to read to. There must have been something, but it just made no real impression. This all very much reminds me of being an immigrant or being a homeschooler or being in maybe even a religious community in which you are separated from society. Now, the title of this piece is The Outsider. And so this brings the question: what does it mean to be an outsider? What does it mean to be separate? And Lovecraft really gives us some different examples, different ways in which this person is an outsider. So one way this person is an outsider is that they are there's no one, there's no other people around, right? Um the vague memory of some older person, there must have been somebody, but that is certainly one way to be an outsider. And what I think of um, you know, the homeschool community and then religious groups that do not want for their children to be exposed to popular culture. Um, I've certainly worked with families that send me a message saying, hey, just so you know, my child will not understand any references to pop culture. And we don't celebrate holidays, we don't celebrate birthdays. And so while this is great for um that particular family's way of living when it comes to that child's ability to socialize with other children, it's very difficult. It's very difficult. That child doesn't have to have knowledge of uh Taylor Swift or Beyoncé or Minecraft or anything of that nature, but the idea of um not trying to shield that child from any exposure um does put them at a severe disadvantage. It's one thing to say, hey, uh, we don't partake, we don't listen, we just want to, you know, listen to whatever music we personally make in our house. Cool, that's fine. However, when that child gets to socializing with other kids outside of the house, are they able to comfortably carry on a conversation or are they feeling overwhelmed by all the things that they don't know? Um, which in and of itself is fair, right? You go somewhere new, you learn something new, that can be overwhelming. But if you're trying to shield your child, prevent your child from being exposed to anything other than what you as the parent has provided, that's where I feel like we are crossing a line. Um yes, it one would say it's the parent's responsibility to shield the child from anything that is dangerous or might harm them. And so a parent deems that uh knowing about Harry Potter or knowing about um, I I think I had a parent withdraw a child from a class because I had the child read an Edgar Allen post story. And I'm like, this kid is of age in which they would be reading the rating in in school. So what's the problem? But um every family's different, right? So, yes, it is the parent's job to protect, shielding that child from things that are bad is definitely one thing, but taking it to a point where you are removing that child from anything that in general is deemed harmless by the rest, the majority of society um that might be educational and a lesson for them, right? So, okay, let's take drugs. You want to show your child from drugs, great. Your child goes to a friend's house and that friend is doing drugs. But, or okay, maybe the friend's not doing drugs. That's that's probably a bit of an extreme. Okay, your friend goes to your child goes to a friend's house and they are the the friend mentions wanting to try a drug or something about, hey, so and so um was talking to me about this drug, and I was like, don't do that, that's not cool. Would your child know what to do? Would your child know to say, hey, why is that not a good thing? Be curious, ask more questions. Would your child cover their ears and run away and be like, no, you can't talk to me about drugs? That's evil. Um, would your child know to stand up on their own two feet and be like, yeah, I don't do drugs. That's not a part of uh my lifestyle. And I hope it's not a part of yours either, friends, or I'm glad you told that other kid not to do that. Um or would they just feel so isolated and outside that they feel like they can't have friends outside of the home in the community? So being isolated in education is one way of being an outsider. Now, another way that Lovecraft shows us being an outsider is language. So we have this character who says, I never bothered to speak. And to be fair, who was there to talk to? Who was there to talk to? Like you don't even remember anybody around. Who am I gonna talk to? And that reminds me of immigrant communities, children, and even parents. I think of immigrant elderly parents who move to the U.S. in order to help their child raise the grandchildren. And that immigrant parent does not speak English in the household. Um the grandchild may not be interested in learning their native language or tries not to speak the language of their grandparents, right? And so that grandparent is trying to communicate with their grandchild. And as that grandchild gets older, often they shun, they will really reduce the interest in being able to speak that grandparents' language. And I have talked to parents of children, these parents who have moved to the US to give their child a certain kind of life. Maybe it was even for, you know, uh my husband's job had us come here. And for these parents to be really sad because their child just wants to speak English, and their child doesn't want the parent to speak to them in the presence of their friends, because that child is embarrassed by their parents' accent. And that really breaks my heart. Um I get it, teenagers and even preteens, because actually I'm thinking of somebody whose child is a preteen. Um they will do and say things because they feel that they can and the other person will still love them. But they don't realize in that moment just how heartbreaking and how uh cruel it is to say to somebody, I love you, but can you not talk to me and be near me because you're going to cause me pain and suffering by embarrassing me with your accent? So we have language as a way of being an outsider. And this idea of um being someone who causes pain and suffering is something else that Lovecraft brings up. And we're gonna come back to more ways of being an outsider, but I just want to touch on this real quick, which is is it better to be an outsider than to cause suffering to others? So, again, that parent who knows their child is embarrassed by their accent or the grandparent who knows that the child is embarrassed that their grandparent can't speak the language. Um, you know, a lot of times that parent or the grandparent will just accept that that is their child's request. They love that child, and so they will drop the kid off at school from a distance in order to not cause that embarrassment. Even think of economic divides where a child might be embarrassed that dad who um lost his job and so had to sell his car. Now he kind of has an old beat-up car. Or um mom, who maybe just got back from rehab and is getting back on her feet and has really just been struggling after the divorce. Um and so maybe her car is beat up, or um, she works a couple of jobs and she's wearing that nurse's uniform. Hey, grown-up, you don't have as much money as the other kids at this school. You don't have a fancy car like the other families. Your hair and nails aren't done uh the way everyone else expects. I don't want to be seen with you. I don't want them to know that you're my parent. So can you drop me off at a distance from the school? Don't drop me off right in front of the school. Can you drop me off a few uh, you know, a half a block away? Or can I take the bus because I just don't want to be seen around you because you're an embarrassment. I don't want people to know where I come from. I come from you. I don't want them to know that. Ooh, the thanks, the thangs, kids be doing. It's a lot. It is a lot. Um, okay, so other ways to be an outsider separate from the isolation of uh education and the isolation of language disability. So uh notice that the bats and rats are noiseless. Noiseless. That's very interesting. And so this reminds me of being someone who has a hearing impairment or is a part of the deaf community, or even someone who might be on the autism spectrum or um have a myth not not have all four limbs, maybe they're in a wheelchair, this disability separating you from what you feel is what everyone else has can do, right? So this the Lovecraft mentions how um the rats and bats, they they are definitely visible, they are definitely there, they are definitely making noise, and yet the sound is not hurt. And I think of my friends in the deaf community, and my friends in the community of those who are blind or visually impaired, and how instantly when walking into spaces, once it is known that they are a member of this other community, they can feel like an outsider. Now, um, you know, ideally that space will welcome them in a way, but so I worked at this school, which um was a bilingual school, so it was ASL and English, and I really loved working at that school, but I felt terrible that I struggled to make sure the teachers who did not speak English felt included because I didn't speak sign language. I didn't, and so I noticed that the teachers would bring their students to my room in order to uh have their dance lesson of the day, and the teachers just kind of tombed out because they didn't feel like they were included, and I really had to try to find a way to invite them to be a part of this, to want to be a part, and you know, if I could have learned ASL within a week, I would have done it, but that just wasn't possible. Um and what we did find a way to kind of bridge the gap and to uh I did my best in order to help those teachers feel more included, but how frustrating must that be? Because this is your school that you've worked at for years, and for an hour out of the day, you're not being able or permitted or allowed to share your ideas, your thoughts, your input. You know, um do we do we have a translator there for the entire time to translate everything? And what and oftentimes there would be someone in the room who um was bilingual to assist with any translation. But I also have to think, well, what questions am I going to direct to them in order to help them feel a part of this and felt help them uh have agency and understand that their contribution matters? Like, am I doing something here that I would do or would not do if I were just in a room with other teachers who were able to um hear me and speak to me in English. And that's that's that is something. Um because for the most part, a lot of times, I might direct a few questions towards that other teacher in the room, but most of my attention is is on the kids. Like that's mostly where it's at. Um so yeah, there's that. Okay, so that is my comment on disability as an outsider. Also, you know, think of that person who's in a wheelchair and wants to go to the school dance and sees the dance floor is crowded. You know, do they get on the dance floor anyway? And do their friends kind of hang around them and they dance? Does the friend who wants to go dance with the cute boy um have to balance the desire to go dance with the cute boy or to stay with their friend who's in the wheelchair to make sure their friend feels accepted and not like an outsider? So, yes, disability, language, education, upbringing, these are all ways in which Lovecraft says you can be an outsider just based on these things, right? Um now, also in terms of education, someone who goes to a school where it's taught from a very specific worldview. So the person who goes to an ultra-orthodox school or a Catholic school or a Mormon school, um, or even a wild and free wilderness educational institution, when it comes to integrating, socializing with others, there there's a gap. There is a gap because there's this whole realm of things that one simply does not know. Going from a school and the projects to then being on campus at Yale or Harvard. And yeah, maybe it's all on scholarship, which is totally fine. That's not the issue. The issue is understanding how you relate to other people when you feel like all those other people seem to have a lot of money, or maybe they don't have a lot of money, but when they're speaking, it feels like they're speaking with words that you don't understand. Um, speaking of words, there were a lot of big, beautiful words in this story. Someone was like, what is that? And I and I I really had to like force myself to like, wait, I I do know that word. I I think I've read it in a book years and years ago. So that's the one really good thing about these stories is that back in the day, authors really enjoyed using words and language, and stories were a way to boost your education, build your educational level, boost your knowledge. You know, when you think about it, someone stops going to school and they start working, they tend to kind of only learn whatever it is that they're working on. And so escaping with a good book really allowed one to continue to learn about other things, like big words. Okay. So all of that is just on what does it mean to be an outsider? And then we come to the question of is it better to be an outsider than the cause suffering? Which we did talk about that the the parent at a distance, but I just want to focus on the um our narrator going to the house, that castle, and entering, and then seeing, oh my goodness, everyone is screaming and fleeing and running out of here. What on earth has caused this? Should I run too? And then, of course, realizing, oh, I am the cause of this pain and suffering, right? The look in the mirror, that um hard, glassy surface at the end. Just knowing that being an outsider in and of itself is causing someone else pain and suffering is a heavy, heavy burden. And I think of um, you know, immigrant families where maybe one of the parents um is not born in the US and maybe they came to the US as a child illegally or something of that nature. And so having to then go back to The country that they were born in, but they hadn't been in in like 20, 30 years. Having to leave just to ease the pain on their family, just so that their kids and their spouse don't have to stress out about that parent being deported. That's a lot. That's just a lot. And this story was written back in 1926. But all of these things, all of these lessons, thoughts that Lovecraft brings up, they are still ever so relevant today. Would we recognize our loved ones F return from dead? A lot of times when someone dies, there's this mourning. Oh, and I I I have talked to people who are like, oh my gosh, I wish they were still here. I miss them so much. If they came back, would you welcome them with open arms? Would you recognize them? If they weren't the same, would that be okay with you? In general, if a decomposing body um steps into one's happy home, that is not like a oh my gosh, I'm so glad you came back from the grave. Um, let me get you a cup of tea. Can you drink tea? How are you feeling? That's that's usually not an invitation for a conversation. And death is definitely a part of life, but I feel like the story really planks out um the unrealistic relationship people have with death. Because there's this idea that when you die, you shouldn't have died. Like you shouldn't have died. Even if you died of old age, oh, you know, you were eating poisonous mushrooms, of course you were gonna die. No, you shouldn't have died. There's this idea that one should not die, that just should not happen. And people should be in our lives as long as we want them to be in our lives. So this also kind of goes back to the idea of well, if you're an outsider, do you get to say how long you're in someone's life, or does the other person get to determine it? Such big lessons, you guys. Okay. The desire for something more. Our narrator starts, you know, escaping through these books and kind of longing to get out of this dreary environment that they're in. And this also takes me back to those strict religious communities where after a while someone's like, you know what? I think I want to see what else is out there. I just I'm curious. And to be fair, even I would say even not strict religious communities, because I've met people in like rural Indiana who have only known that town, lived in that town, and then the next town over, I've met people who were just like, Yeah, I used to live in that town, and I needed to get out. It just, you know the same people all your life. So the very best I could do was to move to the next town over. Um, this coming from someone who has lived in many, many states. Uh, but yeah, it is definitely a thing to just only live in your community that you're born and raised in, to only be part of that community. Even educationally, wanting to know more than what you know, this is something that a lot of people really struggle with. I want to know more. I want to know what the moon looks like, what the moonlight might feel like if it feels like anything. And so I really love the description of this great effort to get beyond where one is. And then, of course, that that stone slab, I was like, oh my gosh, you're gonna be trapped in a room with dead bodies. I was very much worried about that. Um, but that stone slab falling back into place and being like, oh. So oftentimes we will do things, we will take a risk and hope that we can get back to wherever it was we were. But once you take that leap, once you take that risk, there's no going back. Things will never be the same. And thankfully, our narrator does say at the end, they don't even want to go back down there. They're okay with not going back down there because they never want to go back to this place of not knowing and of just being in this dreary environment. Careful what you wish for. So this narrator was wishing to get out into the light to have a change of environment and gets that, gets that very thing, but then realizes that it's causing pain and suffering, not what they thought it was gonna be. And so, oops, maybe, maybe, maybe we should have just been a little bit more cautious. But taking the risk is what's the most important thing, and as mentioned, there are no regrets in that aspect. Okay, swimming lessons, you guys. So change is inevitable. We all change, and though this body has changed due to decomposing underground, um, it's something that happens to all of us. Not the well, not necessarily the decomposing underground. I mean, you might cremate it or something. I don't know. But in terms of all of us changing, it's going to happen. And will you recognize yourself after undergoing a big change? Will you recognize yourself when you are no longer in your regular environment? Maybe you are the best actor, performer in high school, but then when you go to college, you are no longer the best. How will you cope with this new you, this new identity? Another thing that comes up for me in this story is are the things you despise actually just parts of you? So it almost feels like two separate stories. We have this adventure of getting out of the crypt or from underground, right? And then we have act two, which feels like act two for me, going into this castle and encountering the living, and everyone runs away, and our narrator sees himself in the mirror and is just like, oh my gosh, that's disgusting. It's not speaking, I can't barely look at it, it's grotesque, it's rotting, I see bone, ew, ew, ew, and then that reaching out of the fingers and touching that realization, that thing that was grossing me out, the thing that I wanted to run away from, I think is me. And this is actually something I think of a lot in my own life, in terms of okay, I don't like that way that person is training this other person. I feel like that person is very self-absorbed, very narcissistic. Or that person seems to shop a lot and have no control over their money. These things that I'm observing that I'm saying, ooh, I'm I'm not a fan of that, that I'm passing judgment on. Are these also things a part of me? Like in my analysis, I'm sharing with you some of my experiences and some things about me. Does this make me narcissistic because I'm mentioning me so much? Or I may not spend money on clothes that I can't afford, but I might buy an extra thing of vitamins because they're on sale, and I feel like I need vitamins to make me healthier. Is that me having control over my money? I couldn't afford it, but I have to have it. And so the very idea of the fact that the things that you are repulsed by are actually things within you is very powerful. Are they fixable? Well, in this case, no. This this goodness guy is not like, and I'm gonna put my face back together. They're not fixable in in this particular story. But the awareness is enough to prompt change, the awareness is enough to have him be like, I'm not gonna go after those people, I'm not gonna punish myself for being who I am, but I am going to leave this place. Knowing your place in the world is the last thing I want to get to that I feel this story brings up. And so our character or narrator goes back to the churchyard, goes back to the crypt, but does not go underground, never going back to where I once was, but also understanding this world that I wanted to be a part of is just not gonna happen. The place that I belong is somewhere else. Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night wind and play by day amongst the catacombs. So it's like, look, I want to be out there with the living, but that's not gonna work. I don't want to be in denial, underground, deprived. So gotta find another place for myself. But I know that my place in this world is amongst the non-living. That's my place. I I can't I can't go back to where I was. And there's a really good line that he has in here. And I quote, and at last I resolved to scale that tower. Fall though I might, since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day. And if there is any message that one should take away from this, I think this is it. Lovecraft is saying, It's better to try and fall and fail than to never have tried at all. That's a pretty important message. So if there's something out there in life that you're thinking of trying or you're wanting to try, and it's not going to hurt you or others, give it a try. Because that's what our narrator did. I hope you enjoyed this story and do come back for another Gothic tale.