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"Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye."

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"Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye."

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Cthulhu is the monster, of course, but Lovecraft is not saying that the monster that poses an actual threat to society is literally a giant squid dragon hybrid. Rather, Lovecraft is saying that Cthulhu is a metaphor for the innate human desire for knowledge of the unknown, the real monster. The literal symbol of the monster Cthulhu is made up between "an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature". This symbolizes the real monster at hand is the known (the octopus) the unknown (the dragon) and the desire to conquer both (the human caricature). In the short story, Cthulhu is extremely intelligent and gathers a cult of people for them to garner knowledge of the unknown as well so that they may all have "freedom". However, this freedom is terrifying to Lovecraft and displays his critique of the human effort to step into the new and out of the old by villanizing the embodiment of intelligence, the metaphor of the monster.

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" The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy."

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" The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy."

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Green is a reoccurring visual imagery motif seen throughout Lovecraft's short story. Green is commonly associated with evil and is not-so coincidentally embodied by the monster Cthulhu. Cthulhu is emits a green smoke, his statue is made of greenish stone, and his vaults are covered in green slime. This association of evil with a color so natural is interesting as it suggests Lovecraft believes the evil of the future unknown in inevitable, a natural process.

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"Who knows the end?...A time will come—but I must not and cannot think!"

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"Who knows the end?...A time will come—but I must not and cannot think!"

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Lovecraft believes the decay of humanity in the future should be avoided at all costs!

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Lovecraft believes the decay of humanity in the future should be avoided at all costs!

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Lovecraft Believes the Innate Human Thirst for the Unexplored is Dangerous!

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Lovecraft Believes the Innate Human Thirst for the Unexplored is Dangerous!

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"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

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"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."

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The first two locations the reader sees are Rhode Island and Boston. Not only are these both dry and cold places, which immediately creates tension within the reader, but both border the vast Atlantic ocean. The bordering state of both locations indicates the mental and physical destination that Lovecraft intended to set up for the reader, one which is afraid of the unfamiliar. This ultimately creates a bleak setting constantly on the brink of the eternal threat that is the vast unknown.

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The use of first-person Past Tense within the narration of Thurston puts the reader quite literally in the past, the old, the familiar, and the known. The use of past tense, in this deeply detailed and intricate short story, perpetuates the feeling that what the reader already knows is too much. This creates the idea that the reader should not dare to peer into the unknown, the unfamiliar, the new, and the future. As the reader continues to the end, it is revealed to them that Thurston did not have his dying wishes fulfilled in the past- that no one may read his information. This is ironic in that the reader has now gained all of his knowledge at that point and now may be afflicted with the same curse as him, instead of staying in the past they are forced into the future, forced into the unknown of slow mental decay.

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Lovecraft believes the cult of knowledge within society is evil!

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Lovecraft believes the cult of knowledge within society is evil!