So, what can we say about a piece of writing
like “Dagon”? It’s a suicide note written by a morphine addict driven nuts
while lost at sea by the sight of a giant fish-man worshiping an obelisk. Wow.
The first questions that occur to me are “why
do people like this? Why do I like this?” Then I immediately reconsider
approaching the question that way. It isn't because we should avoid talking
about people, or why they are the way they are, but because focusing on
ourselves and our likes and dislikes is a tangly sort of maze from which we
might not escape. Better to look at what the good of the thing at hand is, or
what good there could be, and maybe gain some insight about ourselves along the
way.
So, “Dagon” has a few themes (all
interrelated, classic Lovecraft, and literarily Gothic): the unknown, the
alien, and the unnatural.
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| Most of you don't have to worry. Dagon would only hide under a waterbed. |
The Unknown
Everyone has experience of the unknown. I
mean both that they have been faced with darkness and mystery, and that they've come to know something that was unknown before.
