Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, pt 2

Worlds converge and lands that were once thought to be unique are connected by the dream.

Welcome back to another blind read!  It’s been a little while, and I apologize for the silence, but it’s been a really busy month! And that’s a good busy, because it’s been all surrounding writing.

Like I mentioned in the last edition of the Blind read, I’m taking a different tact for this story.  There is a bit of fluidity in the story, however there is far more to analyze than there has been in previous stories.  That being said lets get back into a little bit of a recap.  I’ve read nearly half of the story of Randolph Carter journeying through the Dreamlands in his search for Kadath.

The last we saw Carter, he was just escaping the turbaned men, who were trying to take him in the Abyss to Nyarlathotep.  The Cats of Ulthar helped him escape, and he boards another ship and sails away to Oriab.  He travels across the land and finds a carving of the gods he is trying to find, and is surprised that they look much like the sailors in Celephais.  He vows to head to Celephais, when he is captured by winged horrors called Night-Gaunts.  The Night-Gaunts take him to the underworld, supposedly to die.  There, in the underworld, he finds a former friend, Richard Pickman, who has become a Ghoul.  Pickman and his Ghoul friends help Carter avoid the Ghasts (horrible creatures of the underworld), and ascend the staircase to get back to the Enchanted Wood, a higher level of the dreamlands.  He then heads off to find Celephais.

There are a few concepts that I’d like to cover here that I find particularly prescient.

The first is completely meta, and touched upon a little in the last Blind Read ( https://seanmmcbride.com/2018/05/11/blind-read-through-h-p-lovecraft-the-dream-quest-of-unknown-kadath-pt-1/ ), but this is a story (which was published posthumously, so it may have never been intended for publication) where Lovecraft brings together many different stories he previously created.  This is the story which establishes the dreamlands as we now know them.  Despite what I’ve heard that Lovecraft wasn’t looking for cohesion or a “mythos” (forgive me, I forget where I read this, but I’ll do a little research and edit in the link if I find it), this book seems to disavow that concept.  It seems as though Carter was to become his hero of dreams.  The interesting part of this is that the dreamlands and the mythos are considered to be two separate collections, but it seems as though they are irrevocably intertwined.  We have Nyarlathotep as a central being of insidiousness, and Azathoth as the ruler of all creation and destruction.  These Outer Gods have a direct link through the dreamlands, where despite Nyarlathotep heading to earth in the story of his own name, it seems like the easiest way to contact these gods is through the dreamlands.  On top of that We have the concept of the story itself.  Carter is striving to find the gods, specifically by travelling through the dreamlands.  This is a blind read, and I’m only about half way through the story, but that seems almost like incontrovertible evidence to me.

Speaking of gods, there is a mention of a new one, I had never heard from before, which I’m pretty sure comes from Celtic mythology.  Carter is taken by Night-Gaunts to the underworld to be left to die.  The way the text is written it seems as though the underworld is a deeper level of the dreamlands, but more on that presently.

This new god’s name is Nodens, who in Celtic mythology is known as a Pan (the Roman god of mischief, amongst other things), and Nodens controls the Night-Gaunts.  So here we have another god who is trying to stop Carter, or at least delay him from reaching Kadath to ask the gods about the golden city.  If Pan is truly the inspiration for Nodens, then we know that he has more fun in playing with emotions, than with dealing in absolutes, like death.  So Nodens has his servants the Night-Gaunts kidnap Carter and try to deliver him to the despair of the underworld and revel in his misery.

This now brings us to the final point.  This portion of the story is a metaphor for depression.

The Night-Gaunts are a black winged, slightly humanoid creature, who does no harm, but delivers Carter to the underworld.  Much like the demons and devils from medieval art are portrayed.  These devils that speak half-truths into the subjects ears and put them on a downward spiral.  In the dreamlands, the Night-Gaunts are much the same, but have a more active role in actually taking Carter to the underworld.  He is not hurt, in fact he is gently placed and left alone to wallow in his despair.  He is left to die, but he is in no way injured.  He is just in the underworld.

Carter just never let go of his hope and his drive to find the golden city of his dreams.  He then soon sees what happens when one does give up hope.  He meets Richard Pickman, a former friend from Boston, who was a very talented painter.  Pickman has become a Ghoul.  A horrible former joke of the person he once was.  Luckily Pickman retains enough of his former self to understand that Carter was once a friend and rallies the other Ghouls to help him escape the underworld.  To escape the depression of what the underworld represents.  It is already too late for Pickman, he cannot leave the underworld, and returns to his life of horrors once Carter is safely out.

This section is the first truly horrifying section of the story, because previously Carter is merely travelling.  Now he had made a descent.  He is taken deeper into the dreamlands, where he has trouble seeing the light, he has trouble seeing the point of his quest.  So the deeper into the dreamlands you get, the depression takes over your mind, and derails you.  Much like the afterlife dreams in Richard Matheson’s “What Dreams May Come”.  Were these Ghouls sent here because of what they did in their lives?  Is this their hell?

What do you think?