Short Story Review || The Thing on the Doorstep (1937)
"After murdering his best friend, Dan seeks to justify the madness he fears may possess him."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
This review will not open with the clicking of keys noting an analogy ripe with emotively inducing visuals. Instead, I present to you my humble truth; before reading this story, I had never ventured far enough into the Horror genre to read anything written by Lovecraft. It is important for me to state this fact at the start because my impression of & experience with this story are shaped by my original innocence.
“Just where the supreme horror lay, I could not for my life tell; yet there swept over me such a swamping wave of sickness and repulsion—such a freezing, petrifying sense of utter alienage and abnormality—that my grasp of the wheel grew feeble and uncertain. The figure beside me seemed less like a lifelong friend than like some monstrous intrusion from outer space—some damnable, utterly accursed focus of unknown and malign cosmic forces.”
Certainly, the author’s reputation precedes him. In fact, if one were to commence a search on his background, pictures galore, all more sullen & sepia-toned, one from the other, highlights the very nature of the beast himself. To state that I held utter ignorance of Lovecraft’s reputation would be a lie. I state this fact because I kept my eyes peeled for the unsavoury trinkets he has been alleged to possess while reading this story but, found myself utterly distracted by the plot. Therefore, I write to you now from a place of humble awe. Perhaps, the man isn’t so horrible after all or, perhaps, he is as terrible as a person must be to write dreadful stories.
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In essence, this is a story about a man who murdered his best friend. Dan, the narrator, speaks to the reader from the present. Perhaps, the reader has met Dan in a common space, or, as is more likely, the reader has come to Dan as a friend bidding him to release the wounds he fosters with his fear. The narration style is deeply enthralling. Lovecraft employs the perfect protagonist as the story’s leader. Whereas at first glance, the story reads as very straightforward—Dan shot Derby dead—the reality is that Dan acted out of care, thinking his friend prisoner in a magic spell that saw the old wizard of the countryside jumping from body to body in a bid to stay alive, forever.
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As this was my first experience with Lovecraft, I did not know what to expect. In truth, I came upon this story by chance thanks to the tides that bind, allowing the story to nestle perfectly on the week when it was my turn to share a short story with a friend.
My greedy fingers scrolled & scrolled as the narrative unfolded & before I realized how deeply invested I had become, my alarm rang & I was due back to a meeting. Where the time went while I was reading, I cannot begin to know. The vernacular that Lovecraft uses is not complex, but rather entirely the opposite; the linguistic use in this story is overly simple. None of the characters boast of high scholastic achievements though their circumstances lead readers to appreciate their economic standing. This choice by the author is of value to readers across levels & linguistic abilities as it captures the essence of what can make for a good story; the plot.
As Dan describes the events as he believes them to have happened, the story takes on a morose air. Derby, the victim of an alleged possession & the best friend to our narrator, appears for all intents & purposes to be rather inconsequential. Though the story would not be told to the reader had Derby not married the odd girl with the grave stare, nearly identical to her father’s, & had Derby not abandoned all reason to pursue a galavanting lifestyle with his wife, none of the events would have occurred.
Therefore, one must wonder to what extent the characters shape the narrative that acts independently of their presence. By this I mean, that regardless of Dan or Derby, the antagonist lives on & his goal of body-hopping, making himself a Changeling among grown adults, persists no matter the cost or crew.
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Perhaps, what I have said is not entirely accurate. Indeed, on pondering the independent nature of the antagonist I wonder whether the story would be as powerful had the roles been reversed. Had Dan been the man possessed by the old soul of a wicked warlock, would the reader have ever known that a decrepit old troll was wandering the limbs of men & women alike?
Would the antagonist have made it as far as he had? Perhaps I wonder at the necessity of the characters we meet on the page because I am curious about the end goal of the antagonist. What good would he gather having to start life from the beginning, sometimes the middle, but rather more often at the end?
Curiouser things have happened than to learn that a person would offer up silver & gold to become immortal. However, my question arises because of the logistics of the madman’s approach. As Derby explains it to our narrator, the soul of the weak can be easily taken over & as Derby had a feeble constitution, he was easier prey.
The eternal soul that would live on in the bodies of everyone it chooses to possess would run out of life to overtake when the final tomb was born from the invisible hands of the tree’s stump. I digress, what makes a person evil has less to do with their game plan than it does with the actions they take.
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What made this story so engaging was its approach. When Lovecraft wrote this story, & following the years until its publication, the scariest things existed in society but had been downplayed as easily removable. Human beings were permanently institutionalized for reasons that would remain inept; they were experimented on, & lost all agency.
In some people there lived the ideology of supremacy & the elitist mindset that accompanies having all the joys of the world in one’s backyard, & the wealth to dictate who can gallivant in the garden with them. Readers may choose to regard Lovecraft’s demonic entity of the lost soul of Derby as a commentary on society wherein a man lost his life to a woman he loved because she was stronger than he was.
Of course, the tedium of this deconstruction would require a more dedicated critic than I am. The purpose of this reflection is not to state with certainty that Lovecraft understood the gender bias or that he would agree that institutions for the mentally insane should remain as tools to toss away the undesirable reality that is the complex human psyche.
The truth is, I don’t know. The author, having lost his life to a malady that ate him from the inside, was in no financial position to criticize the flamboyant ravings of the wealthy. Derby is a character most unlike the author however, because readers will remain unfamiliar with Lovecraft, one cannot state with certainty that the author has remained completely off-page.
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What is the purpose of this story? As always, this is not a question that I ask to tease the quality of the writing nor is it something I pose to judge the merit of the plot. Rather, I always ask myself this question while reading because everything that was written came from a person for whom life’s complexities may remain secret as the earth they lay interned within.
Is the purpose of this story to criticize the quality of religious teachings? Would the characters have fallen prey to Ephraim’s sorcery if the Church were more present in their lives? If the characters in this book had followed a forceful leader, someone who was certain of the whispering boom of the Lord’s voice & the scripture, might they have remained unscathed?
Perhaps this story is a play on the lost soul of a person who has nothing but silly fancies. Derby was repeatedly described as a man without structure, a man who followed the lead of his father & who had no will of his own. Was Lovecraft’s intention to poke fun at the members of society who remained childishly immature & incapable of managing life on their own?
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Ultimately, what I found to be the most enjoyable aspect of this story was the narration. Dan is a character with few features attributed to his face & even fewer markers to colour his years of life, lest the reader forget that he was nearly a decade older than Derby. The emphasis that was granted to the style, which was neither remorseful, sorrowed, pained, or frantic, encouraged the plot to flow melodiously.
After all, what one is reading is recitation, nearly mathematical in his recollections, Dan is sharing because he wants to, not because he has to. Though he has noted his slight worry at being next on Ephraim’s list of mortal bodies to overtake, both he & the reader know that this will not happen, he is too old & too well-informed to care about the madness of a weak mind.
The purpose of this story as I see it, is to remind readers of what exists around them. The scary fondling gurgle of lost words, weak constitution, illogic, & the absence of motivation may lead one to wander the moors of the American countryside to the willows lining an old necromancer’s humble abode. Two stones over is the asylum, & down the road is the cacophony of a school of gossip waiting anxiously for the demise of the feeble. Though the larvae that wrote Dan his final goodbye may be remembered as once having been a close friend, Derby flounders in a puddle that reflects in despair & gore, how his friends viewed him from their perches, all along.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « The Thing on the Doorstep » by H.P. Lovecraft
C. 💌