Reading from Black Seas of Infinity, pages 99-104

The Outsider presents “Man” as the monster, a creature of book learning, locked into a stifling social construct as if entombed beneath his own heritage, yet cowering beneath the terrifying gloom of The Forest that shades his tomb. Lovecraft evokes the primal terror of the forest to Civilized Man in the following passages:

“…awed watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft.”

“…nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower.”

“…across the putrid moat and under the dark mute trees…”

“…would longingly picture myself among gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the forest.”

“Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle the shade grew denser…”

The unnamed, unspeaking character, his own appearance unknown to himself, decides to release himself from the moldering tomb of a castle in which he has forever resided, indentifying with the images of children in the ancient books, but not able to remember a childhood himself, now conjures the psychological metaphor of the frightful forest in place of the actual one that obscures and shades his tomb in a brilliant passage, “…better to glimpse the sky and perish, then to live without ever beholding day.”

Lovecraft wraps up this reaching brooding story of monstrous ascent nicely, providing a concise horror piece as well as a cunning metaphor for his own bookish isolation and the fate of millions of like minds, entrapped in the artifice of their kind’s creation.