“Dagon”

"Dagon" and "Beyond the Walls of Sleep" were published within a month of each other in the fall of 1919, in The Vagrant and Pine Cones respectively. I think we can look at that autumn as a major turning point in Lovecraft's career; these two stories were almost certainly the seed from which the Cthulhu Mythos grew. Some Lovecraft scholars even assert that Lovecraft's best known story and the one that gave his fictional world its namesake, "The Call of Cthulhu," was nothing but a massive rewrite of "Dagon." If that's true, "Dagon" might be one of the most important stories in the history of the horror genre.

Which is ironic, because if my memory is anything to go by it’s bad.

In my readthrough of "Memory" I alluded to something I called 'the Dagon problem.' There's a specific, massive flaw that defines my recollection of this story, and I'll discuss it in detail when and if we get to it. As with "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" I'm going to do my best to try and ignore the bad memories and pretend I've never read this story before, and maybe it won't be as bad as I remember. And, like with BtWoS, I don't think its going to help.

In we go.

“Dagon said:
I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death.”

Again this knee-jerk fear of "degenerates." What does that word even mean to Lovecraft? He throws it around so often and defines it so poorly.

Anyway, this one starts us off with some pathos. A poor, drug-addicted, seemingly traumatized man on the brink of suicide pouring out his heart to the reader. Its a strong hook, helped along by word choice that evokes desperation, ugliness, and misery (the streets below are "squalid," etc). It still suffers from Lovecraft's usual wordiness, but not as badly as "Beyond the Wall of Sleep's" intro did, and this one also has a dramatic hook to compensate.

“It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time.

When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue.”

This is a passage that just begs for analysis.

First of all, its the first mention of World War One in Lovecraft's fiction so far. The attitudes that the war inspired in America - fear of the world outside one's own borders, the world not being fair or making sense, science having the potential to unleash horrors instead of wonders - all have close parallels in the Cthulhu Mythos. The world is dangerous, chaotic, and hostile, and humanity could destroy itself just by learning too much about its surroundings. Its very fitting that "Dagon," the first explicitly Mythos related story, would be about a soldier in the war.

What's much more confusing, though, is why exactly the narrator chose to escape the German vessel. At first glance, I thought he was being sarcastic when he said that the Germans treated him well...but then he cites their light hand as the reason he was able to escape. Why would a man who, in his own words, was "never a competent navigator" risk the open ocean and drowning or starvation if his captors were treating him well? I could imagine him trying to escape once they came closer to shore, but in the open sea? What drove him to face almost certain death over a relatively comfortable and short-lived political incarceration? If he was a special agent on a critical mission that still needed to be carried out, or if he had information that he couldn't risk the Germans wheedling out of him, it could make sense, but he was just the quartermaster aboard a merchant marine. His country doesn't have desperate need of him, and he certainly doesn't know any military secrets.

Why would he do this? And, perhaps more importantly, is that a question that Lovecraft meant for the reader to ask? Am I intended to be confused by this character's actions?

“The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.

Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear.

The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.”

That's easily the most surreal image Lovecraft's work has given us so far.

I usually roll my eyes when Lovecraft describes scenic natural landscapes as "hideous" or "nauseating," but in this case I don't think he's being too dramatic. As a marine biologist in training, I can testify that the ocean floor isn't always pretty, especially when you bring a sediment sample above the water and the burrowing invertibrates - some of which are nasty looking even in the best of conditions - all tunnel out in their death throws. Let it all rot in the sun for a few hours and make it stretch in all directions as far as the eye can see, and I can see how it would be really disturbing.

The land is described as having gentle ripples ("undulations") across its surface. While the seabed definitely looks like that along the continental shelf where sediment gets arranged by wave and tidal action, the abyssal plane usually lacks this feature. Since this is over the open ocean - and knowing Lovecraft's fondness for "stygian depths" and "lightless abysses" - I'm going to call this an oceanographic error on Lovecraft's part. It might be an understandable one, though; underwater photography was in its very, very early stages at the time, and unless you were a marine scientist yourself it was unlikely you'd get a look at the deep sea floor.

I don't know how he could have slept through a tectonic event that raised a large island under his boat, but its possible that this was a supernatural occurrence rather than an earthquake.

“For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue.

On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill.
”

So he's been on this slowly-hardening mass of silt and rotting fish and sea worms for the better part of a week. How much water did he bring on that little boat, and how is he carrying it that far? The stench and sunlight are both going to make him need more water as well.

Not completely SoD breaking, but still, this is pretty intense. Its almost painful, reading this and having to imagine myself in that situation.

“I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence.”

Yeah, really.

“I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.”

That...is a really, really odd thing to allude to in this situation. There must be something to it.

I'm guessing its either supposed to suggest damnation (the protagonist willfully condemning himself to this pit, first by choosing to flee the Germans and next, or so I predict, by choosing to descend), or dark revelation (in "Paradise Lost," Satan climbs up through the abyss to trick humanity into gaining knowledge that will ruin them; maybe the pit contains dangerous knowledge?). Maybe I'm sounding pretentious here, but "Paradise Lost" out of the blue is just such a wtf that I feel like there NEEDS to be a reason for it.

“As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated.”

Once again, he's doing something unhelpful and dangerous for reasons he can't or won't articulate. Is that supposed to be social commentary or something? If so, its not terribly clear. If not, what the hell is this guy's problem, and how exactly did he survive to adulthood?

“All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures.

Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely.”

There's a monument on the slope in the hole in the bottom of the sea.

"Dazed" I can understand, as this is probably the last thing he expected to find (though I'm really not sure what he WAS expecting to find in the deep sea sinkhole, or why he wanted to find it). The "frightened" part, on the other hand, makes no sense to me. Sure, he's in a fragile place mentally and physically after being stranded on Rotting Polychaete Island for a week, but an ancient monolith is probably the least disturbing thing he's seen since being stranded. If anything, it should be reassuring; if there were ruins on the ocean floor, that means he's not nearly as far from a proper shore as he thought. Sea levels have changed a lot since the Last Great Ice Age, but not so much that you could find an underwater city without being somewhat close to a modern coast.

We're starting to see hints of "this beautiful jungle terrifies me" again.

“The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain”

Pictographic characters based on benthic invertibrates, without any land animals at all? Sounds like a merman writing system. So much for the monolith implying nearness to land; depending on the depths mermen can handle, he could still be at the epicenter of the Pacific.

There's still water at the bottom of the sinkhole. While I'm sure its undrinkable seawater, there might be some live crustaceans or deep sea fish surviving in it. If I were him, I'd check for that; raw shrimp isn't pleasant, but its nutritious and relatively safe to eat. I'm surprised he isn't paying more attention to the water, really, though I guess the giant alien monument could be rather distracting.

“It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me.”

Yep, mermen. Ugly mermen too, at least in the narrator's opinion, though nothing about his description sounds all that bad to me. Webbed hands and feet, fishy lips, and bulging eyes without any other description just makes me think of an anthropomorphic goldfish, which would be uglycute at worst. Apparently they have "other features less pleasant to recall," but since I have absolutely no idea what those might be I have trouble seeing the figures as anything but...well...anthropomorphic goldfish. "Unpleasant features" could mean anything from spines to pointy teeth to extra heads to oversized, dangling cocks. Fish penises are terrifying for this guy.

At least his unexplained disgust at the merman figures loses out to his awe at finding a (presumably) prehistoric artifact in the end, so there's a humanizing touch. And, I could maybe see why his threshold for "ugly" being lowered due to psychological stress; he's been through a harrowing week, after all.

Even without experience with this genre though, I don't think I'd be convinced by the narrator's conclusion that this is just an ancient human relic. The pictographs of nothing but deep sea organisms similar to those inhabiting this specific piece of seabed say "mermen" all over them.

And then...this happens:

“Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.

Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods.”

Um. What.

The lack of description for the creature ("Polyphemous-like" could mean it had one eye, or it could just mean it was a large biped living in a cave near the sea) forces me to imagine it as one of the mermen depicted on the monolith. The mermen which, as I explained, do not strike me as remotely scary. So, a giant goldfish person came out of the water and hugged the monument.

Even if the merman was genuinely scary looking though, so what? It might make sense to be at least apprehensive in that situation (he doesn't know that it ISN'T hostile, so he might as well be cautious until he learns more), and as noted the recent events would have left him exhausted and emotionally fragile, but even then I cannot believe that anyone would be driven into a multiple-day psychotic mania from watching a merman hug a rock. The merman did not behave in a threatening manner. The members of its species depicted in the carvings, however obscene their naked fish penises might strike you, are not noted to be doing anything unpleasant; just swimming around, praying at a shrine, and hunting sea animals. There was absolutely nothing bad going on during that scene at all, or even being hinted at.

Is that supposed to be the point? This guy has been making strange and questionable decisions from the beginning of the story, so maybe the fear isn't meant to be shared by the reader and is only supposed to reflect badly on the character? There's not quite enough to suggest that, however satisfying it sounds. And I remember my disappointment when I tried to use a similar justification for the protagonist's weirdness in "Beyond the Wall of Sleep."

Long story short, this guy may have just made first contact between humanity and another sapient species - a cultured, artistic, civilization-building race that we've unknowingly shared the planet with for millennia or eons - and his reaction was to scream and run away.

And then to keep screaming and keep running.

For DAYS.

I don't even.

“When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention.”

Imagining what those delirious rants must have sounded like is making me chuckle.

Narrator: "N...no...huge! Vast...Polyphemous-like! It...so huge..."

Doctor: "What's huge? What did you see?"

Narrator: "Its...oh god...its giant fish penis! THE HORROR! THE HORROOOOORRRRRR!!!!"

Doctor: *backs away slowly*

“Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe.”

I'm also not sure what to make of the entire landmass sinking under the water again as soon as he got back in his boat. Everything about this story stopped making sense after the merman appeared.

“Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.”

Continuing the pattern of shit that makes zero sense, he's somehow associated the mermen with an obscure Levantine deity. Why would he think of Dagon before Poseidon, Neptune, Nijord, or any number of better-known sea gods? Maybe its because Dagon bears a physical resemblance to the creature he saw? If Dagon is a particularly terrifying sea god, maybe the vi-

pppfffffffffffaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!

The only possible reason I can think that he'd choose Dagon over Poseidon is because Dagon was worshipped by the Philistines - biblical enemies of the early Hebrews - and thus has vaguely negative pop culture connotations. In the world of the story, its a completely nonsensical lead for the protagonist to follow.


As a historical side-note, it is now known that Dagon wasn't actually a sea god at all. To the ancient Levantines, fish were a symbol of fecundity and prosperity. That tradition has been retained somewhat in Judaism and Christianity, where the fish is still used to represent fertility and providence in various contexts. Dagon probably had more to do with agriculture than with the ocean.

That isn't Lovecraft's mistake, though; at the time he was writing, the academic consensus was that Dagon was indeed a maritime deity. With depictions like the one above, its easy to see how archaeologists could have made that mistake, and its only relatively recently that new finds revealed the truth. So, don't blame Lovecraft for mixing up Dagon's nature, blame him for absolutely everything else about this story.

“It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men.”

Oh fuck me, not ONLY did he spend weeks running and babbling to himself after fleeing the horrible mangoldfish, but afterward he turned to morphine to cope with it and is now a broken shell of a man. That drug-addicted suicidal depression he started the story with, that excellent and intriguing hook, is all down to him watching a merman hug a rock.

“Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite.”

Another callback to him escaping the man-o-war. I want this to be an unreliable narrator.

This story would be so much less stupid if it were meant to be a commentary about closedmindedness and irrational fear. Give us a sign, Lovecraft. Anything to go off of. Anything to credit that reading. Come on man, I know you can do it...

“I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!”

And on that unintentionally comedic note, the story ends.


If there remains any ambiguity about whether this story wasn't trying to be horror, Lovecraft expands on the mermen (or at least, he introduces another race that are described similarly) in later stories, particularly "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and, indirectly, "The Call of Cthulhu." While I remember those stories being infinitely more competent than this one, they do nothing to suggest that the reader wasn't meant to be scared of Dagon the ManGoldfish and his offensively visible wang. More damning still, Lovecraft later claimed to have gotten the inspiration for this story from a nightmare. Hilariously, "Dagon" seems to have been intended as an unironic horror story.

I ran across an analysis of this story on Tor, which suggested that this was written as a metaphor for PTSD. Certainly, the penultimate paragraph ties back to the war, with the narrator fearing that the mermen will destroy humanity in the wake of our own world war. The nihilistic terror that consumed him when he saw the merman - which could just be one member of a ruinous army - could work as a parallel to PTSD stemming from the cruel realization of human frailty and impermanence.

The problem with that interpretation is that, in the actual story, there's no indication whatsoever that there will be a merman invasion. The protagonist seems to have decided that they pose a threat to humanity just by virtue of their existence. So really, who's the monster? The being who just came from fighting a brutal and pointless war and decided, on a whim, that the existence of other sapient life forms is abominable...or the being who (as far as we know) swims around, hunts whales for a living, and occasionally visits the temple? Even if we couldn't be friends with the mermen, I would find their existence comforting; even if humanity wipes itself out, at least someone will still be around to experience the world as we once did.

Its a pity. The first two thirds of the story were a great buildup.


A few years ago, someone on /tg/ shared a funny anecdote from Chaosium's "Call of Cthulhu" roleplaying game. The game is burdened by a nonsensical "sanity points" system that makes your character lose sanity whenever he or she sees something supernatural, and losing too much sanity means you have to roll on a random derangement table to see what kind of mental illness it gives you. Its not very good at psychological realism.

Anyway, as the story went, the player character's were investigating a murder in a steel mill. One of them notices an abnormality in the dog pawprints that were found in the dust near the victim; after investigating more closely, he realizes that the pawprints are bipedal. The DM made him roll to avoid sanity loss - only a very, very minor loss, and an easy roll - but he scored a critical failure. Next, he had to roll to see how many SAN points his character would lose from the failure, and got another critfail. The bipedal dog footprints made him lose so much sanity that he had to then roll on the random derrangement table, and got the result of "suicidal mania." The session ended with his character suddenly looking up from the ground, eyes wide with terror, screaming "TWWWWWOOOOO LEEEEEEGGGSSS!!!!," and throwing himself into an open incinerator.

At the time, I thought this was just a case of badly written game rules creating a nonsensical ingame event, but going by "Dagon?" That sanity system is spot on. "Two Legs" is my name for this tic of Lovecraft’s going forward.


Next time we'll return to The United Amateur in the final months of 1919 with "The White Ship."