Do characters in Lovecraft stories actually go mad?

[Yora]

I just read someone writing the common piece of knowledge that in Lovecrafts stories, learning about the true nature of the universe makes people go mad. But is that actually true?
Right now, I can remember only two characters who went really mad, in At the Mountains of Madness and The Haunter of the Dark. The first one doesn't have have any understanding of what's going on (while the protagonist who does stays sane) and the other one is actually hunted by a monster that is going to kill him. And all the evil sorcerers also seem to have their things very well together.

[Eldan]

The Call of Cthulhu might count. I'm not at home, so I don't have the full text here, but I think the character telling the story of the encounter was at least somewhat incoherent. Of course, he had also been drifting in the pacific for ages without food or water, after losing his crew and fighting a giant monstser.

Apart from that...

I think The Rats in the Walls (I think that was the title, it might be slightly wrong) ends with a more or less mad narrator.

Edit: of course, the text is online:

Once my foot slipped near a horribly yawning brink, and I had a moment of ecstatic fear. I must have been musing a long time, for I could not see any of the party but the plump Capt. Norrys. Then there came a sound from that inky, boundless, farther distance that I thought I knew; and I saw my old black cat dart past me like a winged Egyptian god, straight into the illimitable gulf of the unknown. But I was not far behind, for there was no doubt after another second. It was the eldritch scurrying of those fiend-born rats, always questing for new horrors, and determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth’s centre where Nyarlathotep, the mad faceless god, howls blindly to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players.
My searchlight expired, but still I ran. I heard voices, and yowls, and echoes, but above all there gently rose that impious, insidious scurrying; gently rising, rising, as a stiff bloated corpse gently rises above an oily river that flows under endless onyx bridges to a black, putrid sea. Something bumped into me—something soft and plump. It must have been the rats; the viscous, gelatinous, ravenous army that feast on the dead and the living. . . . Why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things? . . . The war ate my boy, damn them all . . . and the Yanks ate Carfax with flames and burnt Grandsire Delapore and the secret . . . No, no, I tell you, I am not that daemon swineherd in the twilit grotto! It was not Edward Norrys’ fat face on that flabby, fungous thing! Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died! . . . Shall a Norrys hold the lands of a de la Poer? . . . It’s voodoo, I tell you . . . that spotted snake . . . Curse you, Thornton, I’ll teach you to faint at what my family do! . . . ’Sblood, thou stinkard, I’ll learn ye how to gust . . . wolde ye swynke me thilke wys? . . . Magna Mater! Magna Mater! . . . Atys . . . Dia ad aghaidh ’s ad aodann . . . agus bas dunach ort! Dhonas ’s dholas ort, agus leat-sa! . . . Ungl . . . ungl . . . rrrlh . . . chchch . . .
That is what they say I said when they found me in the blackness after three hours; found me crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat. Now they have blown up Exham Priory, taken my ******-Man away from me, and shut me into this barred room at Hanwell with fearful whispers about my heredity and experiences. Thornton is in the next room, but they prevent me from talking to him. They are trying, too, to suppress most of the facts concerning the priory. When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of a hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering, scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.

Or in Cthulhu:
On April 12th the derelict was sighted; and though apparently deserted, was found upon boarding to contain one survivor in a half-delirious condition and one man who had evidently been dead for more than a week. The living man was clutching a horrible stone idol of unknown origin, about a foot in height, regarding whose nature authorities at Sydney University, the Royal Society, and the Museum in College Street all profess complete bafflement, and which the survivor says he found in the cabin of the yacht, in a small carved shrine of common pattern.
This man, after recovering his senses, told an exceedingly strange story of piracy and slaughter.

[hamishspence]

Not sure about mad - but the narrator of The Shadow over Innsmouth finally embraces his heritage as part-Deep One at the end of the narration, after having gone through some episodes of behaviour seen as mad by other people.

[Yora]

Yes, he's pretty mad. But that seems to have very little to do with learning of the existance of greater cosmic powers. He was already quite unstable to begin with, got lost alone in a dark cave with very dangerous creatures, and his madness is focused on rats. It does not seem like a case to me in which knowledge made him go mad.


Not sure about mad - but the narrator of The Shadow over Innsmouth finally embraces his heritage as part-Deep One at the end of the narration, after having gone through some episodes of behaviour seen as mad by other people.
But that's a physical change that turns him into something else.

Madness does come up frequently, but I don't think it's ever caused by "I read the book".

[Eldan]

Fair enough. Yeah, if you argue like that, none of them really go mad from revelation alone. There's always darkness, monsters, stress, maybe death.

Of course, I never really believed the "mad from the revelation" interpretation either.

[Yora]

Yes, and my point is that it's wrong. :smallamused:

The more I look at it, Lovecrafts own stories seem to be a very different thing from the Cthulhu Mythos.
Just like most Conan related stuff has very little resamblance to Howards stories.

[Eldan]

Nyarlathotep, maaaaaybe? Society collapses at the end. But a lot of it seems more mind control than anything.

[hamishspence]

It may be something of a sliding scale - reading a book won't cause complete breakdown - but it might cause troubled dreams. And if the character behaves in an obsessive manner afterward, it may seem like "going mad" to those who don't know what's going on.

With witnessing a full-scale Great Old One, having a more dramatic effect.

[BeerMug Paladin]

I don't really recall full madness being that common a thing in Lovecraft stories. But what does seem to happen to people is being disturbed by knowing the truth. At the very least, knowing what is true is portrayed as an unsettling thought and it seems quite frequent that the characters lament the glimpse of the unknown world they were misofrtunate enough to recieve. Other people who managed not to have the same experience are lucky to still be ignorant of how fragile their world is.

If one values being happy and knowing the truth of things, maybe being forced to come to grips that you can't really have both at the same time forces some crisis of values that is hard to reconcile. Do you hide the truth from people to keep them happy, or do you condemn others to a life of misery? That would not be a fun choice to make. And if you don't reveal it to others, you are alone in misery.

I think this is probably the dilemma most of those characters are facing, whether or not they exhibit more direct madness. And it would lead to a disturbed, and unhappy life if nothing else. It also bears noting that melancholy or chronic depression can be considered a mental disorder, and a character who has had these sorts of truths revealed to them often appear to suffer from it. Or seem to think that they always will.

As for sorcerers and cultists being able to cope, they do so by entirely abondoning values that one would consider human values. So in terms of being able to do things, they can be functional, but they do it by twisting their own psyche into something dark and inhuman. IE, humans can maybe survive in this world, but it requires us to abandon those things that we consider most important.

[comicshorse]

It seems to me that the narrator of 'Pickman's Model' if not driven mad has been traumatized by what he saw and is now drinking heavily to help him cope with it


Yes, he's pretty mad. But that seems to have very little to do with learning of the existance of greater cosmic powers. He was already quite unstable to begin with, got lost alone in a dark cave with very dangerous creatures, and his madness is focused on rats. It does not seem like a case to me in which knowledge made him go mad.

And I'd partially disagree with this I 'd say its definitely the knowledge of what his family has done and the mysteries the house concealed that drove him mad (and I always assumed the rats don't actually exist they are just product of the narrator's insanity)

I could also think of a couple of Ramsay Campbell stories of the Mythos where people go insane but as there not by HPL himself I'm not sure they'd count

[GolemsVoice]

There's also the story of the guy who finds out that his mother was some kind of ape from Africa, who sets himself on fire. In this case, it was exactly the revelation that hit him.

However, in general, I agree with Yora's point. A lot of his protagonists are temporarily disturbed by what they learn of whitness, and some go strange after spending a bit too much time with stuff they were not meant to know (see the Whateleys), but the popculture "read a book and go crazy" variant is actually quite rare.

[Tono]

Its been forever since I read Lovecraft, but does the Color Out of Space Count? I seem to remember madness in that and a quick wiki check says it might count.

If I remember Lovecraft though, there was plenty of madness, but it was always with 'NPCs.' The narrator is generally just looking in at someone else as they experience the full effect of whats happening. All I can think of is the X-Files. In most Lovecraft we seem to be following Scully around as she dips in what ever is happening.

[danzibr]

Hmm. I've only read about a third of the Necronomicon, but I can't recall anyone going insane. Plenty of holy-sh**-let's-get-out-of-here fear, but no insanity.

I need to finish that book. But he uses so many big words... :P

[Fralex]

To varying degrees and in different ways, yes. One story ends with the narrator coming so close to glimpsing a horrifying truth in a dream that he must never fall asleep again. Another ends up terrified of the night sky, for fear the dreaded stars he learned about are watching. One story begins with the narrator saying that his only remaining comfort is that he knows far too much for Them to let him live. A bunch of stories end with the characters almost certainly traumatized beyond help.
For the most part these people go mad in that the dark knowledge leaves them unable to function as normal humans anymore, even if they are still quite lucid. But that's the thing. By normal human standards, their beliefs and behaviors are completely insane now.

[Zyzzyva]

I think it's more of a Derleth King-In-Yellow thing, yeah, coupled with Chaosium mechanics. But the Mountains of Madness guy explicitly learns something the protagonist doesn't, and that drives him insane; so it's not like the split-second-vision-lose-3d10-SAN aspect is altogether missing.


There's also the story of the guy who finds out that his mother was some kind of ape from Africa, who sets himself on fire.

Oh, Lovecraft. :smallannoyed: No subtext there, nope!

[the_druid_droid]

Its been forever since I read Lovecraft, but does the Color Out of Space Count? I seem to remember madness in that and a quick wiki check says it might count.


If you read between the lines a little, Color is more about alien parasitism than madness per se. Any weird behavior on the part of the family in that story falls more in line with side effects of playing host to the creature than anything else, although you could call it madness, I suppose. It's not really the sort that people usually associate with HPL's stories, though.

[Closet_Skeleton]

If you read between the lines a little, Color is more about alien parasitism than madness per se.

I thought it was more about radiation sickness, but the Colour is so different to any biological cellular organism that I don't know how you'd necessarily tell the difference.

Still, nobody goes mad without being sick first or having long term exposure.

[Clertar]

In Lovecraft's tales and novels, we always find the protagonist as a narrator, taking us through the story from a pretty mundane point of departure through some adventure, which ends with the horror/ mystery climax or revelation. We do not find babbling mad characters, but I think that's because of a few reasons.

First, being "mad" doesn't mean rocking back and forth in a straitjacket like a cartoon. Someone like Walter Bishop in Fringe is mad, for example, while still being bright and (mostly) coherent. That could be the

Then, the nature of the narration in those stories makes it pretty impossible to have a Bugs Bunny type of mad protagonist. The same person is narrating it from the beginning, so he can't just go completely bonkers once the story he's telling hits the end. And it would be a stylistic decision that means a big investment and a loss of narrative resources, to have it all narrated by an incoherent narrator from the beginning.

Having a first-person narrator is always a very artificial thing, nobody would write an account like a Lovecraft tale, so not having a narrator that writes like someone clinically diagnosed with some severe madness is not less artificial than having the Innsmouth guy writing a novel as his testament. (Although that could actually be seen as a clear sign of madness, actually xD)

There's also the issue of that "mad" is. Someone who's very careful and paranoid about government black ops initiatives (ala Person of Interest) would be judged as mad, right? Same thing with someone who journeyed through a Lovecraftian hell and made it back with disturbing knowledge, upon which he then acted.

[the_druid_droid]

I thought it was more about radiation sickness, but the Colour is so different to any biological cellular organism that I don't know how you'd necessarily tell the difference.

Still, nobody goes mad without being sick first or having long term exposure.

Well, the mother in particular talks about something biting or feeding off her, and although she's technically 'insane' at that point in the story, the subtext is that she's giving a fairly reliable picture of what's actually happening on some level, which is why I consider it to be a story about parasitism.

Most of the talk about something behaving like radiation, in the sense of poisoning the farm, comes from the family and their neighbors as a plausible explanation for the weird aftermath of the meteor. Since they don't know what's happening it first, I typically read that as them not understanding the Color's parasitic life cycle or its semi-sentience at that point and thus attributing things to general space badness (which a modern reader would probably take as owing to radiation or similar physical effects).

[veti]

First, being "mad" doesn't mean rocking back and forth in a straitjacket like a cartoon. Someone like Walter Bishop in Fringe is mad, for example, while still being bright and (mostly) coherent.

This. Being mad doesn't necessarily mean what you may be imagining. A lot of the stories end with the narrator, while still remaining perfectly coherent, "embracing the darkness" and venerating the Old Ones. That's "mad" from the perspective of anyone who cares a jot about the welfare of the human race. Any narrator who finds himself[1] writing "Cthulhu ftaghn!" or "Ia! Nyarlathotep!" has most likely already crossed that line at least temporarily, no matter how coherent the rest of their narrative.

The rules of Call of Cthulhu, which is surely the poster child for "people going nutso from knowing too much", clearly spell out that a character who drops to zero SAN becomes an NPC/villain. So SAN is really a proxy for "alignment".


[1] I'm pretty sure they're always male.

[Blackhawk748]

Well the main character in the Lurking Fear is pretty messed up afterward, the guy who looked in the telescope in The Dunwich Horror is also messed up real bad, but ya it usually isnt "read a book" and lose 2d10 San, though that can happen if the book induces visions or something.

Honestly what most of the Narrators experience is closer to PTSD than what we conventionally think of madness, so its usually drug abuse, alcohol abuse, insomnia etc instead of straight-jacket-rocking-in-corner.

[Giggling Ghast]

Temporary insanity is fairly common -virtually all of his protagonists freak out at some point - but permanent insanity does occur at times. The main character of The Rats in the Walls goes mad and has to be locked up in an asylum, for instance.

[Lord Loss]

I've always read Dagon as being almost entirely about human insanity, in fact, the encounter with Lovecraftian horrors experienced by the protagonist can be interepreted as a bout of insanity caused by hunger, thirst, disorientation, stress, etc. Beyond that, I found it to be implied that the thing that chases the protagonist to his home at the very end is a hallucination. The same claim can be made about the protagonist's experiences in The Music of Eric Zahn Many characters in Lovecraft's tales also exhibit extreme obsessive or anxious behavior, for instance Herbert West in former case.

I feel like Lovecraft's works feature lots of characters uncovering the true nature of the universe, and lots of characters going insane - but not necessarily both. Many of the ''revelations'' experienced by characters can, however, be viewed as bouts of insanity in their own right.

[Raimun]

See, what you do is that you max your SAN-score (a derived stat).

If your chance to succeed a SAN-check is at the start 70%-80% (or more?), it should take a long time for you to go mad.

[GolemsVoice]

Even the CoC game however has mechanics for temporary insanity when the character looses too much SAN at once. And that's the kind of insanity most protagonists fall into, the shock and disgust at having seen or learned something they were definitely not meant to know.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Characters go crazy in Lovecraft, but it's very rarely the case that you have a permanent mind-snap out of the blue, or just from learning information. It's the same with the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game, actually - even though fainting spells and temporary bouts of being out of one's mind are fairly common, and long-term neuroses can start to pile up as you get more and more involved with the mythos, it takes a large number of exposures to things far more terrible than just eldritch tomes to render a character Permanently Insane - or getting really unlucky when you glimpse the truly mind-bending, like the true form of Big C or a giant avatar of an Outer God.

[Raimun]

Even the CoC game however has mechanics for temporary insanity when the character looses too much SAN at once. And that's the kind of insanity most protagonists fall into, the shock and disgust at having seen or learned something they were definitely not meant to know.

Hmm, I've never even had temporary insanity in CoC-RPG. I've just lost a point or two of sanity at a time. I've usually rolled a pretty good POW-stat, so SAN-checks have been easy to pass.

The way I see it, my characters might have been shaken or rattled but they've still kept it together.

Besides, if the characters went completely crazy at the mere sight of a book or even one supernatural phenomenon, wouldn't the story grind to a halt? Some forms of insanity might render the character completely unusable. Without player characters there is no game and even books usually need a view point character. If this happens, it's usually at the end.

[KillingAScarab]

Yes, he's pretty mad. But that seems to have very little to do with learning of the existance of greater cosmic powers. He was already quite unstable to begin with, got lost alone in a dark cave with very dangerous creatures, and his madness is focused on rats. It does not seem like a case to me in which knowledge made him go mad.


I don't really recall full madness being that common a thing in Lovecraft stories. But what does seem to happen to people is being disturbed by knowing the truth. At the very least, knowing what is true is portrayed as an unsettling thought and it seems quite frequent that the characters lament the glimpse of the unknown world they were misofrtunate enough to recieve. Other people who managed not to have the same experience are lucky to still be ignorant of how fragile their world is.


And I'd partially disagree with this I 'd say its definitely the knowledge of what his family has done and the mysteries the house concealed that drove him mad (and I always assumed the rats don't actually exist they are just product of the narrator's insanity)I may need to go back and re-read "The Rats in the Walls" but it was my understanding that, while it may not be a cornerstone of the universe which is unveiled to Delapore (the narrator), the Cthulhu mythos plays some part in inspiring the things which his line and the Exham cult did. I also had the impression that Delapore's form of madness involves him actually experiencing his family history.

Finally, the "rats" were not rats at all. It was a story inspired by Lovecraft's brand of racism, where if human bloodlines (things we could call ethnicity today, rather than race) were allowed to intermingle enough you would end up with sub-human abominations (which Anglo-Normans ruled over, since the mixing of Angles and Normans wasn't held to the same standard in his mind). While I admit, the idea for the "rats" was a very creepy line of thought which has been... memorable, it was the fact that there was a subterranean world built around them (or at least a city) which brings the story to a level of horror where it fits well into the mythos (although which elder god (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rats_in_the_Walls#Connections) is mentioned is confusing). Delapore may not have found a disturbing universal truth, but what Delapore discovered was a piece of the world which wasn't as he thought.

[McStabbington]

Hmm, I've never even had temporary insanity in CoC-RPG. I've just lost a point or two of sanity at a time. I've usually rolled a pretty good POW-stat, so SAN-checks have been easy to pass.

The way I see it, my characters might have been shaken or rattled but they've still kept it together.

Besides, if the characters went completely crazy at the mere sight of a book or even one supernatural phenomenon, wouldn't the story grind to a halt? Some forms of insanity might render the character completely unusable. Without player characters there is no game and even books usually need a view point character. If this happens, it's usually at the end.

Well, it's important to remember that "madness" is a term that doesn't have a clinical definition so much as a definition that lies at the fuzzy intersection of pop culture, medicine and the law. Most people, when they think of "madness", have some idea of mental illness, but they tend to associate it with characteristics you only see in extremely severe diseases like mid-stage alzheimers or the most severe cases of schizophrenia, where your mind (or so they are imagining) is like a file cabinet with all the files dumped on the floor, and you're just reading files at random regardless of connection.

A person whose mind is completely coherent, but proceeds from a premise that is not based on reality (or at least, a reality the average person wants to accept, since this is the CoC-verse), may well meet legal standards for insanity like the M'Naghton rule, where a person is insane if at the time of a crime the defendant 1) operated under an error in reasoning, 2) caused by a defect of mind, that rendered him either 3a) unable to understand what he was doing or 3b) unable to appreciate the rightness or wrongness of his actions if he did understand them, but nevertheless fall well short of this pop culture conception of "insanity".

[Raimun]

Well, it's important to remember that "madness" is a term that doesn't have a clinical definition so much as a definition that lies at the fuzzy intersection of pop culture, medicine and the law. Most people, when they think of "madness", have some idea of mental illness, but they tend to associate it with characteristics you only see in extremely severe diseases like mid-stage alzheimers or the most severe cases of schizophrenia, where your mind (or so they are imagining) is like a file cabinet with all the files dumped on the floor, and you're just reading files at random regardless of connection.

A person whose mind is completely coherent, but proceeds from a premise that is not based on reality (or at least, a reality the average person wants to accept, since this is the CoC-verse), may well meet legal standards for insanity like the M'Naghton rule, where a person is insane if at the time of a crime the defendant 1) operated under an error in reasoning, 2) caused by a defect of mind, that rendered him either 3a) unable to understand what he was doing or 3b) unable to appreciate the rightness or wrongness of his actions if he did understand them, but nevertheless fall well short of this pop culture conception of "insanity".

Good points.

However, I was thinking about catatonia, delusions and similar types of insanity that would render a character in a book (or in a game) unable to function as an "investigator"-type of character that would be able to advance the plot.

Heck, even an insanity that alters the character's behavior could grind the story to a halt.

What I'm trying to say, Raymond Chandler said better*:

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”


*Though, actually about private detectives in general.

[Raimun]

Didn't the musician in "The Music of Erich Zahn" actually die from glimpsing Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know? :smalleek:

So? Dying is not a form of insanity.

[Grinner]

A person whose mind is completely coherent, but proceeds from a premise that is not based on reality (or at least, a reality the average person wants to accept, since this is the CoC-verse), may well meet legal standards for insanity like the M'Naghton rule, where a person is insane if at the time of a crime the defendant 1) operated under an error in reasoning, 2) caused by a defect of mind, that rendered him either 3a) unable to understand what he was doing or 3b) unable to appreciate the rightness or wrongness of his actions if he did understand them, but nevertheless fall well short of this pop culture conception of "insanity".

I pretty much came here to say this.

It's been a while since I've read any Lovecraftian stories, but it's important to remember that the characters in such stories are typically fully coherent. However, if they were to ever open up about what they're thinking to another human being, they would, at the very least, receive some very nervous glances. They might see strange and wondrous things, but all the village sees is a butt-naked drug addict running wild through the streets.

[Raimun]

Hmm, of course a perfectly sane man in mythos-world would appear to be barking mad, if he were to talk about in great detail of his battle (that actually really happened) with the mi-go, or some other small monster. This is assuming of course that he doesn't have any evidence to back up his story.

Let's say a man would go to a jungle and see an animal that's wildly different (it's the size of a great dog but is green, has six limbs and three eyes, something like that, I don't know) than anything that has a proper scientific classification. So, this beast that no human being has seen before would attack him and he would shoot it in self-defense. Then it would fall off the cliff in its death throes and the stream of water at the bottom would carry the carcass away. If he were to report this, no one would believe him as they would assume he's either a liar or a madman.

You know, there was a time when people in Europe didn't belive in the existence of elephants when they heard stories about them.

[Zyzzyva]

Hmm, of course a perfectly sane man in mythos-world would appear to be barking mad, if he were to talk about in great detail of his battle (that actually really happened) with the mi-go, or some other small monster. This is assuming of course that he doesn't have any evidence to back up his story.

Let's say a man would go to a jungle and see an animal that's wildly different (it's the size of a great dog but is green, has six limbs and three eyes, something like that, I don't know) than anything that has a proper scientific classification. So, this beast that no human being has seen before would attack him and he would shoot it in self-defense. Then it would fall off the cliff in its death throes and the stream of water at the bottom would carry the carcass away. If he were to report this, no one would believe him as they would assume he's either a liar or a madman.

You know, there was a time when people in Europe didn't belive in the existence of elephants when they heard stories about them.

When was this time? Livy's been part of the curriculum since forever. :smallconfused:

And I think your putative explorer would be much more likely tagged as "liar" or even "fabulist" than "madman". I'm not sure what kind of story you'd need to come back with to be classed as mad - maybe Lemuel Gulliver-grade misanthropy? - but "I killed a Mi-Go" isn't enough.

[HandofShadows]

A couple of stories where the character has some major mental problems are "The Horror at Red Hook", "From Beyond" and "Herbert West: Reanimator".

[Raimun]

When was this time? Livy's been part of the curriculum since forever. :smallconfused:


Way back. After a few centuries since the collapse of Roman Empire, most europeans would put elephants to same group with griffons and other mythological creatures that may or may not exist. Their chances to see an elephant wasn't that much greater than their chances to see a griffon. Books and education weren't such a widespread thing back then, so there was no way to check.

In fact, when the europeans first discovered the platypus and one of them sent a pelt and a drawing of the animal back to Britain, the scientist there thought first that it was a hoax.

[Zyzzyva]

Way back. After a few centuries since the collapse of Roman Empire, most europeans would put elephants to same group with griffons and other mythological creatures that may or may not exist. Their chances to see an elephant wasn't that much greater than their chances to see a griffon. Books and education weren't such a widespread thing back then, so there was no way to check.

In fact, when the europeans first discovered the platypus and one of them sent a pelt and a drawing of the animal back to Britain, the scientist there thought first that it was a hoax.

Platypus isn't an elephant, though. It's a weird animal the 18th C had trouble with because it's weird according to the general scheme of How Mammals Work. And griffons and unicorns totally exist (unicorns are big and grey and run around Ethiopia with elephants!)

Also, High Middle Ages as "way back". You're cute. :smalltongue:

[DavidSh]

It seems likely that skeptics about elephants were rare. Where else do the tusks imported for ivory come from? If one ever makes it to the nearest cathedral, there should be some ivory carvings there. And a tusk carved as a hunting horn was known as an olifant -- see for example the Chanson de Roland.

[Bulldog Psion]

So? Dying is not a form of insanity.

True, I'll remove my original post as stupid and non-topical.

[Bhu]

The 'read a book and go bonkers' trope is more attributable to Lovecraft's followers than HPL himself. A lot of post Lovecraft stories end with the protagonist running about screaming "What's going on!?!" before reading (insert book here) and saying "Oh that's what's going on. We're all pretty buggered aren't we?"


Plus a lot of the madness in his stories can be discounted as the supposedly insane person actually knows some truth about reality no one else believes in and acts accordingly. If I somehow discover media is manipulated by psionic bunnies the world over, and no one else believes me, I am insane by their world view. If the rabbits are subsequently discovered or simply give up their secrecy in an overt grab for power, it will come as small relief to the one person who knew all along, and who has been getting shot up with thorazine in an asylum for several years. Come to think of it, a lot of the people in lunatic asylums in lovecraftian stories are probably less insane from what they know, than the trauma inflicted upon them by their clueless physicians. "Once we hook Jeb up to this electric chair twice a day and give him a lobotomy and some lithium, he'll be a responsible member of society again. Or..ya know...a vegetable."

[Kalmageddon]

Tons of people go mad in Lovecraft's original stories but it's never (as far as I recall) from simply reading the Necronomicon or similar books. In fact, the Necronomicon is portrayed as being known by virtually any erudite character and most of them are the good guys, that use the knowledge of the book to save the day or at least their life, like in "The Dunwich Horror" a ritual from the Necronomicon is used at the end to solve the situation.