Present-Ly Safe: The Anthropocentricism of Time in H. P. Lovecraft's Fiction (Critical Essay‪)‬

While H. P. Lovecraft's work is populated by monsters and aliens, creatures from far-flung dimensions, and undying beasts older than the universe itself, it is also inhabited by humans--fragile, ignorant, frightened individuals who can only loosely be defined as "protagonists." These individuals have no hope for survival in the face of the cosmic terrors that confront them; they are far weaker and much less intelligent than the creatures that invade their lives. Humans are little more than ants, struggling to build pointless hills of civilization in an uncaring and vast wilderness. That Lovecraft had no illusions of humanity's supremacy in the universe is well established. (1) His fiction perpetually reiterates the idea that Donald Burleson, in his essay "On Lovecraft's Themes: Touching the Glass," refers to as "denied primacy"--the concept that, "as human beings on this planet, we were not first, will not be last, and have never been foremost" (136). Humankind, outmatched by myriad alien forces and holding no special place in the grand scheme of existence, may appear impotent to defend itself against ever-impending doom and disaster. This is not entirely the case. Lovecraft's stories, in particular "He" and "The Shadow Out of Time," exhibit a unique utilization of temporality, one which allows humans to hide behind the walls of the present and shield themselves from the horrific entities lurking just out of reach in the past and the future. Indeed, within these stories, and perhaps throughout all Lovecraft's work, the very dimension of time is an entirely psychological human construct, developed by humans, for humans, as a defense mechanism against a hostile, uncaring, ever-encroaching universe. Lovecraft's "He" follows an unnamed narrator into a world of armchair time-travel, in which the curtains that separate past from present and present from future are, literally, torn away. The story begins innocuously enough, with its narrator wandering New York City alleyways at night to avoid the throng of humanity and the despoliation of peace by technological progress. As he walks, he witnesses buildings lose their polished modernity to the deepening shadows and remarks that "darkness calls forth what little of the past still hovers wraithlike about" (214). Such sentiment is more than mere metaphorical musing on the past's causal influence upon the present. Indeed, the statement has its basis in the concrete, physical substance of reality, as becomes evident when, during his nocturnal stroll, the narrator meets the titular "He," a mysterious, antiquated gentleman who reveals to the narrator that he can exercise "some very remarkable qualities [of will] [...] over every variety of force and substance in nature" (217).