Miskatonic Arcihves

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Tagged: Coercion

Themes & context

Identity and possession

Lovecraft repeatedly separates the person others recognize from the intelligence occupying a recognizable body. His stories use several different mechanisms: coercive exchanges of consciousness, physical impersonation, alien custodianship and the survival of a mind under radically altered conditions. Reading these mechanisms separately reveals how letters, habits, memories and witnesses become tests of identity when appearance fails.

8 min read · 1,506 words

Literature

The Thing on the Doorstep

The Thing on the Doorstep follows Daniel Upton’s attempt to justify shooting his closest friend by reconstructing a marriage, a series of personality exchanges and a final visit from a body that should no longer be alive. Its horror turns on the difference between recognizing a familiar body and identifying the mind inside it.

9 min read · 1,718 words

Characters

Walter Gilman

Walter Gilman is the Miskatonic student whose study of mathematics and witchcraft becomes a series of involuntary journeys in The Dreams in the Witch House. His experiences are marked by a widening gap between intellectual understanding and practical control, ending with an attempted rescue that defeats one adversary but leaves him exposed to another.

6 min read · 1,066 words