Swastikas over Innsmouth?
Lovecraft, as any enthusiast knows, didn’t have the warmest or fuzziest feelings towards persons of different races. Also, though, enthusiasts know he married a Jewish woman. I don’t know precisely how Lovecraft felt on the topic, but I am fairly certain he didn’t feel quite as much ire as Benett Lovett-Graff seems to think he did in his paper “Shadows over Lovecraft: Reactionary Fantasy and Immigrant Eugenics.”
“…the most obvious and distasteful literary crime Lovecraft commits is the oblique reference he makes to Nazism through his use of symbols capable of restraining the Deep Ones” (Lovett-Graff 9). I call shenanigans on Lovett-Graff for this. The swastika is an ancient symbol. Wikipedia (the ever reliable resource) comments that it is a simple shape that “will arise independently in any basket-weaving society” due to its repeated design and the edges of the reeds in a square basket weave. This explains why the symbol has appeared in almost all Indo-European cultures and independently in Native American cultures. The swastika, even stripping away its Nazi connotations, is a powerful symbol. So powerful, in fact, that it could potentially combat the Deep Ones. It is a popular luck symbol with Hindus. My uncle moved to the U.S. from Fiji when he was in his thirties, and had to cover up a swastika tattoo. With his dark Indian complexion, he certainly wasn’t a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. It makes sense to me, then, that Lovecraft included the symbol in that light, and not as an intimation “albeit quietly, [of] his own sentiments about the very immigrants who threatened the eugenic and cultural soundness of America” (Lovett-Graff 9).
The author goes on to discuss the raid that the narrator calls upon Innsmouth in “light of the swastika meant to protect us from the Deep Ones” (11). “Shadow over Innsmouth starts with the narrator recounting the raids and arrests made in the isolated town of Innsmouth, the “deliberate burning and dynamiting-under suitable precautions-of an enormous number of cumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront” (Lovecraft 218). He suggests that those who were not in the know would pass off these raids as “one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor” (218). Lovett-Graff counters this by saying that if you take the Deep Ones at face value, read them literally, then this all seems reasonable. Burn and bomb the fish-people back to where they came from. However, when the reader places these actions in the context of Lovecraft’s racist hatred of immigrants, he’s gearing up for a fish-people holocaust. No trials were held for the Innsmouth natives, nor did they turn up in jails. They went to concentration camps (which were first called concentration camps during the second Boer war in Africa around 1900-thanks Wikipedia!) and military prisons. Some liberal groups complained, but were made to see the error of their ways and backed off. Is Lovett-Graff stretching the interpretation here? I think it's easy to forget that Lovecraft, who died in 1937, didn't have the context of WW2 that Lovett-Graff is pasting on here. While his conclusions are not illogical, I think he's stretching Lovecraft's intentions (which probably weren't so sweet to begin with).
How much is Lovett-Graff reading into the work what isn’t there? With works like “The Street” and “Horror at Red Hook” Lovecraft certainly opened himself up for such comparisons. Without a certain kitty-cat in "The Rats in the Walls" it would be much harder for modern readers to come to these conclusions. I poked around the internet trying to see if there were any sites saying “nah, he really wasn’t that bad,” and instead found a reader comment saying “As a black man I find attempts by modern people to gloss over this fact [Lovecraft's racism] far more offensive than anything H.P. Lovecraft ever wrote” (Cooper). Lovecraft’s fear of “others” infused his work and allowed him to really needle into fears that were very real at the time he was writing (and, who are we kidding, are real now.). Without his world-view, we wouldn’t have gotten the stories that we got. While we can tsk-tsk his anti-immigrant sentiments, “Shadow over Innsmouth” gives us some of the most chilling scenes in all of horror literature. The moment when the narrator discovers the deadbolt in his hotel has been removed, then later as someone (or something) slyly tries all three doors gave me chills as I read it. Lovecraft’s worldviews can’t be ignored, but I think Lovett-Graff takes the reading too far.
(If the webmaster of the HLP Archives is still reading, I'd love to hear your take on this!)
Works Cited:
Lovecraft, H.P. Black Seas of Infinity. Ed. Andrew Wheeler. New York: SFBC Science Fiction, 2001. Print.
Lovett-Graff, Bennett. “Shadows over Lovecraft: Reactionary Fantasy and Immigrant Eugenics.” Extrapolation 38.8 (Fall 1997): 175-192. Rpt. In Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
“Swastika.” Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2010.
Cooper, Seamus. “12 Days of Lovecraft” Tor.com. 2 Dec. 2009. Web. 8 March 2010.
“…the most obvious and distasteful literary crime Lovecraft commits is the oblique reference he makes to Nazism through his use of symbols capable of restraining the Deep Ones” (Lovett-Graff 9). I call shenanigans on Lovett-Graff for this. The swastika is an ancient symbol. Wikipedia (the ever reliable resource) comments that it is a simple shape that “will arise independently in any basket-weaving society” due to its repeated design and the edges of the reeds in a square basket weave. This explains why the symbol has appeared in almost all Indo-European cultures and independently in Native American cultures. The swastika, even stripping away its Nazi connotations, is a powerful symbol. So powerful, in fact, that it could potentially combat the Deep Ones. It is a popular luck symbol with Hindus. My uncle moved to the U.S. from Fiji when he was in his thirties, and had to cover up a swastika tattoo. With his dark Indian complexion, he certainly wasn’t a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. It makes sense to me, then, that Lovecraft included the symbol in that light, and not as an intimation “albeit quietly, [of] his own sentiments about the very immigrants who threatened the eugenic and cultural soundness of America” (Lovett-Graff 9).
The author goes on to discuss the raid that the narrator calls upon Innsmouth in “light of the swastika meant to protect us from the Deep Ones” (11). “Shadow over Innsmouth starts with the narrator recounting the raids and arrests made in the isolated town of Innsmouth, the “deliberate burning and dynamiting-under suitable precautions-of an enormous number of cumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront” (Lovecraft 218). He suggests that those who were not in the know would pass off these raids as “one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor” (218). Lovett-Graff counters this by saying that if you take the Deep Ones at face value, read them literally, then this all seems reasonable. Burn and bomb the fish-people back to where they came from. However, when the reader places these actions in the context of Lovecraft’s racist hatred of immigrants, he’s gearing up for a fish-people holocaust. No trials were held for the Innsmouth natives, nor did they turn up in jails. They went to concentration camps (which were first called concentration camps during the second Boer war in Africa around 1900-thanks Wikipedia!) and military prisons. Some liberal groups complained, but were made to see the error of their ways and backed off. Is Lovett-Graff stretching the interpretation here? I think it's easy to forget that Lovecraft, who died in 1937, didn't have the context of WW2 that Lovett-Graff is pasting on here. While his conclusions are not illogical, I think he's stretching Lovecraft's intentions (which probably weren't so sweet to begin with).
How much is Lovett-Graff reading into the work what isn’t there? With works like “The Street” and “Horror at Red Hook” Lovecraft certainly opened himself up for such comparisons. Without a certain kitty-cat in "The Rats in the Walls" it would be much harder for modern readers to come to these conclusions. I poked around the internet trying to see if there were any sites saying “nah, he really wasn’t that bad,” and instead found a reader comment saying “As a black man I find attempts by modern people to gloss over this fact [Lovecraft's racism] far more offensive than anything H.P. Lovecraft ever wrote” (Cooper). Lovecraft’s fear of “others” infused his work and allowed him to really needle into fears that were very real at the time he was writing (and, who are we kidding, are real now.). Without his world-view, we wouldn’t have gotten the stories that we got. While we can tsk-tsk his anti-immigrant sentiments, “Shadow over Innsmouth” gives us some of the most chilling scenes in all of horror literature. The moment when the narrator discovers the deadbolt in his hotel has been removed, then later as someone (or something) slyly tries all three doors gave me chills as I read it. Lovecraft’s worldviews can’t be ignored, but I think Lovett-Graff takes the reading too far.
(If the webmaster of the HLP Archives is still reading, I'd love to hear your take on this!)
Works Cited:
Lovecraft, H.P. Black Seas of Infinity. Ed. Andrew Wheeler. New York: SFBC Science Fiction, 2001. Print.
Lovett-Graff, Bennett. “Shadows over Lovecraft: Reactionary Fantasy and Immigrant Eugenics.” Extrapolation 38.8 (Fall 1997): 175-192. Rpt. In Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 127. Detroit: Gale, 2010.
“Swastika.” Wikipedia. 2010. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 March 2010.
Cooper, Seamus. “12 Days of Lovecraft” Tor.com. 2 Dec. 2009. Web. 8 March 2010.