Universidad Nacional de Colombia Foreign Languages Department English: Written Communication VI Ana Maria Ayala Cante 04861283 December,

2013 At the Mountains of Madness: Fictional Horror Imagination Made by Descriptions Detailed descriptions of something let us imagine and create things that can be both fictional and horrific for us. What I contend in this paper is that through detailed descriptions of real things, At the Mountains of Madness narration is able to create horror and fiction depending on how deeper our imagination can gets to. By arguing this, some aspects will be shown and explained in order to clarify and demonstrate the power of depictions in a story. Regarding the anthropological and geological aspects which Lovecraft uses when he is describing an event or a discovered specimen, these descriptions are so detailed that the reader is able to imagine whatever it comes to his mind when he is reading these characteristics. Although some descriptions are both archaic and technical, it is not mandatory to be an expert on this field in order to imagine a strange being which is being portrayed. Objects are eight feet long all over. Six-foot, five-ridged barrel torso three and five-tenths feet central diameter, one foot end diameters. Dark gray, flexible, and infinitely tough. Seven-foot membranous wings of same color, found folded, spread out of furrows between ridges. Wing framework tubular or glandular, of lighter gray, with orifices at wing tips. (Lovecraft, 1985, p.54) It is attractive to note the way Lovecraft describes every discovered fossil in a detailed way that we, as readers, could know everything regarding its appearance. Furthermore, these descriptions made me realize the importance for the narrator to let us know what he was seeing without missing any detail.

The use of real descriptions ends in real facts which make the reader focus on what he is reading since it could be an explanation to the real fact the author is mentioning. As an example, I took the following excerpt as a way to show how the author mentions the fact that the continents were once a whole unit. As I have said, the hypothesis of Taylor, Wegener, and Joly that all continents are fragments of an original Antarctic land mass which cracked from centrifugal force and drifted apart over a technically viscous lower surface- an hypothesis suggested by such things as the complementary outlines of Africa and South America, and the way the great mountain chains are rolled and shoved up-receives striking support from this uncanny source. Maps evidently showing the Carboniferous world of an hundred million or more years ago displayed significant rifts and chasms destined later to separate Africa from the once continuous realms of Europe (then the Valusia of primal legend), Asia, Americas, and the antarctic continent. (Lovecraft, 1985, p.88) These detailed descriptions definitely bring us to start imagining what the described specimen could look like in terms of reality and naturalness. Taking into account the characteristics and aspects used in every description, note how fiction is being constructed just by using the natural world to create a specimen that does not even exist. This is the reason why my claim is that imagination is always present in the reading since the characteristics mentioned are known for us; therefore, we can create a picture of our own being, depending on the level of imagination we give to the descriptions made in the story. A second aspect that made me think about imagination connected with real descriptions is the use of real places, places that we already know or at least we have heard of them. To start with, the fact that the story starts with an expedition to the Antarctic made me start imagining several things that may happen in that place. I already knew that the Antarctic was a real place, and the way the narrator creates mystery by giving details of this place leaded me to start thinking what could be there for real.

The narrator addresses to the Antarctic as a continent that has been explored a few times before and that has a lot of hypotheses about what it was like in the past such as the existence of a tropical climate and animal life in which just some animals are still survivors. Therefore, he and his colleagues expect to find some geological remains that confirm these hypotheses and also the expectations to find more detailed information about the evolution of this continent. By doing so, the narrator starts creating some mysterious questions which engage the reader and make him keep going along the story in order to find out what were the things the explorers found in the expedition. Keeping the aspect of real places to make fiction and horror, it is interesting to see how the author uses the mountains interior to create a hidden place which is completely described when the place is founded by the geologists. As I have been saying throughout this paper, the descriptions -in this case of the places- are as detailed as realistic that it is not difficult to create an image of the place where they are. For instance, the hidden city is covered in ice, it has a lot of tunnels or entries which make it resemble a maze. While walking they found a rampart which attracted their attention and they described it as follows: This rampart, shaped like a star and perhaps three hundred feet from point to point, was built of Jurassic sandstone blocks of irregular size, averaging 6 x 8 feet in surface. There was a row of arched loopholes or windows about four feet wide and five feet high, spaced quite symmetrically along the points of the star and at its inner angles, and with the bottoms about four feet from the glaciated surface. (Lovecraft, 1985, p. 69) The characteristics are as real as detailed that we can easily think about a real rampart that has these specific characteristics. The descriptions given for every place makes the reader to involve in the scene and try to see in his imagination what the narrator is seeing in the story. Taking into account the civilization the geologists found in the hidden place, this fact leads us to relate detailed descriptions with the reality we know. The Old Ones, which were the first

civilization in supposedly occupying the Earth, are the ones with whom we can take our imagination to a deeper level. The narrator describes them as the ones who developed a lot of technology and resources in order to create their own city. There was commerce, there were soldiers, which protected the Old Ones but at the end revealed from them and kill them, there were artistic skills and materials to develop these skills. When we are trying to imagine these so called Elders, we can move and relate this description with the ones from a real civilization lets say the Aztecas, Mayas, etc. So it is more common that we portray in our mind one of these civilizations in order to understand the lifestyle of The Old Ones. This aspect also creates horror in the way that each character is so detailed that the purpose of the narrator is to leverage our own imagination to suggest and make us think in things much nastier and horrifying than anything a writer could think of. The beings moved in the sea partly by swimming - using the lateral crinoid arms - and partly by wriggling with the lower tier of tentacles containing the pseudo feet. Occasionally they accomplished long swoops with the auxiliary use of two or more sets of their fanlike folding wings. On land they locally used the pseudo feet, but now and then flew to great heights or over long distances with their wings. The many slender tentacles into which the crinoid arms branched were infinitely delicate, flexible, strong, and accurate in muscular-nervous coordination - ensuring the utmost skill and dexterity in all artistic and other manual operations. (Lovecraft, 1985, p.93) As in the excerpt, the descriptions are, again, using real facts and natural characteristics in order to make the reader create his own specimen taking into account that they were horrific beings and that, at some point, they would cause any harm to the geologists. Talking about an unknown civilization, that suddenly a group of geologists find in a not so explored mountain, is enough to start creating mystery in the story because then, it means that something important and frightened will happen.

The use of a lost civilization creates, at some point, certain kind of doubts about the real presence of any alien or being in this Antarctic continent. My claim is that what the narrator intends to do is to make us know that The Old Ones were a very ancient civilization that might existed even before the animals that were before us and that they were all killed by their soldiers which, in fact, were gigantic monsters. Or, at least, that was what my imagination could conclude about the depiction of this hidden and lost civilization. The last aspect that justifies the imagination and the creation of fictional horror as a consequence of detailed and real descriptions is that Lovecraft develops different ways in order to change the traditional and standardize horror style. As we know, an usual horror story has to do commonly with ghosts, supernatural and paranormal features. With this respect, the Lovecraft horror has to do, usually, with aliens, lost civilizations, monsters and connections with the real world. What I intend to do by mentioning the fact of a different horror story, is that this aspect also makes us start creating and developing different things in our mind that are horrible and that are not necessarily related to paranormal traits. By doing so, we are also breaking up the idea that a horror story contains just paranormal and suspense aspects. All things considered, it seems to me that this novella lets our mind work freely in order to create our own horror. The descriptions the narrator does about everything new and strange they find are enough to make the reader imagine his own picture. Depending on the descriptions and depending on the words the narrator is using, the reader is able to be as horrific as he wants. This is a novella in which the descriptions do not marginalize the readers to a certain thing. In other words, this is a horror story in which the narrator leaves some things to just imagination in spite of describing them. If a new discovering cannot be described, then, it really cannot be described (Hanagarne, 2010). Moreover, when the narrator is trying to portray

something -a place, a specimen, an event- that due to the shock it causes is difficult to describe, he just stops doing it and leaves the picture and representation of the event to the readers mind. There is nothing more horrifying and fictional than what the mind per se can create.

REFERENCES: Lovecraft, H.P (1985). At the Mountains of Madness. 3rd ed. Sauk City: WI: Arkham House. Worldsstrongestlibrarian.com (2013). At The Mountains Of Madness Book Review. [online] Retrieved from: http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/7796/at-the-mountains-of-madnessbook-review/#sthash.x06RWeui.dpuf [Accessed: 16 Dec 2013].