H.P. Lovecraft – 1917
“I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.”
Me being all dramatic when my sertraline runs out.
I have an honest bias when discussing this work. Dagon was the first story of Lovecraft’s I read, and I loved it. I am an absoloute sucker for the concept of something so grotesque and horrifying that merely looking at it sends you into an irrecoverable state of dread, paranoia and madness for the rest of your days. Of obsessing over the traumatic experience until it consumes you physically and mentally. I know that sounds very Edgar Allan Poe, but I assure you, despite being an earlier piece of writing, Dagon is quite conventionally Lovecraftian. Considering it was written by the guy.
Just a heads up, Gou Tanabe created some beautiful illustrative editions of Lovecraft’s works which I will feature here and in a few other Lovecraft based posts. His art is incredible, and I appreciate his reclaimation of work with an audience beyond Lovecraft’s ‘ideal’ in mind. Sure, there are some things that do not require visuals, or may even be better without them, I really appreciate Tanabe’s work as an artist and classical reader.
The Supernatural and Scares
Lovecraft loves his oceanic gods. Being one of the staples of the cosmic horror subgenre (mainly from Call of Cthulu) it isn’t exactly unexpected that Dagon keeps that up.
Whilst not all of his writings have a directly labeled god, they will have some sort of cosmic entity beyond mortal comprehension. Dagon however is a case of the former.
“I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my enquiries.”
Valid point.
The creature our nameless protagonist has the misfourtune of witnessing is a god of sorts. We do not know its intentions, morality, purpose or what he’s doing with the monolith. It does nothing to harm the narrator, not even something to suggest that it might. It just… looks at him.
Yet that on its own was enough to completely dismantle this man’s life.
I don’t mind Tanabe’s interpretation of the Dagon, naturally my imagination pictured it differently. But that is to be expected, if anything preferred. Lovecraft intentionally describes the Dagon so that you, without anything explicit, will picture something horrifying enough to drive our poor protagonist to madness.
“Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then.”
I found the horror of this particular text to be in the uncertainties. Whilst knowing I will be refuted for calling Lovecraft of all writers ‘discerning’, I will in this case. Dagon is shorter, it is a part of the collective mythos, so naturally not as intensive as Call of Cthulu. Though I do actually appreciate that. I appreciate that we are not told about the Dagon’s beautiful green orbs or how ‘tears fell down my cheeks’ as our protagonist runs from the god. There is a much heavier focus on the emotional implications of the interaction over the interaction itself.
Whatever our fish buddy was doing, it began to haunt the narrator. The idea of there being more ‘things’ underwater. How when one day the land sinks and dark waters rise, we will be unable to hide from these underwater creatures. He tries to seek help, but is laughed at.
The story ends on this:
“The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God that hand! The window! The window!”
If you want to go with the idea that the Dagon managed to track down this guy and was pounding his little floppy knuckles on the door, it can be assumed that our protagonist did just as he informed us he would, commit suicide. I find it interesting that the mere sight of the creature made him want to end his life rather than be confronted by its presence. He did not fear it for its intentions, the big fella could be a large slippery dog for all we know, but he feared it for its sheer grotesqueness. Little judgemental, but I’ll allow it.
Makes you wonder if it’s appearence could shatter a human beings will, what can the Dagon actually do?
Psychological
Full well knowing I am not the first person to say it; Dagon is a very good metaphor for PTSD and trauma in general. Particularly, given the context, wartime trauma. We know our protagonist was involved in a war (does not specify which) to some extent. If you thought of the actual Dagon creature being a visceral manifestation of wartime trauma that the narrator experienced, there are some decent enough ways to back it up.
Whether or not the trauma the Dagon’s appearence inflicted on the narrator was the root of his mental decline, or whether the war he was involved in was is a bit uncertain. However, for the purpose of this hypothetical reading, let’s just say the Dagon was not the cause of the trauma, but a personification of it. If the Dagon is not an actual physical entity, but a way of the narrator to cope with what he witnessed during his service. To provide some closure that the horrors he witnessed man inflict on one another was the result of some godlike creature from the depths of the ocean rather than a sadistic power struggle.
His mind was already being eaten away with unprocessed trauma, and to cope with it his brain conjured the Dagon – a fishy little boy filled to the brim with unrecognised grief, guilt, anger and regret. Hence why the creature conjured so much emotion in the narrator – and furthermore, why he ran.
Regardless, the narrator’s trauma caused him nightmares, made him the amusement of those around him and drove him to drug addiction. He resolved that this life was far too filled with suffering for him to cope with.
“It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transcient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave.”
My personal take on the concept is that our protagonist did see the Dagon originally on the island he found himself on. However in the end his post-traumatic stress fueled fears and hallucinations is what made him cause his own death. The Dagon did not drag his giant slippery feet to wherever our narrator is living just to give him a bit of a fright. I imagine he would scarce fit through the front door.
It is a combination of trauma (the Dagon itself and/or war), lack of closure (not being able to get a straight answer from our ‘hopelessly conventional’ ethnologist friend) and the resulting drug abuse and social alienation that led to the narrator’s final decision. Which, is not an uncommon case and cause for PTSD survivors.
Anyways,
Lovecraft’s Dagon has been a favourite of mine for a long time, and one I am openly biased in assessing. I appreciate it, like many other of Lovecraft’s works, for the level of reader control. You can take it as literally or metaphorically as you would like, either interpretation is just as valid and sound. It is conceptually frightening, written in a style I enjoy reading with enough psychological analysis for me to have fun deconstructing.
Overall, I give Dagon a…
Lightly Burnt Sienna 
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