The Books I Have Taught series is a personal reflection on the books I have taught in my classes. Their experiences often reveal interesting truths, not about the themes necessarily, but more about the outcomes and interactions I had with my students and the various paths it led me down. I hope you enjoy my reflection on the books that I have taught.
I don’t quite remember where my fascination of Lovecraftian horror began. It wasn’t something I had as a child nor very long before I decided to teach The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft. I think it originated first when I watched a Critical Role one-shot game of a Lovecraftian inspired adventure. That planted the seed that when I later began looking for short horror stories for my senior English class, a choice that I made because despite my general unwillingness to engage in the genre, I found Lovecraftian horror and committed myself to the study of it in class. Now, you might rightly question why I would choose a genre that I am unwillingly to generally engage in to study in class. There is one clear reason, that is the genre allows for exploration into ideas that other texts simply do not. They tend to explore issues that young, near adults relate to and I also appreciate that when exploring constant death and terror, literary depth is not far behind. I mean, one of my favourite movies to both watch and study is the 1960 Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock, I just don’t enjoy being scared. The reason I chose The Call of Cthulhu was simply that I found it a stronger text than the other Lovecraft story I read, At The Mountain of Madness, which mixed in a geological scientific text with, well, madness. Something that I learnt from the experience is that it is quite a challenging text, despite the short length, and rather foolishly I overestimated the capability of my students with this text. To be fair, it is complex, mainly the writing as Lovecraft tends to use academic language throughout, but there were still moments that the students understood. I take the second part, in the swamp for example, the crazed worship of Cthulhu, it was still able to be unnerving for my students. I did like the assessment, which was a text comparison between the book and a film called Cloverfield by Director Matt Reeves. I found the comparison compelling, even if the students found the film mediocre. I liked that both involved a large monster of destruction, but one caused terror through madness while the other stepped on people.
For my writing, I was inspired to add some Lovecraftian horror into a novel I was writing at the time and what I learnt is, I think it is hard. The fear of your general irrelevance is a challenging write, perhaps because I myself cannot believe in the possibility of it. I also believe that we write from our soul and I clearly did not have the fears that he did. I do not think I would ever commit myself to writing a horror book, though I have written dark tales. I suppose we all have some darkness in us, some more than others and from those we can draw our own tales. There is a story I wrote, that I edited and even tried to publish once, one that is the darkest tale I have ever written. I am not sure if I would ever want to publish it but I know for me, it was an exploration of the darkness within and while unsettling, it can also be healing, to find the open scars and begin stitching them back together. I was only able to write that tale when I was within darkness and I do not feel I could replicate it now, as I have stepped into a lighter environment. Though it did teach me an important fact of my own writing, that as it reflects my soul, the best time to write is not when I want to, but when my soul is in a space where it can tell the story through the lens of my surroundings.
I am unsure if I would teach The Call of Cthulhu again. I would like to, but I just don’t know if I currently have the students who are capable of engaging with it. There is no benefit to choosing a text that is too complex and as such, disengage my class. Still, I would like to do it again, horror is such an interesting genre, and one that has many more tales to tell.
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