The Call of Freudthulhu

Jazz-Age weird fiction writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft is well-remembered for his stories of hideous, eldritch horrors from beyond the stars, which he used as metaphors for the decay and degeneration hidden in modern society and the utter insignificance of humanity in the vastness of the cosmos. Lovecraft's most acclaimed story of all is "The Call of Cthulhu," first published in 1928, and it includes what has perhaps become his most famous creation, the anthropomorphic, bat-winged, octopus-headed Cthulhu, high priest of the Great Old Ones, a race of ancient, alien beings. In the story, Cthulhu is locked in a perpetual state of dreaming deep beneath the Pacific Ocean, neither alive nor dead, and waiting for a day when the stars will be right and it and its kin will be released to walk the Earth once more. Some Lovecraft scholars have blamed Cthulhu's octopoid appearance and the undersea location of its tomb on the author's fairly well-documented aversion to seafood. But what would Freud make of this product of one American man's nightmares?

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/cc.aspx (a link to the 1928 short story)

From a Freudian perspective, Great Cthulhu could be seen as a progenitor or "father figure," since it is both immeasurably older than humanity and the most prominent member of its race. In addition, Great Cthulhu is massive, said to be miles high and compared to a mountain. The helplessness that humans feel in its awesome presence is reminiscent of the fear a son has for his father. Thus, the scene in which the Norwegian sailor Gustaf Johansen desperately chooses to ram a steamboat into Cthulhu is clearly symbolic of the child's desire to kill their hated father. However, as in Freud's "Oedipus complex," the child realizes that overcoming his father is impossible - Cthulhu reforms shortly after having its head cleaved through by the ship. And so instead the child takes on the qualities of its "father." Besides being enormous, hungry, and inhuman, one of Cthulhu main qualities is its maddening presence, which warps the dreams and minds of sensitive individuals. Thus, in taking on the quality of Cthulhu's madness, Johansen goes insane (as does his shipmate William Briden). It is interesting to note that Lovecraft's father went insane when Lovecraft was very young, and so the author grew up under the shadow of the possible inheritance of his father's mental illness.

As already mentioned, Cthulhu is trapped in a state of dead-dreaming in which it is neither truly alive nor conscious, and has been cut off from humanity ever since it and the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh suddenly sunk beneath the sea. The sinking of R'lyeh and the "death" of Cthulhu and the other Great Old Ones is symbolic of the repression of a negative, damaging memory in humanity's collective psyche - after all, what's more damaging than the realization that we are all completely insignificant and only so much food to the true masters of the Earth? However, the earthquake which caused R'lyeh to rise to the surface during
the course of the story allows Cthulhu's presence to infect the dreams of sensitive humans, causing horrible nightmares, suicides, increased cult activity, and general unrest across the world. In this case, the earthquake and rise of R'lyeh represent the human psyche's failure to fully remove the memory of Cthulhu by repression. The suicides and insane behaviors that follow are the symptoms of humanity's negative emotions being channeled elsewhere in other parts of life, since the people affected are not aware that Cthulhu is the cause. The couplet discussed in the story, "That is not dead which can eternal lie/And with strange aeons even death may die," summarizes the nature of repression - the repressed bad memory never truly goes away, it just remains hidden until a time when it can emerge and affect the person once again.

Cthulhu's degenerate worshipers, however, have already been driven insane by the knowledge of Cthulhu's existence, much like Johansen. They behave in irrational ways not deemed appropriate in normal society, by engaging in acts of human sacrifices and rites of orgiastic intensity. Clearly, the Cthulhu cultists are representations of hysterics. The symptoms of their hysteria are their obsessive desire for secrecy and the murderous lengths to which they will go to preserve that secrecy and serve their "god," Great Cthulhu. There is also a strong sexual element to the cult, as the gruesome rites that New Orleans  Inspector John Legrasse witnesses take place with the cultists completely naked. The cultists also believe that when the Great Old Ones return, they will be taught new ways to shout, kill, revel, and enjoy themselves, and the Earth will flame with "a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom." This is very clearly a Freudian warning against the dangers of too much sexual freedom.

To take the metaphor even further, the opening of Cthulhu's tomb has strong connotations of sexuality in young children. The alien and untrustworthy geometry of R'lyeh hints at the obscure and mystifying nature of sexual intercourse to the mind of a child. The way in which the crew of the Emma resolve to open the massive door out of curiosity, despite their growing feelings of fear, is not unlike the resolve of young children to uncover the truth about sex (where babies come from), even though knowing sexual material too early would be harmful for them. The massive door itself and the deep darkness beyond represent the female genitalia, and it is then the author's aversion to such which is evidenced by the description of the awful smell and the darkening of the sun. The tomb itself in this case symbolizes the missing "mother figure," which the crew desire to enter, but they are stopped by the presence of the Cthulhu "father figure" which emerges from within. Finally, the "child" crew's worst fears are realized as they are devoured by Cthulhu, symbolizing their punishment and the realization of the "castration anxiety" they felt upon reaching the island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHuY2wXTd0o (a link to the trailer for the 2005 film adaptation)

Please note that the content of this post does not in any way represent my personal views on Lovecraft's work. And maybe it is also worth noting that Lovecraft himself took a very dim view of Freud's "puerile symbolism," as he refers to it in another of his short stories, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" (1919). Also, if you haven't read the "The Call of Cthulhu" or any of Lovecraft's other works yet, I highly recommend that you do!
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