The Colour Out of Space

“It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night.”

One of the overwhelming themes of “The Colour Out of Space” and many of Lovecraft’s stories is the idea of human beings coming in contact with the incomprehensible and unimaginable, things so alien that even to see them may drive the viewer “mad.” Something has infected this region that humans aren’t meant to understand, and it exerts a subtle influence over people’s minds.

“[T]he secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.”

This line is reminiscent of one of Lovecraft’s better-known quotations from The Road to Madness: “But more wonderful than the lore of old men and the lore of books is the secret lore of ocean […]; for ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and the dreams of Time” (Lovecraft, H. P. The Road to Madness: Twenty-Nine Tales of Terror. Random House Publishing Group, 2011).

For all his love of the ocean, Lovecraft often depicted it as a keeper of secrets and the origin of many of his eldritch horrors: the deep ones, Dagon, and Cthulhu asleep and dreaming in his dead city of R’Lyeh.

“Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in.”

Haze, perspective, and chiaroscuro all refer to effects of light, shadow, and depth-perception. The agency that infects the region gives off a frequency of light that the human eye is not able to detect, so it makes sense that a viewer would have a sense of visual distortion.

“[The fragment] displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown.”

A bit tongue-in-cheek. Lovecraft was extremely fond of terms like: “bizarre optical properties.” It highlights his opinion that conventional science tends to dismiss anything outside its established rules.

“The colour […] was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all.”

Lovecraft faces a tricky task in trying to get the reader to imagine the unimaginable. He raises the question of how one describes a colour. One can point to a colour and say, “that is red” or “blue,” but one cannot describe a colour but by analogy. In the case of the alien blight, the human eye doesn’t have the rods and cones to properly detect it.

“At the end of the tests the college scientists were forced to own that they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.”

further. Lovecraft is teasing both readers and characters with a glimpse of the unknown and then showing us that it is unknowable. This in accordance with his dictum from his 1927 essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature” that “[t]he oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Lovecraft, H. P. The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature. Hippocampus Press, 2000).

“When [the fragment] had gone, no residue was left behind, and in time the professors felt scarcely sure they had indeed seen with waking eyes that cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside; that lone, weird message from other universes and other realms of matter, force, and entity.”

Similar to number seven above, fathomless gulfs evoke the loneliness and isolation of the first line of the story. The author’s description of the aerolite as a message emphasizes its alienness by contrast with “lone” and “other.”

“In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before.”

Another writer might describe the ways in which the woodchuck’s body had changed, trying to evoke horror with strangeness. Lovecraft has been known to describe hideous creatures in great detail when it suited him. Here, however, his point is to challenge the reader to imagine the unimaginable—particularly what expression a woodchuck might wear that no one has ever seen.

“The trees budded prematurely around Nahum’s and at night they swayed ominously in the wind. Nahum’s second son Thaddeus, a lad of fifteen, swore that they swayed also when there was no wind […]”

Trees budding prematurely seem relatively harmless, and branches moving in the wind might be disturbing but not abnormal. Following those two images—the benign and the unremarkable—the moving trees take the reader by surprise, making the image seem the more unnatural.

“The bad fruit of the fall was freely mentioned, and it went from mouth to mouth that there was poison in Nahum’s ground.”

This is one of Lovecraft’s subtle religious references. It is also rich with double meanings and word play. Superficially, it appears to be a simple, straightforward statement. Underneath, it invokes Eden and the fall.

“It was really lucky for Ammi that he was not more imaginative. Even as things were, his mind was bent ever so slightly; but had he been able to connect and reflect upon all the portents around him he must inevitably have turned a total maniac.”

A person of small imagination might be startled by a sound in the darkness, but he assumes only ordinary and familiar causes. It’s the imaginative who terrify themselves with the most fearful and fantastical horrors. Ammi may be frightened by what he finds in front of him, but at least he’s not imaginative enough to contemplate the horrors of an infinite and indifferent universe.

“It must be a judgment of some sort; though [Nahum] could not fancy what for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lord’s ways so far as he knew.”

Nahum still believes, despite all evidence, that there is a personal god who cares for his creatures and that righteousness in God’s eyes should be a protection against evil. The point of the story is that the universe doesn’t care about Earth, which is insignificant, much less humankind. Whatever it is that has infected Nahum’s farm can’t even be considered properly evil as it has no animus toward Nahum or his family. It is indifferent and hungry, and it desires only to complete its lifecycle and depart.

Lovecraft himself was agnostic to the extent that he claimed if he were presented with persuasive evidence of a God, he would be willing to alter his views. Until then, he was a practical atheist.

“From that stricken, faraway spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky it was just a colour—but not any colour of our earth or heavens. And because Ammi recognized that colour, and knew that this last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well, he has never been quite right since.”

This is likely the “larva” from the “egg” that was broken when the scientists were taking their second sample from the meteorite. It works as a reminder that dreadful things can still lurk in the far corners of a daylight world. We all go about imagining that we know how the world works—what is and is not possible. Lovecraft would have us understand that we are in peril, however safe we may believe we are.