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Horror at Red Hook by H.P. Lovecraft - Coggle Diagram
Horror at Red Hook
by H.P. Lovecraft
Use of eldritch horror in relation to marginalized groups
"He had not read in vain such treatises as Miss Murray’s Witch-Cult in Western Europe; and knew that up to recent years there had certainly survived among peasants and furtive folk a frightful and clandestine system of assemblies and orgies descended from dark religions antedating the Aryan world, and appearing in popular legends as Black Masses and Witches’ Sabbaths. That these hellish vestiges of old Turanian-Asiatic magic and fertility-cults were even now wholly dead he could not for a moment suppose, and he frequently wondered how much older and how much blacker than the very worst of the muttered tales some of them might really be." (End of Part II)
Only these marginalized groups are specified to even dare to dabble in the occult. Not only are they demonized, but they are placed into yet another box.
Connotation is also important in this text. "Black" specifically is used multiple times to convey how "evil" these groups and their actions are.
"Once a lean, black-and-white cat edged between his feet and tripped him, overturning at the same time a beaker half full of a red liquid. The shock was severe, and to this day Malone is not certain of what he saw; but in dreams he still pictures that cat as it scuttled away with certain monstrous alterations and peculiarities." (Part VI)
Even animals that come in contact with this group are deemed to have an unearthly, warped quality. Apparently, they can't just have nice things, like your average cat.
Anti-immigration paranoia
"The population is a hopeless tangle and enigma; Syrian, Spanish, Italian, and negro elements impinging upon one another, and fragments of Scandinavian and American belts lying not far distant. It is a babel of sound and filth, and sends out strange cries to answer the lapping of oily waves at its grimy piers and the monstrous organ litanies of the harbour whistles." (Part II)
Not only does this paint a ridiculous image of the residents of Red Hook as "unclean", but it also calls their diverse languages "strange cries" which further shows the narrator and author's ignorance
"The walls were lined with small cells, in seventeen of which—hideous to relate—solitary prisoners in a state of complete idiocy were found chained, including four mothers with infants of disturbingly strange appearance. These infants died soon after exposure to the light; a circumstance which the doctors thought rather merciful." (Part VII)
These lines are disgusting for multiple reasons. One very big one being the fact that it highlights their paranoia regarding the immigrants having children. It also paints the picture that these innocent children are better off not alive because their very existence is some sort of sin.
Class Discrimination
"One saw groups of these youths incessantly; sometimes in leering vigils on street corners, sometimes in doorways playing eerily on cheap instruments of music, sometimes in stupefied dozes or indecent dialogues around cafeteria tables near Borough Hall, and sometimes in whispering converse around dingy taxicabs drawn up at the high stoops of crumbling and closely shuttered old houses." (Part II)
The residents of Red Hook are being demonized for simply living their lives, and making it work with what they have. It's awfully easy to look down on someone when you live on the "nicer" side of town.
"In this work it developed that Suydam’s new associates were among the blackest and most vicious criminals of Red Hook’s devious lanes, and that at least a third of them were known and repeated offenders in the matter of thievery, disorder, and the importation of illegal immigrants." (Part III)
By their standards, it's hard to classify what is "deviant behavior" and what is not. They already hold their superiority over the residents, but their positions in law enforcement help them try to justify their prejudices.
Fears of co-mingling and association
"It was based on certain odd changes in his speech and habits; wild references to impending wonders, and unaccountable hauntings of disreputable Brooklyn neighbourhoods. He had been growing shabbier and shabbier with the years, and now prowled about like a veritable mendicant; seen occasionally by humiliated friends in subway stations, or loitering on the benches around Borough Hall in conversation with groups of swarthy, evil-looking strangers." (Part III)
Suydam's actions become worrisome only when he is know to be associating with residents from Red Hook.
Concerns are also raised by his family because of how this will affect his reputation and standing in society. He can't afford a ruined reputation due to his higher status.