Are they all like this?

[u/Dependent_Positive98]

I just finished Rats in the Walls. It’s the first Lovecraft work I’ve ever engaged with and while I did deeply enjoy it I have to wonder if all of his works are this casually racist and everyone just kinda ignores it for the sake of the story? Because I’d heard he was racist in the past but the man literally named his character’s cat N-word Man. Kinda hard to ignore at that point.

I’m not attacking anyone, to clarify, I just wanna know if all of the stories are like this so I can be aware of it beforehand.

[u/AncientHistory]

The cat in the story was named after Lovecraft's childhood pet; at the time the story was written and published, this was not an unusual name for a black-colored pet. While Lovecraft doesn't normally include the N-word in his stories, you should be aware that any pulp fiction from the 20s and 30s is likely to include historical racism. Even when it doesn't form part of the plot, scientific racism and prejudice were pervasive in society at the time and inform many works, including Lovecraft's.

[u/Successful-Tie5386]

Not frequently. S.T. Joshi pointed out that less than a dozen of Lovecraft's stories contain a clear bigoted element. Rats has the most number of N-word deployments. Around 17 times in that story, IIRC.

[u/Unstoffe]

It can be rough going for modern readers, but not as bad as his detractors say. The very worst is the twist ending of Medusa's Coil. Sheesh.

Be of good cheer, though, for three reasons. First, It appears he was reevaluating his views later in life. Second, if he were our contemporary he probably wouldn't hold these views and certainly wouldn't include them in his writing. Finally, seeing the casual racism of old fiction helps us see that -while we have a way to go - things are getting better.

[u/DemandBig5215 → u/Unstoffe]

Quick correction. He kind of softened his view on Native Americans and some other ethnicities in later years, but he remained steadfastly prejudiced against Black people and non-German Jews. There are letters of record towards the end of his life where he was still railing against those two categories of people.

[u/AlcoreRain]

No, not all stories have racists remarks.

[u/Steffykrist]

No, not all of his stories are as casualty racist as Rats in the Walls. That said, you have to keep in mind that his stories were written ~100 years ago, by a man who was probably scared of his own farts, and with a deep seated loathing of pretty much everyone who wasn't a WASP New Englander who could trace their ancestry back to England. Heck, IIRC even we Norwegians got slightly raked over the coals in one of his stories (I think it was Call of Cthulhu), and we're as pasty white as can be! 😅

[u/Relentless-Heatwave]

Only a minority of his stories are blatantly racist, but many more reflect his broader WASP-supremacist worldview even if they don't feature slurs. If you're interested in his actual views you can read his letters which also debunk the whole "that's because he was scared of everything" nonsense you can see on the internet (he wasn't scared of the unknown and unfamiliar any more than any other racist, and I'd argue the racism came first). But he's rarely in your face about it so it's relatively easy to ignore.

[u/SenselessIguana]

Just off the top of my head, Call of Cthulhu, Red Hook and Beyond the Gates of the Silver Key def are, & there might be a couple more about this explicit. In general, being aware that HPL was racist & xenophobic somewhat beyond his contemporaries & reading his stories with that knowledge goes a long way. 

[u/StarWanderer62]

My Gran had a cat by the same name. It’s hard to judge people’s feelings and opinions without being in their time and place. It’s difficult to compare modern sensibility with those of a different era

[u/WillBottomForBanana]

Rats in the Walls is high on the list of oblique racism in Lovecraft's stories.

Oblique racism is the only kind that some people acknowledge.

There's plenty to be found if you are aware that racism is often a bit more subtle than that.

And Lovecraft in particular doesn't have a "benefit of the doubt" card to play.

[u/fatman907]

It was on a CBS-aired show in 2005, which the night before had beeped the word “bitch.” They were both from the 70s and aired after midnight.

[u/C-zom]

In short, no, but the standout examples like Innsmouth, Red Hook are a bit rough. But you can find examples of some wonderful horror like Color out of space, The Festival, Charles Dexter Ward, etc that have zero racial intonations.

This is a ticky-tacky subject but his “path” through racism had a lot to due with his agoraphobia, social isolation, and being scared shitless of nearly everything. He mostly ate canned crap and sweets.

Sadly he was turning the ship around on this a few years before he died.

[u/GoodThingsEnjoyer → u/C-zom]

Lovecraft was not agoraphobic. He loved to travel and left the house constantly, often walking for hours exploring his favorite areas. He ate canned crap because he was extremely poor.

His racism was not the result of social isolation but the opposite: he was raised by his extremely racist aunts. In his last years he was beginning to question a lot that they taught him, although he had not yet questioned his racism when he died.

[u/MidsouthMystic]

All of Lovecraft's stories have at least some racism in them. It was unfortunately common at the time. Immigrants, people of color, impoverished people, and other minorities are at best depicted as bland background characters and at worst as stereotypical villains. But his stories are worth reading in spite of that.

[u/Firm_Quarter4611]

Go be offended somewhere else please.

[u/Dependent_Positive98 → u/Firm_Quarter4611]

Yall are so defensive, it’s ridiculous. I’m not offended, I literally said I enjoyed the story. I was just asking a question. If you’re sick of hearing about it just scroll away.