Can Such Things Be? · Chapter
An Inhabitant of Carcosa explained
The narrator, reflecting on Hali's words about different kinds of death, finds himself lost in a bleak, desolate plain filled with ancient gravestones and ruins.
What happens
The narrator, reflecting on Hali's words about different kinds of death, finds himself lost in a bleak, desolate plain filled with ancient gravestones and ruins. Believing he is ill and delirious, he encounters a lynx and a half-naked man with a torch, but they seem not to see or hear him. Realizing he sees stars in the absence of darkness and casts no shadow, he discovers a gravestone bearing his own name, birth date, and death date. At dawn, he sees the ruins of the ancient city of Carcosa and understands he is a spirit recounting these facts through a medium.
Themes in this chapter
Death and the Supernatural
The narrator's journey reveals he is a spirit, with his own gravestone marking his death, and the entire landscape is a supernatural realm of the dead.
Madness and Perception
The narrator questions his sanity, attributing the eerie phenomena to delirium, yet later realizes his perceptions are those of a disembodied spirit.
Isolation and Terror
The desolate, silent plain with its ancient graves and lack of human life evokes a profound sense of isolation and existential dread.
Characters to notice
- Hastur
Invoked in the opening epigraph referencing Hali's words, setting a supernatural tone.
Key passages
“For there be divers sorts of death—some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit.”
There are many kinds of death—some leave the body behind, while others cause both body and spirit to disappear entirely.
Opening reflection on the nature of death, setting the supernatural context.
“I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass...”
I was shocked to find myself in a completely strange, barren plain overgrown with dry grass.
Describes the narrator's disorientation and the eerie landscape.
“God in Heaven! my name in full!—the date of my birth!—the date of my death!”
My God! The stone bore my full name, my birth date, and my death date!
Climactic revelation that the narrator is dead, reading his own tombstone.