Short Fiction · Chapter
What the Red Glare Meant explained
The narrator, driven mad by events since August, digs alone in the grave of Jan Martense on a stormy night in November 1921.
What happens
The narrator, driven mad by events since August, digs alone in the grave of Jan Martense on a stormy night in November 1921. He recounts the history of the Martense family, their isolation, and the murder of Jan Martense by his own kin. After breaking through the coffin into a subterranean tunnel, he crawls through the earth and encounters a pair of glowing eyes and a claw. A lightning bolt collapses the tunnel, bringing him to the surface. Later, he learns that a nameless thing fell from a tree into a cabin twenty miles away, and the squatters burned the cabin—an event that occurred at the same moment the earth caved in on the creature he saw.
Themes in this chapter
Madness and Psychological Decay
The narrator admits his mind is 'partly unhinged' and describes his obsessive, irrational digging as 'idiotic,' showing his descent into madness.
Hereditary Curse and Fate
The Martense family is cursed by isolation, inbreeding, and a violent history; Jan Martense's murder and the family's degeneration suggest an inescapable fate.
Horror of the Unknown
The narrator encounters a claw and glowing eyes in the dark tunnel, and later learns of a nameless thing that fell from a tree, emphasizing the terror of the unseen.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator digs in Jan Martense's grave, driven by obsession and madness after the death of Arthur Munroe.
- Jan Martense
The murdered kinsman of the Martense family, whose ghost the narrator believes haunts the mountain.
- Arthur Munroe
The narrator's companion who died under mysterious circumstances; the narrator buried him secretly.
- Gerrit Martense
The original builder of the Martense mansion in 1670, who disliked British rule and chose the storm-prone hill.
- Jonathan Gifford
Jan Martense's Albany friend who discovered the murder and accused the Martenses.
Key passages
“On the tempest-racked night of November 8th, 1921, with a lantern which cast charnel shadows, I stood digging alone and idiotically in the grave of Jan Martense.”
On a stormy night in November 1921, the narrator dug alone in Jan Martense's grave, acting irrationally.
Establishes the setting and the narrator's disturbed state.
“I believe that my mind was partly unhinged by events since August 5th; the demon shadow in the mansion, the general strain and disappointment, and the thing that occurred at the hamlet in an October storm.”
The narrator thinks his sanity has been damaged by earlier terrifying events, including a demonic shadow and a mysterious incident in October.
Explains the narrator's psychological decline.
“History had led me to this archaic grave. History, indeed, was all I had after everything else ended in mocking Satanism.”
The narrator turned to historical research after his other leads proved to be satanic dead ends.
Shows the narrator's reliance on history to understand the horror.
“What language can describe the spectacle of a man lost in infinitely abysmal earth; pawing, twisting, wheezing; scrambling madly through sunken convolutions of immemorial blackness without an idea of time, safety, direction, or definite object?”
The narrator describes the indescribable horror of crawling blindly through an ancient underground tunnel.
Highlights the claustrophobic and disorienting nature of the experience.
“But when two days later the squatters told me what the red glare meant, I felt more horror than that which the mold-burrow and the claw and eyes had given; more horror because of the overwhelming implications.”
The narrator learns that the red glare in the sky was caused by squatters burning a cabin where a nameless creature had fallen from a tree and committed a terrible deed.
Reveals the connection between the underground creature and the surface horror.
