Short Fiction · Chapter
The Picture in the House explained
A genealogist traveling through the Miskatonic Valley in 1896 seeks shelter from a storm in an ancient, isolated farmhouse.
What happens
A genealogist traveling through the Miskatonic Valley in 1896 seeks shelter from a storm in an ancient, isolated farmhouse. Inside, he discovers a rare 1598 edition of Pigafetta's account of the Congo, which repeatedly falls open to a gruesome illustration of cannibals. The house's elderly inhabitant, a ragged and unnervingly genial man, explains he acquired the book in a trade. The narrator's unease grows as the old man's conversation hints at dark secrets.
Themes in this chapter
Decay and Fallen Grandeur
The ancient, dilapidated farmhouse and its antique furnishings evoke a sense of decay and forgotten history.
Horror of the Unknown
The narrator's unease and the house's secretive atmosphere, along with the old man's cryptic comments, create a sense of hidden horror.
Alienation and Otherness
The isolated farmhouse and its strange inhabitant represent a world apart from civilization, fostering a sense of otherness.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The genealogist traveling through the Miskatonic Valley who seeks shelter in the old farmhouse.
- The Man
The elderly, ragged inhabitant of the farmhouse, who speaks in an archaic Yankee dialect and owns the rare book.
- Cotton Mather
Author of 'Magnalia Christi Americana', a book found on the shelf in the farmhouse.
Key passages
“Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places.”
Those who seek terror travel to remote and eerie locations.
Opening line establishing the narrator's perspective on horror.
“But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England.”
The ultimate connoisseur of horror values most the old, isolated farmhouses of rural New England.
Highlights the setting's significance in the story.
“It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any shelter was preferable to exposure.”
I was forced to take shelter in such a dilapidated building during a heavy November rainstorm in 1896.
Introduces the narrator's arrival at the house.