Short Fiction · Chapter
The Unnamable explained
The narrator and his friend Joel Manton debate the nature of the 'unnamable' while sitting on a tomb in an old Arkham cemetery.
What happens
The narrator and his friend Joel Manton debate the nature of the 'unnamable' while sitting on a tomb in an old Arkham cemetery. The narrator defends his supernatural fiction by recounting a local legend from a 1706-1723 diary about a monstrous being born of perversion, which haunted an attic and left scars on his ancestor. He describes the horror of a hybrid creature, its spectral apparitions, and his own discovery of bones in the abandoned house, which he later moved to a tomb.
Themes in this chapter
Forbidden Knowledge and Occultism
The narrator delves into hidden diaries and local legends to uncover the truth about the unnamable monster.
Horror of the Unknown
The central debate revolves around whether something can be truly 'unnamable' and beyond human description.
Madness and Psychological Decay
The boy who entered the attic in 1793 went mad from what he saw, and the narrator describes the psychological impact of the horror.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator, a writer of supernatural tales, argues with Manton and recounts the legend of the unnamable monster.
- Joel Manton
The narrator's friend and principal of East High School, who scoffs at the idea of the unnamable but is gradually impressed by the tale.
- Cotton Mather
Referenced as the author of 'Magnalia Christi Americana' who told of the beast with a blemished eye.
Key passages
“We were sitting on a dilapidated seventeenth-century tomb in the late afternoon of an autumn day at the old burying-ground in Arkham, and speculating about the unnamable.”
The narrator and his friend sat on an old tomb in Arkham's cemetery one autumn afternoon, discussing the concept of the unnamable.
Sets the scene for the philosophical debate.
“I told him what I had found in an old diary kept between 1706 and 1723, unearthed among family papers not a mile from where we were sitting; that, and the certain reality of the scars on my ancestor's chest and back which the diary described.”
The narrator revealed that he discovered a diary from 1706-1723 among family papers, which described scars on his ancestor's body.
Introduces the key evidence for the monster's existence.
“It would have been blasphemous to leave such bones in the world, so I went back with a sack and took them to the tomb behind the house.”
The narrator considered the bones too profane to remain, so he collected them and moved them to a tomb.
Concludes the narrator's personal involvement with the horror.