# The Unnamable explained — Short Fiction > Chapter companion for Short Fiction by H. P. Lovecraft. ## 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. ## Character check-ins ### 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 lines > 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._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_26_se/chapters/the-unnamable - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_26_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_26_se/chapters