Q2 Blog 3: Beyond the Wall of Sleep

For my third blog this quarter, to continue with my Lovecraft spree, I went back to read "Beyond the Wall of Sleep."

The short story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" by H. P. Lovecraft is the story of an imaginative worker of the state psychopathic institution and his encounter with Joe Slater, described as a barbaric, degenerate hill-dweller from the Catskills. Slater was brought in after beating his neighbor to death in a hysterical fit, and is found to have waking nightmares that possess his being.

What I like about this story's structure is how the narrator frames the account in a way, so it is not just a narrative of events, but it shows the narrator's thoughts and gives the story a sort of credibility. In the beginning, the narrator gives a sort of introduction, revealing his views on dreams and how they might be truer than material life. At the end, he instructs the reader to take the story as whatever he or she wants, as he realizes how fantastic and "rhetorical" it turns out. Also, the quotation he pulls at the end from the supposed writings of an astronomer stating apparent evidence of the events of which the narrator spoke wraps the story up with spooky tone.

A possible purpose of this story (and possibly of the Dream Cycle as a whole) is to present the concept of dreams in a new light. When the narrator uses his apparatus to enter the dreamworld of the dying Slater and to speak to the entity that possesses him, he experiences firsthand and is told of the reality of dreams. The thought he expresses at the beginning that the dream world is truer than the material world is reinforces when he experiences the "palatial magnificence" of "this elysian realm." He states that he  "dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar" and that he was being recalled back to earth, where he "least wished to go." It seems that he feels more at home, or more alive in this ethereal existence. The entity expresses how dreams transcend all physical limitations of time, space, and other dimensions. It says that it looks forward to meeting the narrator in ancient Egypt, after the end of the universe, on planets orbiting a distant star, or on the moon of Jupiter with creatures referred to as "insect-philosophers." This also plays into the narrator's belief that the corporeal world is secondary to the ethereal and our true spirits are "held back by bodily encumbrances."

All in all, another spooky Lovecraftian story to leave you with some creepy philosophy to ponder over Christmas.

Artist Michael Bukowski's rendition of the
insect-philosopher of the fourth moon of Jupiter