Lovecraft and the Eldritch Horror.

While unable to obtain success within his lifetime, H. P. Lovecraft's tales have achieved great posthumous success, and is now considered to be one of the greatest horror fiction writers of the 20th century.  One of the reasons for his success lies in the universal themes that span across all of his works, such as humanity, ethics, and civilization.  However, one of the most prevalent themes contained in his works was that of the Eldritch horror; a horror arising from an apparent abnormality in reality, where something or someone seemed to exist as a sort of perversion of nature.  In his stories, the Eldritch horror is often described as a mockery of reality, something which humans can not fully grasp or which violates the very laws of nature and reality, often driving those who do see it or try to understand it mad.  This can be seen perfectly in his short story "The Rats in the Walls," where the narrator and his companions discover a hidden chamber in their house, and come upon a spectacle that drives them mad.  Within this scene, the party first notice that the structure is immensely old, and was chiseled from below to the surface, a feat which would be impossible in reality, and yet exists.  As they go further down, they come across different bones, which at first seem human, but upon inspection reveal that they are like nothing ever seen before, creating once again a sense of non-earthly horror and tension about the room.  The tension comes to a head as the men discover an impossibly large chasm and are suddenly swarmed by a living wave of rats, and the narrator slips back from his present state to saying (presumably) the words of his ancestors  to a forgotten tongue impossible to pronounce, until finally revealing his current state, in the madhouse.  Here, the horror of the Eldritch reaches a creshendo, as they come across an chasm that shouldn't exist, and are swarmed by an unfathomable amount of rats, while the the narrator looses his mind.  Lovecraft uses the horror inherent in the impossible, and the fear that arises when something that shouldn't or couldn't happen does, and here uses it for the climax of his tale, as the narrator is stripped of his sanity and the reader is left with a chilling ending.