In Lovecraft’s stories his horror is often rooted in the science of the world. He wanted his stories to be believable which made them more terrifying. He believed that science explained the world so Lovecraft used science in his stories to make the reader feel a grander sense of dread once all the horror aspects came to light. He kept his horror realistic too in order to make it more impactful. One example of him using this is “The look unsettles readers not because it is far-fetched, but because it resides close enough to humanity that it demands understanding.” showing how Lovecraft loved having his horror just outside of real life to be truly terrifying.
Lovecraft horror was also written with the intent that it would affect the reader’s subconscious to utilize the reader's mind to scare them more. He uses the mind as a character and a setting in his stories. The mind is something that affects the stories. He uses the mind as a scientific object that can affect the outside world. He also makes death happen regularly by mental illness since it adds more horror. Cordova states “Death by cerebral hemorrhage suggests that it is not the destructive power of science at work in Tillinghast’s demise, but rather humanity’s incapability of understanding things beyond our perception.”
Lovecraft believed that the cultural center of the world was wrong. In his writing he tried to center it around something else to try to fix it in his views. In his horror he also tried to go against the idea of colonizing and discovery. He often used the idea of exploration to discover the cosmic horrors in his world. This goes with postcolonialism in the way that it is critiquing the way of the colonizers always looking for more to conquer. Lovecraft also wrote about what could not be achieved in his life into his horror. He did this since he wanted to fulfill his life and it would make it more scary since it is more realistic to life.
Lovecraft uses the monsters to symbolize the other as in with postcolonial criticism. He does this to make the effect of it being more terrifying since “The horror here is doubled: it is not just that the self is Other, but that the Other was always ancestral”. The other also refuses to assimilate into the colonizers culture. “Ancient ruins resist assimilation into Western history, and the Other proves older, stronger, and more intelligent than the self.”
Lovecraft's use of cosmic horror induces great fear since it is normally above the reader's understanding. This also evokes the reader's deep fears rooted in their subconscious. This can lead to our trauma and other such coming to light while reading and experiencing his horror. He combines the sadness and fear from the reader to create a sense of despair. The polarization of emotions led on by his writing creates a really unique sensation. He often follows the wheel of emotions to balance out his stories and make them truly engaging.
Lovecraft often taps into the reader's sense to induce fear. His use of fear truly lets the readers feel the fear coursing through their entire being. Lovecraft also often uses ethnic symbolism to create larger fear. The ethnic symbolism gives a backing to why things happen in his world. He also uses strange word structure and sentence structure to induce a weird feeling inside the reader.
Lovecraft's stories often use the fear of the unknown to make people more afraid of his monsters. Humans are often afraid of what they don’t understand. This fear allows lovecrafts stories to be much more terrifying since when we don’t understand how something happens then our brains believe it to be terrifying. Humans fear is often deeply psychoanalytic. Our fears most of the time can be tied back to our trauma and past experiences. Human psychology which makes it very easy to have a fear of the other. Since humans become afraid of something that is seen as less than us being stronger and more powerful.
In lovecrafts stories the characters will often deny their findings of the cosmic horrors. They do this since it is sometimes so terrifying that their only response to try to save their mind is to deny that it ever existed. They will also avoid the evidence of the horrors to also save themself. Lovecraft often uses letters in his stories to hide the flimsiness of the characters' minds and other aspects of them. The horrors are often outside of the boundaries of human standing which makes the characters try to escape and avoid everything involving the horrors of their world.