What is the name of HP Lovecraft cat?

HP Lovecraft Cat

What is the name of HP Lovecraft cat?

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American writer of weird and horror fiction known for creating what became the Cthulhu Mythos.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Lovecraft spent most of his life in New England. He was born into affluence, but his family’s wealth dissipated soon after the death of his grandfather.

In 1913, he wrote a scathing letter to a pulp magazine that ultimately led to his involvement in pulp fiction.

He wrote and published stories focused on his interpretation of humanity’s place in the universe during the interwar period. In his view, humanity was an unimportant part of an uncaring cosmos that could be swept away at any moment.

These stories also included fantastic elements that represented the perceived fragility of anthropocentrism.

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What is the name of HP Lovecraft cat?

So that you know, Lovecraft was a very racist man. Now, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard but instead esteemed English and English descent.

He praised non-WASP groups (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) such as Hispanics and Jews; however, his private writings on Irish Catholics, German immigrants, and African-Americans were consistently negative. Just some food for thought.

The cat’s name, “Nigger Man,” has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft’s racial attitude. Lovecraft owned a cat by that name until 1904. The cat had likely been given its name when Lovecraft was about age 9.

How was H. P. Lovecraft racist?

Among other things, he once wrote in an early poem titled “On the Creation of Nigger”:

“A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure/ Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.” It sounds pretty terrible, regardless of the context “of the time.”

There is no bitter dispute of literary or historical circles that Lovecraft was personally a rather ardent racist, even given standards of the time. Wikipedia explains it pretty well, too (emphasis mine):

The race is the most controversial aspect of Lovecraft’s legacy, expressed in many disparaging remarks against the various non-Anglo-Saxon races and cultures in his work. As he grew older, his original Anglo-Saxon racial worldview softened into a classism or elitism, which regarded the superior race as including those self-ennobled through high culture.

From the start, Lovecraft did not hold all white people in uniform high regard but instead esteemed the English people and those of English descent. He praised non-WASP groups such as Hispanics and Jews; however, his private writings on Irish Catholics, German immigrants, and African-Americans were consistently negative.

In an early poem, 1912 On the Creation of Nigg-ers, Lovecraft describes black people not as humans but “beasts… in semi-human figure, Filled it with vice”. He argued for a strong color line to preserve race and culture in his early published essays, private letters, and personal utterances.

He made these arguments by disparaging various races in his journalism and letters and perhaps allegorically in his fiction concerning non-human races.

Some have interpreted his racial attitude as being more cultural than brutally biological: Lovecraft showed sympathy to those who adopted Western culture, even to the extent of marrying a Jewish woman whom he viewed as “well assimilated.” 

While Lovecraft’s racial attitude has been seen as directly influenced by the society of his day, especially the New England society he grew up in, his racism appeared more robust than the general popular viewpoint.

Why is H.P Lovecraft considered a poor writer?

Lovecraft is a polarizing writer – many people will defend his writing to the end, while others do “consider him a poor writer.” Most of the criticism levied against him comes in two forms. HP Lovecraft cat

The first has to do with his style, which is dense, complex, and lengthy; his prose is often described as “over-written.” Lovecraft’s writing was already decidedly old-fashioned when he wrote it in the early 1900s, let alone today.

HP Lovecraft cat

His vocabulary is extensive and exotic, and he does the readers no favors in understanding his language. Furthermore, Lovecraft’s stories are very heavily expository – that is, they spend a lot of time with the narrator simply describing things outright.

The density of actual dialogue in his work is drastically lower than in most prose, and the oh-so-oft-quoted rule of “show, don’t tell” is flagrantly ignored. This is mainly because his stories are almost always epistolary:

The story is meant to be the notes or journals or letters of the main character, so exposition is about the only mode that makes sense. In modern literary criticism especially, production is generally considered the weakest form of prose.

Furthermore, Lovecraft includes his work’s supernatural and paranormal elements as if the reader already knows those things

Despite the stories mainly being exposition, there is no time to explain his work’s outlandish science fiction elements, and names of people, supernatural figures, and paranormal books are thrown around freely as if these things were already in the popular conscious.

This is one of the ways Lovecraft makes even his wildest flights of fancy seem grounded in the real world. How he and his compatriots built the mythos over time – these off-hand references became internal mythology, such that it’s almost necessary to have already read all of the mythos material to understand the connections being made in a given story properly. 

This is the best part; for critics, it’s a confusing rat’s nest of randomness. The second often cited reason is the implicit bigotry that permeates a significant portion of Lovecraft’s work.

There’s no denying he had a pathological fear of “otherness” that fostered some very problematic views within him. While many people call him a racist, this isn’t accurate; in truth, he was a vocal xenophobe.

There’s no denying that, like pretty much every author, Lovecraft produced some… questionable material alongside the gems. My favorite story is “The Rats in the Walls,” which is frequently decried as one of his most over-written stories and includes a cat whose name is a racial slur. No one said Lovecraft’s work wasn’t complicated.

Use in Memes – HP Lovecraft cat

On June 12, 2018, Tumblr user greatpostsonline commented under the photograph of H. P. Lovecraft holding his friend’s cat, posted by sandinlungs-blog, writing, “Lovecraft and his cat n-…

nnnnn-… Ummm…his cat’s name was uhhhh….”

On the same day, Tumblr user robloxgf responded, “what was his name,” later adding, “oh no.” The conversation (below) received over 204,800 likes and was reblogged in two years.

On June 18, 2018, Know Your Meme user Cold Hard Crash uploaded a screenshot of the post, and the post racked up over 144,600 views in two years. HP Lovecraft cat

On July 23, 2018, Redditor AncientHistory published a post containing extensive information about the cat and his role in H.P. Lovecraft’s life.

The viral spread of the Tumblr post sparked more references to H.P Lovecraft’s cat in online memes. For example, on November 14, 2018, iFunny user AlekFletcher posted a Machine Gun Skeleton meme inviting users to Google the cat’s name.

On December 8, 2018, iFunny user Wimpy-Kid posted a screenshot of a Google knowledge panel containing information about the cat, and the post garnered more than 600 smiles in two years.

On January 30, 2019, webcomic artist He Silly tweeted a comic about the cat, and the post garnered over 730 retweets, and 2,400 likes before the account were deleted (shown below).

HP Lovecraft cat
HP Lovecraft cat

The meme gained more popularity when, in September 2019, the Don’t Google reverse psychology memes gained popularity online.

On September 13, 2019, Redditor nessso posted the first known “No Google” cat meme, and the post garnered over 540 upvotes on / r / okbuddyretard in six months (shown below).

HP Lovecraft cat
HP Lovecraft cat

The following year, memes referring to the cat maintained notable popularity online, with “H.P. Lovecraft’s Cat” sometimes used as a euphemism for insult.

Why is HP Lovecraft cat named?

The cat with the racial slur for a name was his childhood pet who went missing in 1904 when he was 14 years old, the first of a series of tragic events that would beset the struggling author. The short answer to why his cat was named a racial slur is that HP Lovecraft was racist.

What is the bane of HP Lovecraft cat?

The cat’s name, “Nigger Man,” has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft’s racial attitude. Lovecraft owned a cat by that name until 1904. The cat had likely been given its name when Lovecraft was about age 9.

How many pets did H.P. Lovecraft have? – HP Lovecraft cat

Was Lovecraft’s choice of a pet a minor topic or significant theme in his life? “No summary of Lovecraft’s life is complete without a mention of his passionate devotion to cats… He only owned one cat in his lifetime, but fed and named every alley cat he found” (16).

What was the name of H.P. Lovecraft name? – HP Lovecraft cat

H.P. Lovecraft, incomplete Howard Phillips Lovecraft, (born August 20, 1890, Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.-died March 15, 1937, Providence), American author of fantastic and macabre short novels and stories, one of the 20th-century masters of the Gothic tale of terror.

Is Cthulhu male or female? – HP Lovecraft cat

Cthulhu is a fictional deity created by the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Cthulhu is a powerful monster from another planet. It (Cthulhu is neither male nor female) is very ancient compared to humans, since the dinosaurs.

Is Cthulhu evil or good? – HP Lovecraft cat

He is the great-grandson of the greatest evil in all of the Universe, though he is not evil. Cthulhu transcends morality. He is instead the priest of the dormant Old Gods, who can only return upon the proper alignment of the stars.

Did Lovecraft face any backlash for the cat’s name?

There is no record of Lovecraft facing criticism for the cat’s name during his lifetime. The racist name was largely accepted at the time due to prevailing racial attitudes. However, modern readers have widely condemned the name as offensive.

Does Nigger-Man appear in the Cthulhu Mythos?

Yes, the cat briefly appears in some of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos stories, including “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.” He serves as a minor plot device.

Conclusion – HP Lovecraft cat

When Lovecraft was 5 years old he was given a cat with a racial epithet for a name. Being 5, it’s doubtful that he named it, but that it was named by his parents or other adult relatives.

He owned it until he was 14. He never owned another animal, but he did make friends with many strays, which he gave such names as “Little Sam Perkins” and “Old Man”.

He invented a fraternity for the strays to belong to, and filled his letters with the antics of the members of the Kappa Alpha Tau (Kompson Ailouron Taxis, or Company of Elegant Cats).

While there can be no question that HPL had racist beliefs, I don’t think the name of his childhood cat can be laid at his door, and he never called any other cat by an epithet name, though he did put the pet of his youth in two stories, THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD and THE RATS IN THE WALLS.

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