Lovecraft's fear

Of course any work in horror has some connection to the writer's experience. For Lovecraft it was likely his father who was put into an asylum when Howard was young. This stress was furthered by his father's sudden death and his love-hate relationship with his mother.

So what did Lovrcraft fear? What pushed him to write such horrifying stories? Perhaps he feared he would subcomb to his father's madness. Even before genetics were well known the idea of inheriting insanity was a fear. Look no further than Arthur Machen's work "The Great god Pan." Now we know madness for it's different forms and have a ready category for almost all types from bipolarism to schizophrenia and psychosis to Cotard's syndrome (person thinks they are dead.) The brain has many oddities that have yet to be understood even 100 years after Lovecraft. Lovecraft even writes that the greatest fear is that of the unknown. It's like a rubix fear, a fear of being unable to put all the pieces together. Because a geologist will tell you the world works a certain way and a astronomer will tell you something different. It's something that we can't quite put together no matter how hard we hit the pieces of the puzzle. It's good that there is always something new to find but when you're looking for answers and all you find is more questions you become frustrated, maybe even fearful. Lovecraft dove into many sciences to perhaps give himself an answer that religion would not. Why did my dad die? 

Lovecraft's mother seems to have exasperated the questions tumbling in his head. She called him ugly and he believed it. Lovecraft often hid his face from public preferring close friends or family members. And with his mother's words he began to belive that he was ugly. It became his truth. That and along with his studies he saw man in a universe of cosmic indifference. God's and monsters that care little for man's place. But that what truth was for Lovecraft. It became an giant monstrosity with an octopus head that towers over man. It became Cthulhu.