At the Mountains of Madness

Monsters whether human or otherworldly parade through our nightmares and fears time after time. They appeal to our most primal fears. But what about these horrors and creeps truly makes them monsters? Exploring this question gives us insight into our fears and how terror plays with our emotions. Monsters are a common subject in both Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein and H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. In Mary Shelley 's novel the man Frankenstein creates his own monster by turning back death itself. In the end, the creature ultimately brings upon Frankenstein’s doom. In At the Mountains of Madness, the monster is not created but rather found. As the two scientists, Dyer and Danforth, explore the unknown of the antarctic they find…

Forbidden Planet (Directed by Fred M. Wilcox), At the Mountains of Madness (written by H.P. Lovecraft) and The Tempest (written by William Shakespeare) are very alike in many aspects. In their own special ways, they are all considered science fiction and share traits that range from the appearance of the characters to the themes. All three of the stories discuss topics such as ambition, natural instincts, and human nature. With these topics, they also included common themes, such as “Some things…

Much in the same way that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, madness and its ever-changing definition––due both to perspective and to one’s own personal beliefs––is determined by each individual on a case-by-case basis. Society caters to this fluidity by manipulating conceptions of what is acceptable and correct. In many cases, madness is simply the over-stigmatization of opposing ideas from those already set by societal norms and traditions. Depending on your environment, different…

Madmen and prophets have been, for quite long, the source of contention in literary circles. The relationship between madness and prophecy in literature is somewhat difficult to tackle as both concepts are connected to a more mystical world that can give shape and meaning to human existence and truth about life. During the twentieth century, immediately after the Holocaust, people began more readily questioning the existence of a supreme Deity and His lack of divine intervention in such a…

Euripides’ Bacchae is built on creating and exploring binary oppositions. A central opposition, sanity and madness, forces the reader to evaluate each character’s actions and motivations to judge them as sane or insane. By making these judgments, the readers assign different values to each character based on beliefs that they have acquired and cultivated since their early development and are affected by society and surroundings throughout their lives. For example, “good” values correlate with…

of 90mph. Many climbers were not thinking clearly and were suffering from frostbite. They all had to make the choice between selfless or selfish and it very important when you in this kind of critical situation like almost freezing to death on the face of a mountain. When you chose selfishness you are saving yourself and getting out and being free but where being selfless you are saving people and using every ounce of energy left in your body to save people and that would be more rewarding in…

attempt to summit Everest in the disaster of 1996. The Everest guides fight not only to get to the top, but to get popularity for more customers to climb with them. The only way to get people to pay to get up to the top of the world’s highest mountain was to have a good reputation. Rob Hall the guide for Adventure Consultants, Scott Fisher the leader of Mountain Madness, and Ian Woodall are examples of leaders who made commercialism their highest priority. Rob Hall is a very respected guide on…

It was full of characteristics of romanticism but it was dominated by two which were nature and supernatural. Nature played a huge role in this story, this excerpt show what was said before "They (The Kaatskill Mountains are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country (lrving Pg.7). The river and the mountain provide the best civilization for a modern American…

Polonius’ death Ophelia turns to singing to portray her madness. She sings about her relationship with Hamlet as well as the one with her father. Ophelia croons about Polonius, “He is dead and gone, lady, he is dead and gone; at his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone” (IV:v:34-37). Her father has always given her orders to follow, she does not know how to act alone. She says her father is, “white his shroud as the mountain snow” (IV:v:41). Her father told her to deny Hamlet’s love,…

in the afternoon, Fischer walked into camp towards his tent, uncharacteristically slow with his jaw clenched. Krakauer notes “...one of his favorite utterances was, ‘If you’re bumming out, you’re not gonna get to the top, so as long as we’re up here we might as well make a point of grooving.’ At the moment, however Scott did not appear to be grooving in the slightest; instead he looked anxious and extremely tired” (154). Scott Fischer is normally always upbeat and even has a optimistic motto for…