Language

Style of language

The language used by H.P. Lovecraft in the short story “The Outsider” is complex and descriptive. This way, readers have a better idea of what the narrator experiences. In the following example, the descriptive language helps the narrator give an account of his surroundings:

I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible; full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light…

When it comes to choice of words, the author uses plenty of adjectives with negative undertones. For example, adjectives like “distorted”, “shriveled” and “d...