At the Mountains of Madness

Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1936

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Dyer gives an overview of the Old Ones’ history in a “formless, rambling way” (42). The Old Ones came from some distant part of space and could travel through space using their wings. They spent large amounts of time underwater, and their mechanical and scientific knowledge was far beyond anything known to man. The Old Ones created life on Earth—at first for food and later for other purposes. They have created life on other worlds and fought against rival, enemy races of aliens. One of their creations was the Shoggoth: a mass of black slime with many eyes floating on its surface that could form itself at will into any limb or organ required. The Old Ones created the Shoggoths as slaves to help build their vast, complicated cities beneath the sea and on land.

The Old Ones were powerful creatures with extra senses and tentacles capable of performing incredibly complex tasks. Their tough bodies could endure great pressures beneath the sea, and their wings allowed them to fly. They only seemed to die “by violence” (44); because they lived so long, they only bred (via spores) when they needed to colonize a new planet. They cooked their food, preferring to eat meat, and both raised animals for slaughter and hunted for game. While they did not have families in the traditional sense, they lived in communities and formed complex governments. Dyer describes their money, commerce, agriculture, manufacturing, and travel. They lived on Earth for millennia, even as the tectonic plates shifted, the continents moved, and the climate changed.

A rival species appeared on Earth around the time the moon formed. The Old Ones fought this octopus-shaped enemy, named the Cthulhu spawn. The two sides ultimately reached an agreement: The Old Ones would base their civilization around the Antarctic, while the Cthulhu spawn would live elsewhere. Changes in the Pacific Ocean eventually killed the latter, leaving the Old Ones alone again, “except for one shadowy fear about which they did not like to speak” (45). The Old Ones discovered that their slave Shoggoths had begun to develop a consciousness of their own. When the Shoggoths fought back against the Old Ones, the Old Ones won “a veritable war of resubjugation” against their slave workers (46). The arrival of a race of half-fungous, half-crustacean creatures also led to a war, during which the Old Ones discovered that they had lost the secret of space travel. Eventually, the Old Ones retreated to the Antarctic.

Chapter 8 Summary

Dyer continues his history of the Old Ones. His examination of their artwork suggests that there is an even taller range of mountains in Antarctica, and that these contain something even the Old Ones believed to be “vaguely and namelessly evil” (48). Some of the Old Ones prayed to this distant, unspeakable force, while others had a religion and a spirituality of their own. A river flowed from the taller mountain range and hollowed out a network of caves beneath the Old Ones’ city. They might have found something terrible in that river, but they refused to include it in their art. Instead, they only showed themselves cowering in front of it.

An ice age swept over the earth and forced the Old Ones to abandon their city and return to the subterranean sea beneath the network of caves. The more recent artworks portray a city in decline and a new city being built beneath the water. Dyer does not know how long this sunken city survived or whether it still exists. He thinks about the eight perfect specimens of the Old Ones that are now missing from Lake’s camp.

Chapter 9 Summary

Having surveyed the city and the history of the Old Ones, Dyer and Danforth decide to descend through the tunnels to explore the caves and the sea beneath the city. However, their torch batteries are running low, and they are conscious of the time. When they reach the mouth of a tunnel, they notice an odor of death, as well as places amid the debris where something large and heavy seems to have been recently dragged along the ground. Danforth again announces that he hears music, and both men smell gasoline. They worry about Gedney and decide to continue into the dark corridors. However, they soon discover that fallen debris blocks their path forward.

The men notice a doorway in which a pile of debris seems to have recently been disturbed. Inside are scattered objects from Lake’s camp and spilled gasoline. Among the objects are scraps of paper on which maps of the city have been scrawled in the unmistakable style of the Old Ones. Assuming that whatever made the map has long since moved on, Dyer and Danforth follow the route the papers depict. They find a giant stone ramp leading down below the city. There, they find three large sledges from Lake’s camp, which seem to have been ridden hard. The sledges are “intelligently packed and strapped” with Lake’s supplies (59). They remove the tarpaulin from one of the sledges and find the bodies of Gedney and the missing dog.

Chapters 7-9 Analysis

Dyer provides an extensive but not exhaustive history of the Old Ones based on his time in the city. He examines their art and their architecture and pieces together what he can. By its very nature, his story is incomplete. He does not have the time or the tools to conduct a full survey of the city, so aspects of the Old Ones’ story remain unknown. This approach to storytelling fits the novel’s approach to the idea of horror: that which is left unsaid is more horrific than anything described in detail. The unknowable horror of the Old Ones, the Shoggoths, and the city itself extends to their history. Dyer, for example, does not know exactly why the Old Ones abandoned their city for the subterranean alternative, but not knowing allows his (and the reader’s) imagination to fill in the vacant spaces. Anything terrible enough to scare the Old Ones is so horrific that words would not be able to describe it, just as words are not able to fully explain the terrible vision that causes Danforth to have a nervous breakdown. At the Mountains of Madness exemplifies the idea of Lovecraftian horror, which taps into humans’ primal anxieties about what we cannot know, understand, or control.

The suggestion of the subterranean city also adds a present threat to the narrative. If the Old Ones did not simply vanish or leave the planet, then they might still be lurking beneath the continent, perhaps waiting to take over again. Dyer must therefore reckon with the reality that his visit to the city and Lake’s uncovering of the dormant Old Ones might have reawakened a danger to humanity that would otherwise have remained asleep. As a result, Dyer feels even more pressure to warn people against going to Antarctica. They not only need to worry about their own sanity but also about the survival of humanity.

The discovery of the bodies of Gedney and the dog invert the relationship between the humans and the Old Ones. Until this point, the Old Ones function as a mysterious, violent force that the human characters observe and study. The bodies of the man and the dog suggest that the Old Ones are also observers; they are interested in humanity, just as the humans are interested in them. However, the Old Ones treat the human body the same way that they treat the dog’s, discarding both when they have satisfied their curiosity. The Old Ones are so much more advanced that to them the humans and the dogs seem to be on an equal intellectual level. The discovery of the bodies reveals to Dyer that the Old Ones have a passing interest in humanity, but that they do not consider the humans to be anything more than pets or livestock (perhaps similar to the life forms they themselves created). The bodies on the sledge are a reminder of the weakness of humanity and the strength and intelligence of the Old Ones.

For modern readers, the intelligence and cultural sophistication of the Old Ones raises another issue: their relationship with the enslaved Shoggoths. As alarming as Dyer finds the Old Ones, he considers the Shoggoths far worse, depicting them as a species of low intelligence but extreme violence whose “proper” place (if they must exist at all) is as the more advanced Old Ones’ subordinates. Since Lovecraft was writing at a time of extreme scientific racism, there are clear parallels to American slavery and imperialism. Dyer even compares the defeat of the Shoggoth rebellion to American westward expansion: “Thereafter the sculptures showed a period in which Shoggoths were tamed and broken by armed Old Ones as the wild horses of the American west were tamed by cowboys” (106). Although Dyer’s reference is to horses rather than people, the language nevertheless reflects an imperialist worldview in which a supposedly superior race brings civilization to the places it conquers.