Concept art of the Gravemind from Halo 2 Anniversary (Credit: Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries)
H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and the Halo series represent the American fears of losing individuality
“We exist together now. Two corpses, in one grave.” One line from a video game creature summarizes one of the great the fears found in the collective American consciousness. The American identity values individuality while touting itself as the “Great Melting Pot” that welcomes cultures from all places. Anyone can still be themselves while also being American. Individuality is still a component of the country’s collective identity. Every person becomes a unique point of light in the nation’s constellation. With the idea of individual identity resting at the heart of the American identity, the fear of losing that individuality holds a similar level of importance.
The quote above was spoken by the Gravemind in Halo 3. The Gravemind represents the Flood, a parasitic collective that consumes sentient life with the desire to spread across the galaxy. The Flood destroys an individual’s identity to use its body as organic material to replenish that which withers and dies.
The fear of something taking the much-valued individuality away from people has existed in the American consciousness for a long time, but few examples are as well known or as terrifying as H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” This short story centers around a mysterious force attempting to draw Americans into its hold, but its methods rely on subterfuge and deception and long-term planning. The Deep Ones play their scheme through generational breeding, while the Flood are a very proactive force consuming everything it touches with overwhelming force. While in lore, the Flood has immense amounts of patience and can play the long game due to its consciousness’ eternal nature, the methods of subsuming individuals are far more direct.
The shift from a stealthier, somewhat ambivalent approach to an actively malicious one reflects how American fears have grown from the early 20th century to now: the fears about the loss of individuality in Americans have grown from concerns about future decay to active present threats.
American monsters allow for the opportunity to look at the problems facing the American conscience from a more concrete standpoint, and literary theory will bear this out. If a creature does something to someone, it can represent what an ideology can do to the country. In the section, “American Monsters” of A Companion to American Gothic, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock puts it plainly, “Our monsters therefore tell us a great deal about ourselves – they tell us who we imagine we are, what we hope we’re not, and what we are afraid we might ourselves become” (Weinstock 42). In the American collective consciousness, the Deep Ones of “Innsmouth” and the Flood of Halo represent something very non-human. Both hold an idea of a more collective goal-oriented ‘society’ as compared to the individualist nature of humanity and are portrayed as powerful enemies that will consume innocent and good people for no other reason than it is their nature. The Deep Ones are portrayed as somewhat ambivalent infiltrators who reproduce with humans to create hybrids that eventually turn into Deep Ones while the Flood actively consume any living creature with significant biological mass, turning them into sustenance and vehicles by which to further spread. Sometimes this involves killing the subjects before reanimating them to serve the Flood’s purposes.
The ideas behind them are the same, but the execution evolved in the sixty-five years between the two. Both are horrifying to American audiences because, as Weinstock says, humans create monsters. His exact words are, “…monstrosity is an anthropocentric concept; that is, human beings define that which is monstrous in relation to themselves. The monster is the other, the inhuman, the “not me.”” (Weinstock 48).
Their base differences from humans in their approaches to life and their goals make both the Deep Ones and the Flood monstrous to humans. Their natural state of being against individuality places them at odds with the American view of individualism. Both come from very alien sources as well, with Weinstock further noting, “The American Gothic tradition in both literature and film is packed with monstrous aliens…[some] must be defeated or destroyed in the name of preserving “the American way.”… the monstrous others are alien races that threaten either to impose an alternate way of life on Americans or to wipe out life altogether” (Weinstock 51). Weinstock’s argument about the threats of imposing another way of life on Americans or destroying the American way is absolutely true for both the Deep Ones and the Flood. However, the aversion to Weinstock’s final sentence found by examining both the Deep Ones and the Flood, makes them all the more terrifying: there is almost no way to stop either one for good.
In “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” the narrator, Robert Olmstead of Ohio, goes on a genealogical trip to New England, where he stops by the town of Innsmouth. While there, he discovers the townspeople are the hybrid children of humans and fish creatures known as the Deep Ones. His exact description of them is as, “…a grayish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed,” (Lovecraft 45). Robert escapes Innsmouth but then discovers that he shares ancestry with the people of the town. This leads to the revelation that he is also a Deep One, before he feels the primal call to return to the city in the water beneath Innsmouth to be with the others. The difference in physicality shows a marked Otherness compared to humanity, but it’s the behavior of the Deep Ones that lend themselves to the idea of a collective consciousness, or at the very least, a collective that shares similar goals and acts as a consensus which is in direct conflict with the American goal of individualism.
After discovering which family members were Deep Ones, Robert notes upon observing their pictures, “I gazed at their pictured faces with a measurably heightened feeling of repulsion and alienation. I could not at first understand the change, but gradually, a horrible sort of compassion began to obtrude itself on my unconscious mind” (Lovecraft 48). The change in mindset signals a lack of free will, as the decision is being made on a subconscious level, with obvious influence from something else. Instinct or the powers of those which gave rise to the Deep Ones are the two likely candidates, and the former does not exist without the latter. Robert has lost his individual willpower, replaced by something greater, more shadowy, and less fathomable to human minds. Furthermore, the desire to live communally is shown in the final page of the short story, with narration taken from several paragraphs giving a clear picture of Robert’s mindset and making revelations about the Deep Ones:
“One night I had a frightful dream in which I met my grandmother under the sea… I met also that which had been her grandmother. For eighty thousand years Pth’thya-l’yi had lived in Y’ha-nthlei, and thither she had gone back after Obed Marsh was dead. Y’ha-nthlei was not destroyed when the upper-earth men shot death into the sea. It was hurt, but not destroyed. The Deep Ones could never be destroyed, even though the palaeogean magic of the forgotten Old Ones might sometimes check them. For the present they would rest, but some day, if they remembered, they would rise again for the tribute Great Cthulhu craved…We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y’ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever” (Lovecraft 50).
It is a dense paragraph to unpack, but hearing the mindset from one undergoing the transformation sheds a great deal of light on the Deep Ones. With the unconscious draw to the sea marking a lack of free will, the communal basis of the Deep Ones – in the sense that they desire to live with the others – underlines both their non-individualistic nature and its inevitability. Being in the service of Cthulhu, possibly continuing the sacrifices and tributes, lends more credence to this identity as non-individualistic, while the ‘possibly’ points out one of the key differences between the Deep Ones and the Flood.
The Halo series is most easily summarized as the existential conflict between mankind and other beings out within the stars. The original Halo trilogy sees the player character on board the cruiser Pillar of Autumn playing as the last of the SPARTAN-II supersoldiers, commonly known as Master Chief. The main human stronghold of Reach has fallen, and the Autumn is being chased by the Covenant. The Covenant are a hierarchical alliance of aliens who seek to find ancient and advanced artifacts of the long-disappeared Forerunners. The Autumn crashes on one such artifact, a massive ring known as Halo. On Halo, Master Chief discovers the Flood, a parasitic life form that transforms its hosts and slaves them to the Flood’s will with the sole goal of overwhelming the galaxy. Chief later discovers that Halo was a designed as a weapon to fight the Flood by killing off all sentient life in the galaxy. By destroying all sentient life in the galaxy, the Flood was effectively starved out when the Forerunners used the rings. Destroying its food was literally the only viable option to counter the Flood, as all other efforts had failed. The Forerunners indexed life across the galaxy and sent samples to the Ark, a massive space station outside the Halo array’s range, before their machines reseeded the galaxy once the Flood had died out.
As with many science fiction stories, hubris proved to cast a long shadow in horrifying ways. The Forerunners stored samples of the Flood on each Halo installation and on other facilities to study them. Strict containment protocols were supposed to keep these samples contained, but the hundreds of thousands of years and the Flood’s unique nature, or the meddling of outsiders causes these protocols to fail. The Flood could turn a “containable” outbreak into the end of the galaxy once more. In Halo 2, Master Chief returns to Earth, where the Covenant launch an assault to find the location of another Halo ring from a Forerunner artifact on the planet. On this ring is the Gravemind, a hyper-intelligent collected mass of Flood biomatter which could direct the Flood’s efforts in far less primal ways. The Gravemind’s presence enhanced the Flood’s chances of becoming a problem that humanity and the Covenant could not hope to stop should it escape the ring.
Eventually, it did. The Gravemind consumed the Covenant’s mobile capital city, a massive space station, during the battle around the second ring. In Halo 3, the Covenant send more forces to Earth to find their way to the Ark. At this point, the threat of the Flood and the betrayal of Covenant leadership have forced the Sangheili (known as ‘Elites’ to humans) into an uneasy alliance with humanity, in spite of the long and hateful history between the two groups. Together, they discover the Ark through a portal on Earth, traveling to it on the heels of the Prophet of Truth, the sole survivor of the Covenant’s leadership. Truth was attempting to activate the Haloes to usher in the Great Journey, the promise of ascension at the heart of the Covenant. Humanity, the Elites, and Truth all knew the true purpose of the rings, but Truth would use them to destroy all opposition in the galaxy and rule unopposed once his troops left the safety of the Ark. The Covenant, humanity and the Elites, and the Flood all made their way to the Ark where the Covenant was destroyed. The Gravemind was destroyed when the Halo ring being fabricated by the Ark’s automated systems to replace the one destroyed in the first game was destroyed as well.
The Flood themselves are malicious, hive minded creatures which seek to consume all life in the galaxy. The Gravemind is telepathically connected to all Flood forms and every being it consumes. When a new being is subsumed into the Flood, their memories and experiences become known by the hive mind. This facilitates further consumption because the Flood learns secrets, security protocols, and locations of population centers. Furthermore, if a Gravemind is destroyed, its memories are retained by any other Gravemind that happens to grow. Whole planets have their memories stored in a collective consciousness which spans across space and time, and exists to consume everything and bring as much pain as possible in the process.
The Flood infection typically spreads in three stages. First, Infection forms infect living creatures with significant biomass to make combat forms and gather raw materials. This allows threats to be tackled quickly and more intelligent beings to be harvested. Second, once enough biomass has been accumulated, the Flood begin forming a proto-Gravemind which grows into a Gravemind. After the Gravemind is formed, the Flood forms cease acting on raw instinct to being instruments
of the Gravemind’s compound intelligence. Third, once sufficient biomass has been reached, infection forms are no longer needed to create new Flood forms. They are still often used for convenience’s sake but are relatively weak compared to pure forms of the parasite. During the Forerunner-Flood conflict thousands of years before, a Gravemind was formed but wiped out when the Halo array was fired and it starved. Spores survived on the second Halo ring encountered by humanity and improper containment protocols led to the formation of a new Gravemind, retaining the memories of the old one, by the time the second ring was discovered by humanity (Halopedia).
The surface level similarities between the Flood and the Deep Ones are abundantly clear. It should come as no surprise that the cosmic horror of the Cthulhu mythos was an influence when the Flood were created. What makes the Flood an evolution of the Deep Ones in some senses is the progression of goals and methods.
The Deep Ones are mostly concerned with living in their underwater city, and their desire to destroy humans is only brought up as a possibility should they feel so inclined. There is a measure of apathy from the Deep Ones regarding humanity. Humans are viewed as beneath them, as evident by the focus of Robert’s closing narration being the returning to the underwater city, not returning to some quest to destroy humanity. The Deep Ones also rely on subterfuge and keeping their existence a secret to survive while still seeding their creatures. Summarizing the implications of this, the Deep Ones are saying that the loss of individuality happens slowly over time and is lost through new generations being brought up that way as a gradual process, and it is sought by those working subversively.
In comparison, The Flood seek to consume all life in the galaxy, they hold a vendetta against free life, and are open and straightforward with their plans, relying on force and cunning to complete them. All of this means they seek to consume and destroy the individuality of everything else, that they are actively malicious in pursuit of their goal, which is destruction.
The origins of both continue highlighting their differences. The force that created the Deep Ones is shrouded in mystery, but is implied to be very old and powerful and have a level of mortality as it is sustained on sacrifices. It also takes a passive role by collecting tributes and using subterfuge and deception to carry out its plans, if it decides to carry them out at all. In contrast, the Gravemind demonstrates its intelligence by speaking in poetic verse the way normal people compose regular sentences, while it uses both cunning and force to reach its goal. The Gravemind uses subterfuge and can even infect powerful artificial intelligence constructures by what’s known as the ‘logic plague.’ The logic plague is more of a catch-all term to describe how a Gravemind will convince an AI to side with the Flood, even if their sole purpose is to destroy the parasite. The Forerunners created Mendicant Bias to fight the Flood, and the Gravemind was able to turn the AI against its creators and use it to turn other AI constructs as well. It should also be noted that the Gravemind is practically invincible: the memories of all Graveminds are shared, and one surviving Flood spore can, over enough time, repopulate enough to create infection forms and consume enough life to create a new Gravemind.
While the narration implies the Deep Ones cannot be killed, the same narration also mentions that the military attack on Devil’s Reef damaged their underwater city. It is possible that their invincibility can be interpreted as a lie, either one they tell themselves or the way they wish to be perceived by the world. In the interest of self-preservation, portraying oneself as being unable to be harmed results in fewer attempts at harming them. In a way, the Deep Ones could be scared of what humanity could do to them, even with their mysterious and powerful nature.
In “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” the horror is supposed to come from the reader’s point of view, that Robert passively accepts the urge to sacrifice his individuality. Unlike his uncle who committed suicide with his last remnants of free will, Robert becomes one with the colony of the Deep Ones. The Deep Ones are relatively dormant and the horror comes from the idea that they could choose to resume their mission of destroying humanity at any given time. However, the implication that they could be destroyed with enough force gives a spot of hope, if the narration is interpreted that way. The threat of that loss of individuality is not a completely hopeless fight. Despite Lovecraft’s more racial overtones, the loss of individuality could be ascribed to an ideological reasoning as well.
Halo: Combat Evolved, the first entry in the series was released in 2001, while “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” was written in 1936. In 1936, with fascism rising across Europe and communism alongside it, the idea of maintaining individuality in America while still being American was a popular thought as the best way to combat these forces. The Flood first made their presence known to players in 2001. The Cold War had come and gone, with Lovecraft’s work becoming a much more potent representation of how many Americans felt about communism in the late 40s and throughout the 50s, but less so as the rivalry between the USA and USSR becoming less about ideology and more about a petty desire to win. By the time the Flood arrived, the idea that the loss of individuality was something that would happen subtly over time and through subsequent generations making gradual changes was long gone. In its place was the idea that those that seek to consume and take that individuality will do so brazenly and with overwhelming force. The threat escalated and changed over time, and makes the idea that the loss of individuality as a threat came with the rise of technology in a frightening way.
The main differences between the two monsters are drawn from their cultural trappings, namely the fall of 20th century politics and the rise of 21st century technology. In 1936, the fear of communism was present in the American psyche due to the rise of the Soviet Union, though it would metastasize in the years following World War II much more intensely with the defeat of the Nazis. In the years following the war, these fears would be pushed farther and much of the fear mongering around the spread of communism was focused on children and education and keeping the education of those “properly American.”
Much later on, Halo: Combat Evolved began its life as a game for the Mac computer before becoming a PC title and then as the flagship title for Microsoft’s Xbox console, which caused the explosion of console gaming in the United States, because it was the first American-made console. The internet was in a much less advanced form in 2001, but it was still a global network capable of connecting people across the world with ease. National identity started to take less of a priority to many people who used the internet because they were not necessarily from the same country. The internet made communication easier and turned the world into a much smaller place. As a result of this, more people could share their ideas and build a consensus. Much of that was internet culture inherited from its origins connecting academics. Suddenly being part of a greater network of likeminded individuals wasn’t a wholly bad thing to most Americans. It allowed those who felt they were underrepresented in the population at large to connect with likeminded individuals, for better or for worse. Before social media, the internet was divided into more numerous but smaller pockets. At this time, people in those smaller pockets tended to go there due to similar interests. With a natural connection already made, the idea of working as a collective was more palatable. Therefore, it is quite possible that the reason the fears of losing one’s individuality changed forms as represented by American monsters did so in response to changes in American society. What remained, and perhaps even intensified, was that the monsters which threatened to destroy American individuality were not irrepressible.
In “Defining the American Gothic” from Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation, Teresa A. Toddu says, “However, while the Gothic reveals what haunts the nation’s narratives, it can also work to coalesce those narratives. Like the abject, the gothic serves as the ghost that both helps to run the machine of national identity and disrupts it. The gothic can strengthen as well as critique an idealized national identity” (Goddu 10). The American identity being so individualistic is threatened by anything which threatens that individuality. However, the threats to individuality also carry a final common theme in both “Innsmouth” and Halo: they can be beaten. The prevailing notion at the end of these stories is the hope of defeating these forces which threaten to consume individuality. While these spots of hope come from different places, they are both tied together by the idea that resistance to such powerful and overwhelming forces is something which can succeed.
In “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” the hope comes from two factors that have been previously established. One, that the Deep Ones and their city do have the possibility of being destroyed, if the implication is taken that way. Additionally, there exists hope that the Deep Ones will never rise up and take over the planet if humanity has good luck, or they do not provoke the Deep Ones. In the Halo series, the hope is more apparent to match the more up-front nature of the threat. The Gravemind is destroyed in Halo 3 by igniting the replacement Halo ring before its finished construction at the Ark. Humanity, pushed back from its massive colonial footprint across the stars to its homeworld of Earth and besieged by its enemies overcame both the Covenant and found a way to destroy the Flood without destroying the rest of the galaxy.
While the hope in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” comes from good fortune and chance, the hope in Halo comes from the willing to fight back to the bitter end. That if the Flood is resisted by people who are strong enough, like Master Chief, then they can be beaten back and their plans foiled. Even if the Flood continues to exist out in the galaxy waiting to threaten humanity once again, it stands to reason that humanity could beat them again as well.
Individuality is, as established, a core tenet of the American identity. While both the Deep Ones and the Flood represent threats to that individuality and the dangers through which collectivization present, the way they engage with what exactly that threat is changed over time. The fear of losing American individuality shifted over time, as did the ways it must be fought.
In Lovecraft’s days, it was fought by wishing for the forces not to destroy that crucial point of American identity. In modern times, the desire to fight the loss of individuality gives Americans an active role in that equation. To take it a final step farther, it can be seen as a challenge for every individual to double down on their individualism, and to take risks to fight back against anything that threatens to homogenize them. The Flood were defeated by a ragtag alliance of humanity’s last survivors, previously bitter alien foes turned begrudging allies, and the machines of a long vanished civilization still carrying out their creators’ final instructions. Lovecraft would have Americans believe that they must hope their individuality is left alone by the forces which could destroy it, with the hope that those forces might be able to be fought. Halo says that not only can those forces be fought, but that they should be fought and the only way to win is through the diversity of individuals. In a way, the Flood were brought down by everyone being themselves, together.
This article is a polished and slightly expanded version of a paper I wrote in college. As such, I am reproducing the works cited here. Being for a horror class, I figured it would be appropriate for late October’s article, and a fun way to display some quality writing of mine from the days of old. It’s especially fitting thanks to this website’s genesis as part of two different courses I took in college.
Lovecraft, H.P. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” Gothic Digital Series @ UFSC. 1936.
Weinstock, Jeffery Andrew. “American Monsters.” A Companion to American Gothic. Wiley Blackwell.
Toddu, Teresa A. “Defining the American Gothic.” Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation. New York: Columbia UD, 1997. Print.
Halopedia is a wiki run by fans that organizes information on every aspect of the Halo series. The articles cited contain the references to the sources of the information here, as it has been pulled from a multitude of games, novels, comics, and other sources, all of which would be impractical to cite for such fragmentary pieces of information.
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