The Case of Charles Dexter Ward: Boredom and Terror

Oh boy, time for more cosmic horrors beyond human comprehension! Oh, and racism! Can’t forget about that!

God dammit, Lovecraft… I like your work, but come on, man…

Our story concerns the life of the titular Charles Dexter Ward. After many years of traveling and studying, Charles dives into the dark and horrible secrets of his ancestry. But in doing so, he makes friends with dangerous individuals and awakens evils better left untouched.

The first half of this book is so boring it physically hurt to read. We get chapter after chapter of needless exposition about a figure that only plays a minor role in the actual story, a setting we barely see, all of which ends up being nothing more than a footnote in the story actually being told. I nearly gave up on it multiple times, it was so dull!

Luckily, things pick up dramatically once we get back to Charles. The pacing speeds up and the horror becomes genuinely unsettling. Watching his slow descant into madness, seeing the horrors locked beneath his lab, it’s some of Lovecraft’s best horror out of all the stories I’ve discussed thus far! It’s still very slow, but at least it doesn’t feel like a complete waste of time like the first half.

We also meet creepy new monsters to further flesh out the Necronomicon. Yes, they fall under Lovecraft’s classic ‘too horrible for description.’ But what little detail we do get is skin-crawling. Cannibal monsters that take centuries to starve to death? I’ll file that under ‘no fucking thanks.’

Unlike a lot of Lovecraft’s other works, this one actually has characters! Characters that speak dialogue! Sure, they’re still flat and one-note, but I’ll take what I can get. I just wish said characters – and the story in general – weren’t so jam packed with casual racism. But I guess it wouldn’t be Lovecraft without racial slurs.

Putting that less-than-minor issue aside, I think ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward’ is one of the better Lovecraft stories we’ve discussed thus far. Once you get past the painfully dull first half, you get a fairly chilling – if dated – horror story. If you have the patience for it, I’d recommend giving it a shot.