Lonesome Places | Themes

Lonesome Places Themes

Preview of Lonesome Places Summary:

Derleth has two basic settings for his weird fiction. If the place is essentially good and pastoral, the story is set in the Sac Prairie region. While there may be an evil doer in their midst, the people in the rural regions are basically good and their intentions are just. It just takes a ghost, psychic residue, or essentially otherworldly events to set right a temporary evil manifestation.

When the place itself is bad, it is usually urban or suburban, and it is not even in the United States. Like many other writers of ghost stories, Derleth often sets his evil places in England, usually in the nineteenth-century fog of London. "Hallowe'en for Mr. Faulkner" is a prime example. An American researching his family tree in London finds himself at the center of the "Gunpowder Plot" and fills the role of his ancestor Guy Fawkes. In "Who Shall...
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