by Benjamin Lomax

Created on: December 03, 2010

“The Silver Key” is a short story by the creator of the Cthulhu mythos, second only to Edgar Allen Poe as the master of macabre short fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1926 and originally published in the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It was also collected in The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath collection of related Lovecraft stories in 1970.

“The Silver Key” is the first of the Randolph Carter Dreamlands series (Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath and several others) and sets the tone for the later stories to follow. Interestingly enough it is a post-script story as it begins with Carter “losing the key” to dream travel, so presumably he had traveled many times before to the dreamy lands so much better than reality, among those stories nearly all of the other Dreamlands cycle. So this was written first but is a close to the tale.

Carter had lost the key through his readings in the real world, all of which encouraged a grounding in the logical, in the what is rather than the what might be. This focus on reality slowly and gradually has worn away his ability to dream and imagine better things, something he did with great affinity as a younger man. He turns from science to faith to pain and humor all in the attempt to see what brings so many to the belief that the mundane world is a better vessel for a “delicate spirit”.

Unsatisfied and unhappy as he has lost his former ability to leave behind the dreary world even shortly in his dreams, he begins to search for a way back to that experience and place, reminded of the silver key he once had by his grandfather, he finds it locked away in a chest in the attic. He dashes off into the wild forest to transport himself fully into that world so much more suited to him than this one.

The end of the story relates how as a boy Carter was fanciful but eerily prognosticative with visions of the future that after his disappearance all appeared to come true. It was unknown what happened to the adult Carter, but the boy Randolph was a dreamer and visionary related for many years afterward by relatives.

This is the most relative of the Randolph Carter stories as to Lovecraft’s own dismissal of his world in preference to fantasy, even going so far as to make Carter’s life similar to Lovecraft’s growing up, though without the infirmity of his health problems. This story ends rather happily, unusual for Lovecraft, and can safely be assumed to be wish fulfillment for Lovecraft himself. It lacks the horrific elements of most of Lovecraft’s work, but for those looking for a surreal literary experience, this is an excellent one.

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