“The White Ship” by H.P. Lovecraft
ELDRA LIVES
That cold thought it could take me down!? No, no! Of course not! Through sheer force of will — well, DayQuil (DayqWill?) — I overcame the plague and lived to tell the tale…about another tale.
“The White Ship” by H.P. Lovecraft clearly is set in the Dreamlands given it is set during a dream. I really should’ve made this video a parody of “The Lighthouse,” which I still haven’t watched because I am busy playing riichi Mahjong in Mahjong Souls. I mean, catching up on posts.
We once again see Classical imagery in the Dreamlands: pillars and whatnot. Interestingly, we also see Classical geography. The focus on the various islands draws to mind the seafaring stories of antiquity. Note the color of the ship’s sails: white sails, drawing to mind the white sails of Odysseus in The Odyssey. It draws to mind, as well, the ship of Theseus — not the philosophical problem, but Theseus’s promise to fly white sails if he slew the minotaur, black sails if he was defeated.
Similar to “Polaris,” we have disaster come at the hands of someone due to their falling asleep. The dream itself isn’t the danger — it’s that they were dreaming at all that causes a tragedy. With “Polaris,” we had a dream-within-a-dream, the protagonist failing at his task in his dream because he fell asleep in that dream.
If you liked this story, and are interested in more fantasy seafaring fiction, I highly recommend the “Abarat” series by horror author Clive Barker, who also painted lots of works for the series. The series is marked as YA, I believe, but is mature, so I’d say it’s appropriate for high school ages and up. It is not too cutesy or chintzy. It’s also a great gift for the surly teen in your life. It has literary merit, is well-written, and has lots of paintings for the more visually inclined of our group. Abarat follows a girl as she explores an archipelago where each island is based on an hour of the day, e.g. a world of eternal 8 PM, etc. Disney has the film rights and there was almost a theme park based on the series.
Also, if you don’t already use it, definitely check out the National Park Service’s online images database. They have a lot of public domain images you can use, and it’s a great way to learn more about history, find great assets you can use for free (well, your tax payer dollars paid for them…,) and a great alternative to just hoping an image is okay to use. The top three sites I use are the NPS database for nature type photos, NASA for space photos, the Library of Congress archives for other subject matter like archeological ruins, WikiArt and similar sites for public domain fine art, and Flickr for errata (you can search for public domain uploads.) Please note that these archives also include non-public domain images. I use these sites because they clearly show whether an image is public domain or not.
Note that not all Wikipedia/Wikimedia images are public domain. Ones distributed under CC 4.0-SA (Creative Commons 4.0 - Sharealike) require, for instance, that if you use the images, you only use them in works also distributed under CC 4.0 SA (requiring you also make your work okay for others to reuse and remix.) That’s a very common misunderstanding.
