What I never got about Cthulhu

I think the point of the original story (The Call of Cthulhu) is that the revelation that Cthulhu actually exists in our world, not just as some god that some esoteric cult worships, but as an actual being that a perfectly sane Westerner had actually laid eyes upon, is such a profound shock because it implies that human beings are actually very far down on the cosmic food chain, so to speak. No one in the 1920s, serene in his belief that Man is in a privileged position on the planet, would ever suspect that the universe might be occupied and even governed by beings alongside which humans are as mayflies, tiny, weak, foolish, short-lived, whose civilizations are like sandcastles that may be swept away at any time by a tsunami.

(In other words, what Cthulhu did once It was awake wasn't very important. What was important was the fact that Cthulhu existed, and what that implied about humanity's actual place in the cosmos.)

Well, let's look at it from our (humanity's) perspective:


We ordinarily don't notice insects, but if they invade our homes, we most definitely do notice them and work to exterminate them. Cthulhu noticed a bunch of insignificant beings trying to penetrate his home and killed them like the vermin he perceived them as. The survivors managed to inflict a wound on him while escaping as insects can do to humans, but Cthulhu nonetheless asserted his dominance by driving them from R'lyeh.

Requiescat in pace, Krystle Papile. I'll always miss you.

My only problem with Lovecraft stories in general has been the rather exaggerated sense of fragility of human mind, to a certain degree. A lot of these narrators appear to be educated men or at least those that possess deliberating faculties to allow for more keen exploration of dissociated or undiscovered knowledge. But rather than react with excitement and awe, they tend to go mad with revelation. Why? I suppose these stories are product of their time but it'd be surprising to see a learned person reacting that way in this day and age. True some people might be more prone to go mad from such revelations, but I figure a more natural reaction to say someone like Cthulhu would be fearing it as a physical threat to human life, something akin to what happens in godzilla movies for instance. Unless these Lovecraftanian beings possess some psychic power to actually drive a person mad with a deliberate action. If you see something you can't comprehend, I'd imagine that would make a person more humble and perhaps react in awe than actually go mad.