The King in Yellow

Content Warning: This section of the guide quotes outdated and offensive language around mental health conditions and suicide as well as discussing stigmatizing attitudes toward mental health.

“In the following winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of April, 1920, when the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.”

This quote establishes the setting in an alternative New York where the government has legalized suicide. It is also foreshadowing for later events in the story, where Castaigne’s accomplice running into the lethal chamber is a signal that his plan has worked.

“I told him, smiling, that I would get even with him for his mistake, and he laughed heartily, and asked me to call once in a while. I did so, hoping for a chance to even up accounts, but he gave me none, and I told him I would wait.”

Castaigne’s vague threat to the doctor who had him committed, though taken as a joke by the doctor, is real. This foreshadows the moment later in the story when Castaigne kills, or at least claims to have killed, the doctor as part of his revenge plot.

“I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear for ever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth—a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.”

This is the first and most detailed description of the contents of The King in Yellow play, and the mysterious kingdom of Carcosa. That Castaigne views these places as real, and himself as a descendant, are hints that he may truly be suffering from a mental health condition, though he claims otherwise. This is the first of several incidents when reading the play leads to “madness.”