The Colour Out of Space

Nahum Gardner’s farm was struck by a meteor, leading to tragedy for him and his family. We know Nahum only through Ammi’s account—which is the observation of a neighbor but not a close friend. Consequently, the reader is never intimate with Nahum, which is probably just as well, considering what he came to in the end. Nahum is a stolid farmer, not very imaginative. After the scientists refuse to help him, he doesn’t seem to make any particular investigation into the cause of the blight on his farm, and he becomes trapped there with the force or entity sucking his will to escape. Ammi remarks as he is recounting the story to the narrator that the blight seems to have less effect on those with an “unweakened mind.” Perhaps Nahum lacked this “unweakened mind” that would have enabled him to escape, but he was also living virtually on top of the entity. By the time he began to suspect what was happening, it may have been too late.

The reader hears about Nahum Gardner’s experience thirdhand—first through Ammi, then through the narrator. This distances the reader so much from Nahum that it may be difficult to muster much empathy for him. Readers tend to prefer active characters, and Nahum’s passivity makes him a less sympathetic character than either Ammi or the narrator, who both take more active roles.