The Rats In The Walls

Like many works of horror literature, ”The Rats in the Walls” builds tension gradually and keeps readers guessing until its climactic finale. Many horror writers, Lovecraft included, allow time for readers to imagine what the ending of the story might be; the uncertainty of imagination helps build narrative tension and suspense. The story’s final events escalate very quickly, echoing the sudden revelation and intense emotions that the characters experience when they finally gain access to the underground grotto. The truth about the de la Poers is correspondingly extreme so that the slow tension build pays off.

Along with uncertainty, Lovecraft uses ambiguity to increase the tension and horror in his story. He deliberately leaves certain details unclear and certain questions unanswered. For instance, the explorers choose to leave most of the grotto unexplored and never find out with any certainty how long the cannibal cult was in operation. The origins of the underground city are also unclear; Delapore says that the tunnel between the grotto and Exham Priory was carved from the bottom up, a minor detail that raises more questions than it answers.

Another way that Lovecraft increases the intensity of his story’s climax is by setting up an extended time frame for the events of the tale. The underground grotto has been inhabited for millennia. Delapore speculates that the city might date back “ten thousand years” (Paragraph 45). This timeline places the horrors of the story on an almost unimaginable scale, drastically changing Delapore’s understanding of his family’s history and implying that the victims of the cult must number well into the tens of thousands.

When describing the architecture of both Exham Priory and the underground grotto, Lovecraft names several cultures that have lived in what is now contemporary England. He starts with Cymric (Welsh) and “Druidic” (a reference to Indigenous groups from the British Isles) cultures before moving on to Roman, Saxon, and finally modern English inhabitants (Paragraph 43). Lovecraft creates further connections to the ancient world by discussing Cybele, a Phrygian goddess, and Atys (known today as Attis), Cybele’s consort in mythology. When Delapore starts to cannibalize Norrys, he mentions the name “Atys” and speaks in the languages of these ancient cultures (Paragraph 52). Through his family, Delapore is inherently connected to the horrors of the underground grotto.

There are two major reveals that make the climax of “The Rats in the Walls” frightening. The first is the truth about what was happening in the underground grotto and the long legacy of cannibalism and enslavement. The second is Delapore’s apparently hereditary violent urges that push him to attack Norrys. Lovecraft worried throughout his life that he would experience psychiatric illnesses, as several of his family members had. He feared “asylums,” especially since both of his parents died in Butler Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Rhode Island. The fear that some frightening illness or mental state might be inevitable because of one’s family history is something that Lovecraft and Delapore have in common, and Lovecraft explores this fear through the themes of Family History and Identity and Violence and Morality.

The behavior of the de la Poer family is an interesting conundrum in the story. On one hand, the underground city of cannibals long predates the de la Poers’ ownership of Exham Priory. They are by no means the only people to take part in this long-standing culture of murder and cannibalism. When Delapore hears stories about his ancestors, he notes that some of the people who committed atrocities actually married into the family and were not de la Poers by blood; “temperament rather than ancestry” appears to dictate how members of the family will behave (Paragraph 11).

On the other hand, there is a hereditary component to the de la Poers’ cannibalistic tendencies. Delapore is the only one at Exham Priory to hear the rats in the walls, even though he has several servants who also live there. None of the other members of the expedition become violent when they enter the underground grotto. The only other person to experience lasting psychological effects is Thornton, who reacts with extreme fear rather than violence or aggression when he sees the mass of skeletons. This raises the question of whether Delapore ate Norrys because he was part of the de la Poer family or simply because his temperament made him susceptible to the cursed atmosphere.

Delapore’s personality is an intriguing element in the story. While he is not violent until the end of the narrative, he does have an unusual approach to both his actions and his narration. None of the characters in the story are very well fleshed-out besides Delapore himself; he does not seem especially interested in other people’s interiority or perspectives. He is dismissive of any viewpoint that he does not immediately understand, assuming that all of the stories he hears about the de la Poers are nonsense until he is proven wrong.

Delapore finds it difficult to describe and interpret emotional experiences, except when he finally elaborates on the horrors of the grotto. When his son dies, for instance, he simply says that he was bereaved; he says nothing of the circumstances of his son’s death or how he felt about the experience. He is quick to become frustrated by Thornton’s more operatic emotions as well. Thornton faints twice in the grotto; during his cannibalistic frenzy, Delapore scorns him for fainting when faced with the actions of the de la Poer family. Delapore’s emotional reticence and his unwillingness to engage with other perspectives could point to a personal temperament that might resonate with the curse of the underground grotto. What exactly happened to Delapore and why are questions that remain open to interpretation.