"Rats in the walls" is a short horror story that takes place in the early nineteen hundreds. It is a first person novel that follows a man known as Delapore. In the beginning of the book, Delapore seems like he is a trustworthy narrator, but the more the story unravels and develops, you start to question if he is reliable. Delapore moves from Massachusetts to his ancestor's land in England that has been uninhabited for many years, ever since there was a horrible tragedy where many family members died. He decides to restore the old home to its former glory; finally finishing, he moves into this new place with his black cat. Unknowing of most of his families past, he is confused about why most people in the town avoid and dislike him. Being hated by the town leads to Delapore being stuck in his home a lot, which leads to his cat and he eventually hearing rats running around in the walls.

At this point in the story, Delapore starts to hear about a curse that has been affecting his family for generations, reading "In one chronical there is a reference to a de la Poer as 'cursed of God' in 1307" (Lovecraft 33). The more that Delapore researches his family and the house, he finds out that the house is built on an ancient roman temple, and his family maintained an underground city. In the city they found the skeletons of hundreds of humans that had been gnawed on by the rats. The rats that he hears are evil creatures that were known to feed on the men that were held captive in the underground city. The problem with these so called rats is that Delapore is the only person that can hear these rats, leading the reader to think that Delapore really is crazy. All of this new information building up is too much for Delapore to handle and he eventually loses it and kills another man. "When they found me in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with my own cat leaping and tearing at my throat" (Lovecraft 44).  After they find Delapore being attacked by his cat with the dead body of Captain Norrys, he is instantly thrown into an insane asylum. This is where you really begin to question if Delapore is a trustworthy narrator, or if he is just an insane person that hears things in his head, and that he just made up the entire story.  On the other hand, the curse that Delapore talks about could be the reason why no one can hear the rats but him. This is where you have to deeply read the text to decide why Delapore is actually insane.

The author of this story did a fantastic job of writing in a way that leaves the story up for different interpretations, depending on how closely you read.  On the surface of this story there are two different ways to view Delapore; he can either be viewed as a crazy man, or a normal man whose past relatives' life styles have led to him being cursed.  However, if you look deeply into the text it becomes more apparent that Delapore is just crazy. One of the biggest hints that Lovecraft gives about Delapore being crazy is the quote "The rats they can never hear" (Lovecraft 45). This quote shows the fact that all of the rats in the story are all made up in Delapore's head. Another great example showing that Delapore is crazy is when he kills one of his only friends Captain Norrys. In 2013 Public Intelligence Fusion Center studied the relationship between mass shootings and the mentally ill finding out that since 2011 around 79% of gunman that are involved in mass shootings have a history of mental illness. With statistics of killers being mentally ill, along with the fact that the body of Norrys had been eaten leads to the conclusion the Delapore is crazy.

 "Rats in the Walls" started off very slowly, but did a good job of changing pace and hooking you, making you curious as to what would be happening next. Despite the slow start, the book picked up pace, keeping you interested and dragged you deeper into the twisted story line. H.P. Lovecraft differed from many other authors with his vocabulary choices. Most authors choose to use simple plain words to describe things going on in the story. H.P. Lovecraft on the other hand, did an amazing job choosing larger descriptive words that help paint a better, more graphic picture of what is happening. Instead of writing something such as, "I hated the beasts", he would use a sentence like "flabby beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing."(Lovecraft 37) Sentences like this make the book a much better read and keep the reader more interested in what is going on. It makes you to read the story much closer, because if aren't paying close attention you could miss little details that have a large impact on the overall story line. When you read a piece of literature that has amazing detail in it, you can picture everything that the author is saying. This allows you to almost make a little movie in your head about every little scene that you read about.

In Conclusion "Rats in the walls" is written in a way that creates great imagery for the reader. H.P. Lovecraft did an excellent job choosing description words for this story. H.P also wrote this story so that it forces the reader to make a stance on what they believe to be true in the story. When read closely it is easy to figure out that Delapore is crazy, and not plagued by a curse brought upon him by his ancestors.
