The Rats in the Walls is a horror story written by H. P. Lovecraft. H. P. Lovecraft was a college dropout and an amateur writer. He was unpopular when he was alive because of his cynical personality and his weird acting. But that did not stop him to be a great writer, maybe he was gifted and creative.

In the story, Lovecraft tells us a man described Delapore's horror story. In the beginning of the story, we are able to see scary elements. Delapore moved back into a castle in which his ancestors used to live in called Exham Priory. In additional this house involving Gothic towers resting on a Saxon or Romanesque substructure, whose foundation in turn was a still earlier order or blend of orders- Roman, and even Druidic or native Cymric (Lovecraft, 31). His ancestors used to own this castle. His ancestors' last name was de la Poer meaning "cursed of God" in 1307. The villagers hated his ancestors for being so weird. He bought Exham Priory in 1918, but was immediately distracted from his plans of restoration by the return of his son as a maimed invalid (Lovecraft, 32). He started hearing some noise form the wall after six days he moved in, and his cat called Nigger-Man seemed to have heard some noise as well. That noise frustrated Delapore and kept him awake all night, and when he asked other people about this noise, people did not hear anything at night. Then he asked some people to help him to search the castle, later on, he found a basement underneath the castle. However, one of the searchers' named Norrys disappeared on the way and Delapore left the group as well. Later, people found Norrys' half-eaten body, and his cat leaping and tearing at his throat. Finally, people shut him into a barred room at Hanwell.

In the last paragraph, we can see Delapore still does not think that he is crazy, he acts like he the victim of the incident and people locked him in a room. He believes that the rats were eating people, and rats do not leave him alone even he was locked-in. We can see the cat was leaping and tearing at Delapore's throat when people found him crouching in the blackness over the plump. Why was the cat leaping and tearing his throat? We can look the previous text; the cat heard the noise that only Delapore can hear. Cats usually are the symbols of some witches, and cats have the stronger sense of listening, in Egypt, cats are thought the representative of the supernatural power. Therefore, we can see why the Nigger-Man can hear what other cannot hear, see other people cannot see. That might be the reason Nigger-Man acted so weird before and tore Delapore's throat. Delapore is the offspring of the human-eater family, he is one of the "cursed people," maybe some ghost get into his body, that makes him is not like himself. He can hear the noise from deep down the wall and maybe he is the people who ate Norrys. That explained why the cat was tearing Delapore's throat, because the cat see the dark side of Delapore, the cat is the representative of the superpower, it tried to stop Delapore by tearing his throat. Actually, Delapore has two different identifications, the first one is like normal people, and the other one is the cursed one which might carried the curse from his ancestor. When the cursed one appeared, he is like have some superpower also, so he can hear the noise from the wall, and he got the same curse as his ancestor had, he started to eat Norrys. Actually, the cat was not attacking actual Delapore, it is the ghost that gets into Delapore's body, and the ghost is the one which his ancestor passed down, that makes Delapore's behavior sense. Because that Delapore was himself and Delapore was parasitized by his ancestor and he was not able to do what he wanted to do. All he acted out is a crazy and paranoid person.

The author also used some stories about Delapore's family; Delapore was born in a historical family. His family moved out from the castle, because his lineal progenitor was the only survivor of the family, fled to Virginia, and changed their name to Delapore. In the text, Delapore's family has no evil report before the date, but the villagers did not like his family and called them "cursed of God." The villagers were even happy about the loss of his family. There must be something deep down. In the very first paragraph, it says "The place had not been inhabited since the reign of James the First, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained, nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants; and driven forth under a cloud of suspicion and terror the third son, my lineal progenitor and the only survivor of the abhorred line. With this sole heir denounced as a murderer, the estate had reverted to the crown, nor had the accused man made any attempt to exculpate himself or regain his property (Lovecraft, 34)." Why was his linear progenitor the only survivor? Why did his linear progenitor not attempt to exculpate or regain his property? There must be an answer; his linear progenitor must know something about his family. Maybe he knew that his family was feeding on human's flesh, and he still had some humanities, he killed all his family to bring the peace to the village. However, he did not know that he still carried the blood of his family, and that blood is still passing down. When the turn to Delapore's generation, he returned to where his family lived, he started another round of murder. Let's look at the second paragraph, it says" Exham Priory had remained untenanted, though later allotted to the estates of the Norrys family and much studied because of its peculiarly composite architecture; (Lovecraft, 32)" We can see the Norrys family studied that castle when de la Pore's family left, that explained why Norrys was eaten in the end of the story. Because that castle was cursed and no one was allowed to enter, Norrys entered that castle, it was like triggered a curse. When Delapore returned to the castle, the devil inside of him was activated. Because the Norrys family had been studying the castle, Delapore have more motivation to eat Norrys. Therefore, in the end of the story, people found the crouching Delapore and half-eaten Norrys. That is not just an accident, but also these two families' incident.
