 was sane until he slipped into the dark yawning brink. "I told the man that there must be some singular odour or emanation from the old stonework, imperceptible to human senses, but affecting the delicate organs of cats even through the new woodworkLovecraft 36

Another thing that I noticed during the reading, according to Delapore's question "Why did he (Capt. Norrys) urge me to watch Nigger-Man and listen to the cats outside, and why did he guess wildly and vaguely at what could have aroused them?" (Lovecraft 39) o one else could hear the rats besides Delapore himself and his cats reason people thought he was out of his minde could hear the rats because it represented foreshadow that some power wanted to show him the "underground world." He could have never found out  the sub-cellar was. "I had now been shewn the thing which certain forces had wished to shew me"(Lovecraft 41) proved that some forces were showing him something, and the cats could feel it because of their mammal instinct.  might come from his ancestor who wanted him to find out facts about the sub-cellar and inherited it, or it might come from those people who had been "fed-up" by his ancestor who wanted to expose what his ancestor did. 

However, he was insane eventually when he slipped into the brink. His mentality was defeated step by step, which caused him to turn mad and the reason is obvious. After he went through the "ghastly array of human or semi-human bonesLovecraft, 41) and other horrific scenes, he became weaker that at the point he felt the "ecstatic fear," his mind was totally crushed down. 

here are various ways to foreshadowing an event. For example, the  harassed Delapore the whole time, about the twilit grotto really showed up at the end. The cats and the rats foreshadow the sub-cellar, which is the way to go down to the twilit grotto. The rats also  the maze about "who killed Capt. Norrys", which extended the maze to other mazes like "were the rats real" and "why are Delapore and his cats the only characters who could hear the rats." It really amazed me that those mazes can actually connect to each other without any conflicts. 

 too. For example, in the paragraph about Delapore slipped into the brink, "ecstatic" is the word I first noticed. The words ecstatic and fear are conflictive, but  They described the exact situation Delapore was in when he turned crazy mentally. Ecstatic, which means a feeling or expressing overwhelming happiness or joyful excitement, brought us a question about "what was this kind of excitement that will make a man terrified." In my opinion, Delapore was excited for achieving his initial goal, which was to find out his families' history, according to "It was this legendry which definitely turned my attention to my transatlantic heritage, and made me resolve to purchase and restore the family seat"(Lovecraft 32)  the history and the facts about the captivity of human beings destroyed his mentality. 

he of syntax. "The Rats  Walls" has  old-time sentences and the arrangements of words into sentences are beautiful since it was written in August -- September 1923. For instance, "I retired early, being very sleepy, but was harassed by dreams of the most horrible sort.(Lovecraft 37) This is a good example of emphasize how horrible those dreams were. Nowadays, people would probably just say "harassed by horrible sort" instead of putting horrible at the end of the sentence to address the extent. I think the arrangement of the words is  that different order of several words can change the meaning of the sentence. There are also some good symbolisms in the story, too. One of my favorites is "I saw my old black cat dart past me like a winged Egyptian god, straight into the illimitable gulf of the unknownLovecraft 44) Lovecraft compared the cat with a winged Egyptian god and used the word "dart" to show us how fast the cat wanted to get the sound. I think this symbolism is very interesting and impressive. 
