The dark mind of the esteemed writer H.P. Lovecraft has produced many a astounding works throughout his history of writing and storytelling. Known for his grim horror and truly surreal and dreadful environments,  Lovecraft paints an image that is ever so stunningly horrific that it seems unreal, but is so carefully and expertly worded that it seems possible in real life. From the creator of the eldritch abomination Cthulhu, we are given the short story "The Rats in the Walls" to pick apart and interpret what secrets may be hiding in those walls. The minds of men may lead to madness with those secrets though, as some families past a better left in ruins of their old homes.

This short story is one of many Lovecraft stories that emphasize ignorance is bliss and that knowledge is torment. As Lovecraft had once said "We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far." and he truly emphasizes this with his writings. The story itself comes with narrator protagonist whose life is steeped in the loss of loved ones and filled with mystery. This is for the showing of how humans can be just as dark and as cruel as wild vermin and beast. It's a play on what is the human mind and just what dark matter may lay within it.  The dark imagery given for the rat like humans and their insatiable hunger delivers a gruesome display to how dark and depraved mankind can become. "And, most vivid of all, there was the dramatic epic of the rats - the scampering army of obscene vermin which had burst forth from the castle three months after the tragedy that doomed it to desertion - the lean, filthy, ravenous army which had swept all before it and devoured fowl, cats, dogs, hogs, sheep, and even two hapless human beings before its fury was spent." Through this quote alone gives the reader only a fraction of what horrors await for our ignorant protagonist.

The story begins on July 16, 1923 as our narrator, a young man from Massachusetts, moves into his family's ancestral home, the Exham Priory, after new renovations to complete rebuild the shell of a manor to its glory. Though restoring the manor, our protagonist is wholly ignorant to the facts and the tales of the horrid things done in Exham Priory. On his first night of stay our protagonist, and his cats, hears what sounds of hordes upon hordes of rat. Upon investigation  of the basement it is discovered there is an entire underground city network and that it was used for if nothing else the raising of humans as livestock for cannibals. These humans were animal like in nature and are truly the verge of madness with a lack of any moral code or ethics. Some had even reverted back to a quadrupedal state of being, hence the "rats" are truly just mankind in the state of animalism and unruly nature. All this just to fulfill the family's gluttony for the taste of human flesh. With the madness of the city and revelation of his family's dark secret our protagonist snaps and succumbs to his own madness and delves into the traditions of his forefathers and begins to cannibalize on his friend, going into a sort of frenzy. He is later found cursing the wars that claimed his family and the very land itself. He is subdued though and placed in a nearby mental institute. Our protagonist sits in his cell claiming that "it was the rats" who had killed his friend, and it is the rats now that sit in the wall of his solitary cell.

Our protagonist seeks fulfilment and distraction from the woes of his life, in the restoration of the Exham Priory, for he had lost his only son in World War 1 and had no wife to care for. "I bought Exham Priory in 1918, but was almost immediately distracted from my plans of restoration by the return of my son as maimed invalid." (pg 42. par.2 ln. 1-2) Broken and empty he would put all he could into this single bit of owned property "In 1921, as I found myself bereaved and aimless, a retired manufacturer no longer young, I resolved to divert my remaining years with my new possession." (pg42. par 2. ln.4-6) This sole possession he worked for would be his ultimate downfall as the secrets of the Exham Priory would surely overwhelm him. He kept delving for more and more knowledge of his families own mysterious past. His ignorance was his bliss but as soon as that ignorance was lost, it drove him to madness. The madness kept slowly eating away at him bit by bit, scratch by scratch. This would ultimately crescendo into full blown lunacy, "Who says I am a de la Poer? He lived, but my boy died!... Shall a Norrys hold the land of de la Poer?... It's voodoo, I tell you  that spotted snake Curse you Thorton, I'll teach you to faint at what my familys do!"(pg.54. par 4. ln. 10-13) With that even our protagonist ability to stay comprehensively on the same subject is loss and the madness taken over.

Though ignorance may lead to bliss and knowledge to madness, it is knowledge that is needed for discovery to be made. The dark path Lovecraft has written about may be some form of insight into the darkness of the human mind,  but not to all minds for all men. As with the interpretation of the written work the mind of a man is not always set in stone. So as entertaining as the darkness of Lovecraft's worlds are, they should not be construed as true human thought. We all have our own rats in our walls though and always be wary of what secrets my hide in your own past.

