Rats in the Walls is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft that illustrates the point you’re your past could haunt you forever. The short story begins with the main character, Delapore, narrating the backstory about the estate he has acquired from his ancestors three centuries prior to the present time. The estate’s name is “Exham Priory”, however, people consider Exham Priory to be cursed. The estate has many floors with different time periods associated within each floor. As you descend in floors, you descend in time.  The base of the estate is pre-Druidic, then Roman after that, then Saxons on top of that floor, followed by Normans, then finally modern. The estate has been involved with ancient pagan cults and acts of cannibalism. Delapore chose to ignore what he has heard and goes on redecorating the estate. After he fixes up the old castle, odd things begin occurring. The most prominent sound was the sound of rats in the walls. Which isn’t possible, as he just had them redone. His cats start to become irritated and start clawing at the noises in the walls. Delpaore chases after these noises with his sons war friend, Edward Norrys. Captain Edward Norrys says he cannot hear the sounds. They set up traps and catch nothing but still the cats and Delapore can hear the scurrying of rats. Finally, they decide to enter the deep innards of the estate. I believe that there are three main themes of the short story which are, even though a person may have changed the circumstances in their life and the way they live their life, they still will never be able to escape their real blood heritage, which comes from their ancestors and the descendant into madness.

Delapore bought the estate from his ancestors who died a long time ago. He states that the estate had been sitting there for such a long time, that no one had touched it since the “reign of James the First.”  Lovecraft does not give the audience very much information about the ancestors of Delapore. The readers know that Delapore can see soldiers shouting and the women screaming during the fight of the Civil War. We then see Delapore and his father receiving their hereditary envelope, which they are unsure of what it contains. Delapore’s father ends up dying without letting him know. Some believe that the estate might be haunted because of his ancestors, which accounts for the reason for the “rats in the walls” which could possibly be Delapore’s ancestors. The ancient myth was that there were rats in the walls. Even thought there are not any rats in the walls, the main character believes that his ancestors could be haunting him, hence the reason he can’t get away from him. No matter how much he tries to change the way he lives his life, he will never be able to escape his real blood heritage.

One of the other main themes of this short story is that as Delapore is descending down the stairs, he is actually descending into madness. As Delapore descends down the stairs, he goes deeper and deeper underground. As he is doing this, he sees many different levels of evil. The first few floors are modern and original, but as he goes deeper into the ground, he starts to see deeper levels and meanings of evil. He and a group of others go into the basement, which ultimately leads them to an ancient underground city where they see cannibalism. Delapore sees a “pit of bones” which the audience later learns is the reason that lures the people into the city. Near the end of the story Delapore turns into a cannibal himself, which causes him to end up in a mental institution. This, I believe, is the ultimate descent into madness. 

In conclusion, I believe that the two main themes of the short story “Rats in the Walls” are even though a person tries to live a better life his ancestors will always haunt him, and Delapore’s descent down the stairs is essentially his descent into driving himself insane. Lovecraft, as a writer, is obsessed with the idea of the fear of the unknown. Much of his writing is about this theme, but I feel as if this short story captures the theme “the fear of the unknown” the best. Throughout the short story, Delapore makes a series of poor choices, which goes along with the overall main theme of the short story. I believe that Delapore was very intelligent but also extremely ignorant because he made many poor choices throughout the story, leading him to go mentally insane. As Lovecraft would say, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”