
H.P Lovecraft “Rats in the Walls” is a captivating story with all the necessary components to constitute as a horror story. It has supernatural elements, a generally dark atmosphere, frightening imagery, and it ends with a dark plot twist. At surface value, the plot of the story is undeniably frightening. Symbolically, the story represents a darker truth. The past events of the universe have shaped the universe and created an unchangeable reality that humans are helplessly trapped in. 

Repetition is a useful tool in literature in order to help develop a theme. The more an author uses a word, symbol, expression, or device, the more significant it should become to the reader. The first word a reader might pick up on that is used repeatedly is “ancestor” and variations of the word ancestor (ancestor, ancestors, ancestry, etc.). The narrator states that the story takes place in the 1920’s, but a lot of the exposition talks of his ancestors from a much earlier time. His ancestors are a powerful force in his life that have affected his image and how the others in the town view him. They were ostracized from their community for their wrong-doings and this ultimately affected the narrator. While his ancestors can literally function as his ancestors, symbolically they represent something more powerful. They represent the past events of the universe that everyone must inevitably deal with in their everyday lives. Every single little action that has happened within the confines of our universe have helped shape the reality we exist in today. 

Later on in the story, the narrator notes that there are “Roman inscriptions” (85) carved into the walls. On the same page, his family’s cult is described as “antediluvian”, meaning that they had been around since before the time of Christ. Since current setting of the story is the 1920’s, this means that his ancestors had been committing the cannibalistic acts that affected the narrator thousands of years later. Even later, the narrator states “When Dr. Trask, the anthropologist, stooped to classify the skulls, he found a degraded mixture which utterly baffled him. They were mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human” (87). This means humans were trapped in Exham Priory so long that they started to retrogress through evolution. This helps support the theme that the universe has been functioning and existing forever. No one’s reality would be the same without the chain reaction of events that has been going on forever. 

Exham priory also functions as a symbol to support the theme of man’s helplessness. Exham priory is the property that the narrator inherits. It is very large and has many outdated, archaic details. The lower sections of the house were used as cells for the humans that the narrator’s family had trapped and started farming. “There had been great herds of them, evidently fattened on the coarse vegetables whose remains could be found as a sort of poisonous ensilage at the bottom of huge stone bins older than Rome” (87) describes how many humans had been trapped in these cages and for how long. The trapping of these humans parallels the trapped sensation Lovecraft wants to give the audience when describing the universe as a powerful and uncompromising force. 

Lovecraft addresses man’s helplessness in this world, and man is stuck in the reality he has found himself in. “Rats in the Walls” seems to paint this reality as a “hell” of sorts, which is fitting due to the story being a horror. Lovecraft isn’t necessarily saying that reality is a literal hell, but he is making the argument that we are just powerless mortals forced to live our days in this universe we cannot change. This can be seen in the lines “My fear of the unknown was this point very great.” (84). The narrator, and all humans for that matter, are incompetent to understand or influence the forces that control the universe. 

Lovecraft also addresses the helplessness of Man’s mental instability. Growing up, Lovecraft frequently suffered from sleep paralysis and night terrors. Lovecraft and many other horror story authors wrote stories with themes of mental illness. Considering “Rats in the Walls” discusses man’s helplessness in handling his own reality, it is incredibly fitting that Rats in the Walls is written from the perspective of a mentally inept person. The narrator is helpless to his delusions and night tremors that haunt him throughout the story. “But what I can swear to is that behind it I heard a low, distinct scurrying as of rats or mice” (81). Most of Lovecraft’s delusions are of rats and the sounds of rats. Lovecraft does a good job of disguising these delusions as fact until the last couple of paragraphs of the story. This method of leading the reader to believe the delusions are true works to help the reader understand mental illness better. If the reader had known the rats were delusions the whole time, then the narrator would be deemed crazy and unreliable. Instead, the narrator is presented as smart and stable. When the author reveals in the end that everything this reliable narrator has been seeing and hearing throughout the story were just figments of his imagination, it gives the reader an accurate representation of how mental illness can affect a person. Each individuals’ perception of reality is their own unique, subjective view on it and they are trapped within that subjectivity. 

Man has been placed in this universe and cannot change his universe or his reality. The universe is perpetually moving and functions as an omnipotent force. The powerfulness of the universe is not a definite bad thing, but it does have a strong influence on every person. 