A story meant to grab the audience’s attention and possibly frighten them with a story about someone becoming mentally insane and eating one of their good friends alive can be quite entertaining, especially if the cannibal tried to blame it on some “rats in the walls”.  That is why the main purpose of this story is entertainment, Lovecraft writes this mysterious horror story to entertain the reader with ancestral myths and frightening details.  He establishes a theme of not letting the past haunt you.  Delapore lets his ancestors past of farming humans and eating them become his reality by letting the house, the curse, the cat, and the vault haunt him.

The Delapore family is hated all over their town and has been for centuries.  So it isn’t a surprise when Delapore moves in to the priory he is already disliked.  The family was believed to be “cursed of God” (pg. 76) because there were rumors being told of them being cannibals and having human farms. At these farms there were abundances of food to feed people that they keep hostage. The author makes it look like Delapore has no knowledge of the rumors that most certainly are true about his family because he says “something strange must’ve happened then.” (pg. 76) The “rats” represent the curse because they are what seem to drive Delapore to insanity.  Before he moved into the house he seemed like he was a normal guy.  When he heard all of the rumors from the townspeople he was “repelled” and found them disgusting to listen to. (pg. 79) Until he is awoken from his sleep to what he swears is rats in the walls driving his cat, Nigger- Man, crazy because he is clawing and snarling.  “In the morning I questioned all the servants, and found that none of them had noticed anything unusual.” (pg. 81) This makes Delapore insane, because he hears rats in the walls that no one else notices.  His family has to be cursed by God and the rats symbolize this curse because they are the first sign of it. 

Nigger-Man, Delapores most prized cat represents his psychological characteristics.  Nigger-Man drives him to be this crazy person who recognized his families curse, the rats.  “Nigger-Man raced up and down the floor by this part of the wall, clawing the falled arras and seemingly trying at times to insert a paw between the wall and the oaken floor.” (pg. 81) This is shows how the author made sure the reader knows where exactly the cat was pawing.  It is right in between the wall and the floor, which is exactly where a “rat” or another rodent would be. Without Nigger-Man Delapore wouldn’t think the noise was rats. This symbolizes to the reader why Delapore thinks there are actual rats, because his cat, something that hunts rats, was clawing where a rat would be.  This makes it the cats fault for Delapore seeming mentally insane, because his cat is making him hallucinate. 

Exham Priory, this is probably the most important place, or thing in the story.  This is where the curse began and where it takes its toll.  It symbolizes Delapores ancestor’s crazy habits, and his misfortune for becoming like them.  The house was untouched since his family lived there, so if there ever was a curse attached to something in the house, it is still there.  Delapore says that the people hated it hundreds of years ago when his family lived there and that they hated it now. (pg. 75) People thought that Exham Priory was a creepy place to live.  It was believed to be haunted and that everyone who had ever lived in it went crazy.  The way Lovecraft describes the house, when he uses a detail like “Architects and antiquarians loved to examine this strange relic of forgotten centuries.” (pg. 75) Makes it obvious that the priory has an old probably evil and gloomy look to it.  This makes it easy to believe that the country folk made stories and rumors about whoever lived there, who would want to live someplace that looks like an evil castle.

The vault that Delapore finds when he is searching with Captain Norrys and the rest of the crew that is deeper than the “deepest known masonry of the Romans” was never seen before and kind of frightened Delapore that it was never discovered in a house that has been untouched for this long.  When they go searching through the cave they find something that not only justifies all of their rumors but also frightens them to the point where they didn’t know if they could handle it if they weren’t prepared for such a horrid sight.  They found that the Delapore family had been stashing uncountable numbers of human bones throughout this cave.  Skeletons and whole bones with joints were scattered about, some smashed bones as well.  Even after all of this proof Delapore tries to convince himself that it wasn’t the curse that it was simply rat teeth marks on the bones and that the rats where the reason all of these humans were eaten down to the bone.  This proves how insane Delapore is and that he is simply just going through denial and cannot accept the facts of his ancestor’s crimes.  

The blackness that happens at the end of the story, where they find Delapore crouching over Captain Norry’s half eaten body, symbolizes Delapore’s denial.  He seemingly blacked out while he eats his friend and can’t remember what happened.  After he disappeared for three hours and the search party couldn’t find him with his cat clawing at his throat and his friends half eaten body next to him, moments after they discovered that the myths about his family’s curse are true.  All of the facts point towards Delapore yet he somehow gets out of convincing himself of what he did.  “They must know it was the rats.” (pg. 89) Even after he is locked up and his house is burned to the ground and his cat is probably out dead on the streets he still is fully convinced of his innocence and that the rats were the ones who ate his friends and that the rumors against his ancestors are all made up.  

One of the uses that this story has is allowing someone to know that the past can easily affect someone.  No matter what Delapore could have done there was no way that he was going to avoid going insane while living in a cursed house.  His ancestor’s actions are what binds him to the curse that makes him become a cannibal even after living a very normal life up until that point.  There are several things hindering this stories credibility though.  The fact that it is most definitely fiction and is made up from nothing makes it not easy to believe.  Along with this you have to believe in some super-natural things because myths and “rats in walls” not everyone believes in, and if you don’t then the story sounds like complete crap that no one would even think twice about listening to.  The fact that the story is limited to one point of view because it is a narrative takes away some credibility as well.  Not allowing the reader to get to see all the points of view in the story could easily mean that everything is made up and that the narrator is just insane and not able to function right. 
