A story meant to teach the audience’s about ancestral curses and possibly frighten them with a story about a man who become mentally insane and ate one of his good friend alive.  A story of this genre can be quite entertaining, especially if the cannibal tried to blame it on some “rats in the walls”. Lovecraft writes this mysterious horror story to educate the reader with ancestral myths and frightening details.  By doing this he establishes a theme of not letting the past haunt you.  Delapore lets his ancestor’s 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” because there were rumors being told of them being cannibals and having human farms (pg. 76) 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 are thought to be true about his family because he says “Of my family to this date there is no evil report, but something strange must’ve happened then” (pg. 76).  This explains that there is no actual evidence of anything evil happening so he is unaware of his family’s curse.  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.  Delapore expresses his confusion by saying, “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. The rats are the first sign of Delapore’s family curse and the horrors that it has brought to his family and this allows the author to use the rats as a symbol of the curse.

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 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 leads the reader to believe that the cat is what is actually causing Delapore to become insane.  However, it really is not the cat that is making Delapore crazy it is his family’s past and the hosue. 

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, which explains why the towns people believe that it is still cursed.  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 was crazy.  Delapore says that,” They represented my ancestors as a race of hereditary daemons” (pg. 78). 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).  Architects examined the house but left it untouched for hundreds of years.  This would confuse a lot of people and when people are confused they assume things.  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 has not been kept in shape and is seemingly falling apart.  The towns people would think that the people that lived there were cannibals.

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. This frightened Delapore that it was never discovered, because the house has been there for so long and was left in original condition. Someone had to have noticed this cave beforehand and kept it a secret.  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.  Skeletons and whole bones with joints were scattered about, some smashed bones as well.  When Delapore discovers that the rumors about his family’s past are true it drives him insane to the point where he blacks out. This black out is a symbol of his denial.  Delapore explains his blackout as if it was not even a black out, “My searchlight expired, but I still ran” (pg. 88).  They discover him crouched over the captain’s dead, half-eaten body.  He doesn’t seem to remember what happened while he was astray from the group for three hours.  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.  Even after Delapore is imprisoned, his house is burned down, and he lost his beloved cat he is still convinced of his innocence.  He believes that it is truly the rats and expresses it by saying, “They must know it was the rats” (pg. 89).  This backs up claims made about how insane Delapore and his ancestors are and that he is simply just going through denial and cannot accept the facts of his ancestor’s crimes.   

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.  However, just because a story is fiction does not mean that the story is useless because it still holds meaning behind all of symbols.  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 made up things that no one would even think twice about listening to.  The author uses these made up figures to represent the moral of the story which is to not let the past haunt you, which is his way of adding credibility.  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. 
