
Despite how much someone tries to ignore or defy the truth, sometimes it is unavoidable and it will end up coming back to haunt them.  H.P. Lovecraft demonstrates this in “The Rats in the Wall”, showing that events in the past repeat themselves. H.P. Lovecraft used the history of the family and the property, Exham Priory, as a thread throughout the text to bring up this point.  In the family history, there is a cannibalistic past that appears throughout the text to further the authors purpose.  By including this inescapable family cycle, H.P. Lovecraft concocts an indirect meaning to the story, which contains a bigger picture about human tendencies.

During the introduction of the text, de la Poer discusses the history of Exham Priory as he first knows it by saying “the place had not been inhabited since… nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants” (Lovecraft 75). This piece of text serves as an introduction of the history of the estate, where the last time it was occupied was long ago and the tenants were killed.  The history of this is still uncertain and a big mystery.  The language of this background is unspecific, just referring to nature, rather than the actual reason.  This causes suspense.  The legends of the family traveled, bringing a negative connotation on to the family and the estate, Exham Priory.  This negative context was carried on through the generations in the surrounding areas.  The “Country folk…hated it hundreds of years before… and they hated it now,” (Lovecraft 75).  The country folk represent the outside opinion of the de la Poer family, and the current generation of the de la Poer family doesn’t know that much detail of the family history due to the move to the colonies, but the country folk have been there for years and the legend carries through generations.  Captain Edward Norrys, who acted as a mediator of the information from the outsiders’ opinions to the de la Poer family because of his roots in each party, informed de la Poer of some of the legends, though de la Poer and Norrys didn’t take them seriously because of how outlandish they sounded in modern times.  Even though the stories seemed very outlandish, the common people around Exham Priory still feared the de la Poer family, which was evident in the son’s visits to the area, as they “viewed Exham Priory as nothing less than a haunt of fiends and werewolves” (Lovecraft 77).  The common people around the estate provide an outsiders view of the de la Poer family that the current de la Poer is unaware about.  He is the last de la Poer alive and doesn’t know the family history in much detail.  He said that he could only come up with “jesting conjectures,” about the past of the family (Lovecraft 76).  The country people have been around the de la Poer family longer than the last de la Poer, and have generations of stories about the family, so the common people could provide a more accurate and truthful testament to the history of the family than the living de la Poer.  Country folk act as the informed group, knowing the truth, where de la Poer represents the ignorance of the family, just assuming the stories didn’t actually happen.  The stories are so gruesome and unbelievable that he couldn’t accept them, but he wouldn’t know as much as the townspeople.  The importance of this is the separation of de la Poer and his past.  He was different from his ancestors, removed from all of the information.  De la Poer seemed like he would never commit the same acts that they have, but the past ended up repeating itself.  The lack of knowledge about the past couldn’t prevent it.  De la Poer’s ignorance of the facts makes him separated from the common knowledge, which makes the result at the end of the story more surprising, because as much as he tried to remove himself from the past, the past caught up to him in the end.

The final scene of the cannibalistic attack de la Poer was accused of doing was foreshadowed throughout the story.  De la Poer said that the stories the country folk spread around “represented my ancestors as a race of hereditary daemons… and hinted whisperingly at their responsibility for the occasional disappearance of villagers through several generations,” (Lovecraft 78).  Then, on the same page, it mentions the “wails and howlings in the barren, windswept valley beneath the limestone cliff” (Lovecraft 78).  De la Poer then noticed the “disproportionate abundance of coarse vegetables harvested in the vast gardens” (Lovecraft 78) that was meant to feed the humans that his family was going to eat.  De la Poer even had a dream of the cannibalism that occurred for ages at the estate when during his dream there “was a vision of a Roman feast like that of Trimalchio, with a horror in a covered platter” (Lovecraft 85).  The horror refers to a human body part served as if it was a meal, similar to the meals that the de la Poer family ate.  All of this foreshadowing and de la Poer’s realizations were proved when they desented into the cave below the alter in the basement of Exham Priory.  The bones found were “lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but… human… all the bones were gnawed,” shows that the de la Poer family and residents of Exham Priory have been breeding the herd of humans to be eaten for ages, when some of the population eaten weren’t fully evolved (Lovecraft 87).  The ruins of cages showed that the villagers that disappeared in the past were kept underground and were bred as if cattle. The cave on the cliff of the valley found under the house shows that the villagers reports of the stench and wails heard from the valley was caused by the de la Poer family and could explain the random disappearance of the country people.  The cannibalism was included by H.P. Lovecraft in order to further show the inability to avoid the past.  The current member of the de la Poer never committed any of these acts before, but now that he is placed around his family history, history continues to repeat itself.  By foreshadowing it throughout the story, H.P. Lovecraft was able to slowly unravel the history of the family as de la Poer became closer to it.  It shows the progression he made to be more like his ancestors until he finally committed the same crimes as them.  Despite him not seeming like his terrible ancestors, he was ended up the same way as them.

H.P. Lovecraft used a full loop inside the story.  De la Poer said in the second paragraph of the story that “and this week workmen have blown up Exham Priory, and are busy obliterating the traces of its foundations,” which takes us to the end of the story when he is being held insane for the cannibalistic actions, and they’re blowing up Exham Priory because of the haunted past.  Lovecraft uses this circle to end the point he was making all throughout the text, between the history of the estate, the history of the de la Pour family, especially in regards to the cannibalistic past.  Lovecraft used these threads throughout the story to say that history will repeat itself, and one cannot outrun their past.  De la Pour heard about the rumors of his family, saw the hints of evidence, such as the extensive gardens, yet he continued to occupy Exham Priory thinking that the stories about his family didn’t mean anything.  The history of the previous masters of the house set the bleak past of the property, which Lovecraft included to embed the purpose of the text in early, and continuously remind the reader of the past throughout the text with the other stories.  By the end of the text, the reader could almost expect to see what was going to happen because of the heavy foreshadowing that occurred before.  The threads of evidence spread throughout all pointed to the fact that the de la Pour family history was going to catch up to the only living family member, who tried so hard to return to his family roots.  Lovecraft was just trying to show that someone can’t return to their roots without all of the haunted past following them.  De la Pour tried to ignore the past of his family, but the past just repeated itself and he ended up like his ancestors.
