H.P. Lovecraft’s story, “The Rats in the Walls,” combines elements of the horror and science fiction genres of literature and features an unreliable narrator. The story starts off at a slow pace as the reader learns the history of the Delapore family, who initially owned land in England, but suddenly moved to the United States around the Civil War. The protagonist, who is introduced as Delapore and is the narrator, purchases back the land his family once owned, without knowing the strange circumstances surrounding the relationship between the land and the family, as well as the resentful neighbors. 

This sets the reader up as if he or she is reading a typical horror story. Lovecraft presents us with a seemingly trustworthy protagonist, who is acquiring family lands with a history. All the neighbors hate the family name and there are disturbing stories about what his ancestors did. Plus, we have a mysterious issue with rats that no one other than Delapore and his cats can see or hear. However, once we reach the end of the story, we have an abrupt change of pace and Lovecraft changes everything we thought we knew. Our reliable narrator is not so reliable and the reader isn’t left with a definite explanation of what exactly occurred.

Throughout the story, Lovecraft provides us with hints that Delapore may not be entirely reliable. The first instance that stands out is when the rats first appeared. He claimed to have heard the rats and his cat reacted strongly to it one night. The following morning, he found that none of his servants noticed anything that same night. However, the cook’s cat also had a strange instance where it ran off and howled that night. The next night, Delapore awoke from a strange nightmare to find the same thing happen. When he turns on the light, the “motion disappeared almost at once, and the sound with it” (Lovecraft 82). The cat instantly went back to normal at once, too. Delapore and his cat go downstairs and find the same thing happening in the study. All the cats are going berserk, but when Delapore asks two servants if they heard anything, they “replied in the negative” (82). The difficult part to discern is if this noise is actually happening. No humans other than Delapore have heard this strange rat-like noise. However, clearly the cats are reacting to something, because they have woken up the servants both nights. At this point, the reader still has to trust Delapore.

The next night, Norrys and Delapore sleep in a vault with his cat. The cats go wild again and Norrys has no clue what disturbed them. Meanwhile, Delapore had his strange dream again and hears rats. Still, no humans have acknowledged hearing or seeing anything despite being in close proximity to Delapore. Clearly, something has to be wrong with Delapore to some extent. Not long later, Norrys, Delapore, and a group of recruited explorers go under the vault to a hidden city. There are tons of human bones that have seemingly been chewed by rodents and other half-human entities. This area also matches Delapore’s nightmare perfectly. At this point, the reader knows Lovecraft can’t have anything good in store for these characters.

Delapore seems affected by all that he sees. He is disturbed and doesn’t baffle us with any strange comments early on in the expedition. Oddly enough, there are no signs of rats and the cat hasn’t been very active in this ancient city. Then suddenly, Delapore and his cat take off and the story descends into chaos. “Something bumped into” him that was “soft and plump” (88). He assumes this was a rat, but it could have easily been the cat. He goes on to ask “why shouldn’t rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things?” (88). He believes he is about to be eaten by this rodent army, but he acknowledges that his family eats forbidden things, which is important shortly. Judging by what we have read, the Delapores have been essentially cannibals for centuries. They basically bred captured humans, too, which seems worse. He compares the rats to the war that ate his son and the fire that killed his grandfather. These rats sound more like a metaphor than an actual present danger. Delapore now is upset with how Norrys survived the war, but his son didn’t, plus he used to own his family’s lands. Then he curses Thornton,one of the explorers, who fainted when he saw what his ancestors had done to the earlier humans. Then we get some Latin curse.

The remaining group finds him three hours later “crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys, with [his] own cat leaping and tearing at [his] throat” (89). Now, the cat is gone, the ancestral home is destroyed, and Delapore is in a mental asylum. Thornton is there, too. He still hears the rats, which isn’t a good sign. Clearly, Delapore is an unreliable narrator, but it is hard to determine to what extent. The cats clearly reacted to something this whole story, although it is peculiar his cat turned on him at the end. The rats clearly don’t seem to exist and his family had a very dark, disturbing history. Lovecraft suggests that Delapore went mad and killed Norrys, perhaps out of rage for his son’s death and his family owning Delapore lands. Throughout the rest of the story, Delapore seems pretty stable and definitely didn’t premediate this action. Determining what exactly occurred is impossible to say, but determining that Delapore is an unreliable narrator is definitely something readers can take away from this story.