Short Story Review || The Rats in the Wall (1924)
"Narrated by an unnamed member of the Delapore family, who discovers a property that has been in his family for over 17 centuries."
: 🌕 : SPOILER ALERT : 🌕 :
Gloomy hallways lend themselves to the scene; one step too many & the man walking them may tumble into darkness. The absurdly ominous debut of his tale speaks of the familiar fonts of humanity, the despair & gore that slithers like a serpent on the cool stone floors of his ancient abode. What becomes of the innocent man who decided upon ignorance? Where is he to go when his peers deem him unable to function alongside them? In this story, readers will meet a character who has little to offer them in terms of intrigue, he is, after all, just a man.
“I retired early, being very sleepy, but was harassed by dreams of the most horrible sort. I seemed to be looking down from an immense height upon a twilit grotto, knee-deep with filth, where a white-bearded daemon swineherd drove about with his staff a flock of fungous, flabby beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing.”
In essence, this is a story about intergenerational secrets. The narrator of this story remains nameless. This choice was made with the intention of cloistering him under the looming branches of his lineage, one that is ailed by sorcery & malevolence.
The plot follows his decent into madness as he spends years of his time & resources intent on renovating the house that once belonged to his ancestors. What readers come to learn is that the narrator’s family is unlike anyone they have ever known, or, for some readers, the narrator & his kin are the epitome of the doom found in Richard Matheson’s keenly corny best-seller.
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I endeavoured to read a second story written by Lovecraft because I had found the first one so enjoyable. It is perhaps odd that I had spent so many years avoiding the work of the masterful crafter of oddities yet, deep down, there must have been some reason I chose to skip each of his tales.
When I reflect on my experiences with the genre, I find that similarities arise in my disappointment. Too often an author will pen a scene that is objectively scary in the hopes that the reader will sooth the crevices of the holes the plot leaves in its wake. It is not enough to name the Devil; he must be described for one to view his horror.
Lovecraft is a smooth writer. While reading this story I was reminded of his life cut short due to deep seeded paranoia & a terminal illness that literally ate him from the inside. The visual aids provided by the cannibalistic characters allowed my mind to float around the room in scene & ponder the nature of including such a dreadful reality in a story about family lore. As the main character seeks to understand why the villagers dislike his family so deeply, he learns about the history of his people.
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Gangs of ghoul-worshipping gremlins who feasted on human bodies; a basement that housed the alter upon which their spells were cast; the rats whose ghastly tendrils racked the boards of wood & rods of metal in the walls. Through his research & stories told to him by his peers, the narrator learns that his family is deplorable; criminals of the worst kind, one might say. What he does with this information is to ignore it & mosey on his way to living within the walls of the very edifice that sanctioned horror.
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At this point in the review, I must admit to you that I did not enjoy this story. I have previously attempted to quelch my enthusiasm for stories that I had heard too much about but, I have failed in this case. At every turn, & from the mouths of every fondler of Horror, has come praise for what is described as a wickedly wonderful story.
Yet, here I sit, unsure as to what made the tale so wonderful or whereupon the page, I was meant to meet the brutal horror I had been promised. Do not mistake me, there is certainly a great story within the one I have read. In fact, I will read more stories from Lovecraft.
His repeated mention of the racistly-named cat, whom I’m sure would have appreciated being called Figaro or Felix, made me grimace; Why was this done? If one studies the time during which this book was written & during which the plot takes place, it remains a confounding thing to have a beloved pet named a racial slur. This black cat, who helped fend off an army of rats & whom the main character relies on more than anyone or anything else, is named after a despicable ideology in vernacular that has no place either in the story or real life. I remain confused by its inclusion.
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With this aside, I could not muster the mental fortitude to care about what was happening. Like an old timey story, one that has been explored ad nauseum, I found the pacing of the story to be among its few winning features. The reflections on the history of the house & the renovations were of interest to me as I had hoped to see the rats play a larger role in the vermilion that spilt across the construction zones.
Yet, this was not so. Rather, instead of exploring the magistral horror of defiantly large rodents, Lovecraft littered his story with truth, the destruction of good at the hands of the unmerciful man.
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The narrator’s son was his most beloved, his pride, his joy, & his motivation to thrive in the world as he aged. After World War I, the narrator’s son comes home an invalid & later dies as a result of his injuries. This part of the story was, in my opinion, the most powerful.
Though the rabid beasts loom in the home of his family, the narrator becomes ultimately detached from reality because his child died a dastardly death after fighting in a war that ravaged the lives of thousands. Reflections posed during this section may see readers ruminate on the horrors that are caused due to inflated egos & family despondency. Is the narrator’s family tree any different than the one who caused the world to go to war?
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Symbolism is graphically potted along the ridges of this story. The narrator delves further into his grief & begins to view his life as pointless; he has aged, he has no family, his career is at its end, & the world has changed; where does he belong? Just as Elders in our current society begin to dwindle to the periphery of the mind of the young, so too did the narrator to the village.
His ancestral home was repaired & he lived within its walls as his family had once done. Though he never knew the people for whom these walls were once a comfort & coffin, his mind found repose with the stillness of the rat’s nesting ground.
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In the final scenes, wherein the crew of men follow the raving rambles of the rats gallivanting through the walls, down into the depths of the basement, the story reaches what is meant to be its climax. The men see a mini city styled like a tomb, where mounds of human remains litter the cavernous floor.
Rather than make a logical bound out of the basement, the men stand around staring at the skeletal remains of what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of human beings. Readers who are accustomed to imagining a scene will revel at this stage; the men stand intombed in a somber cavern within a house that was never meant to be a home.
Perhaps, other readers will enjoy this scene but, I found it rather tired. The descriptions of the men fainting & going insane after seeing the human skeletal remains was built up to be more than what it was; we’ve nearly all seen a documentary at this stage, human beings die & have done cruel things; bones are bones. Yet, in its year of publication the thought of writing such a story, one that was littered with antagonists who were never named, allowed this story to collect the reputation that met me in the 21st century.
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Ultimately, I appreciated what Lovecraft wrote. I have lived with a rodent infestation before & while paired with clinical insomnia, found myself desperately close to losing the marbles that tumbled around in my head. The clawing & shimmying of rats, whose tails tickled the cobblestones & lingered too long near the skin, revived my hope in this story.
As the main character is found hunched over the body of a friend, a man who seems to be torn apart by human teeth, readers will witness the beauty of a story too tormented & forlorn to tell.
The narrator becomes entrapped by his own despair & is locked away in an institution where a study of his peers will judge him for his shortcomings & lack of stable sanity. Overall, this was a story that deals quite heavily with the sorrow of a life that has no purpose, & no prose that lingers in the wind of a stormy afternoon.
If you would like to read this story, please visit this link — « The Rats in the Wall » by H.P. Lovecraft
C. 💌