The Rats in the Walls Flashcards
by H. P. Lovecraft — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: The Rats in the Walls
When does the narrator move into Exham Priory, and what happened there before his arrival?
He moves in on July 16, 1923, after a complete restoration. The priory had been uninhabited since the reign of James I, when a tragedy killed the master, five children, and several servants.
What did Walter de la Poer do that caused the family to flee to Virginia?
He killed all other members of his household except four servant confederates in their sleep, apparently after making a shocking discovery about the family. The villagers condoned the act, believing he had purged the land of a curse.
What first alerts the narrator that something is wrong at Exham Priory?
His old black cat becomes unusually alert and anxious, roving from room to room and scratching at walls. Soon all nine cats in the house display similar restless behavior.
What does the narrator hear behind the tapestry in his tower bedroom?
He hears low, distinct scurrying sounds as of rats or mice behind the arras on the wall. When the cat tears down the tapestry, only damp ancient stone is revealed with no trace of rodents.
How do the narrator and Norrys discover the hidden vault beneath the sub-cellar?
While spending the night in the sub-cellar, they notice the cat pawing at the base of the central stone altar. A lantern flame flickers from a draft coming through a crevice between the altar and the floor, revealing a deeper space below.
What does the expedition of seven men discover when they open the altar passage?
They find a twilit grotto of enormous height containing architectural remains from multiple eras and a vast sea of human and semi-human bones, evidence of an underground operation where sub-human creatures were herded and fattened for food.
What is found inside the English building in the underground grotto?
Captain Norrys discovers it is a butcher shop and kitchen with familiar English implements and graffiti as recent as 1610, confirming the de la Poer family continued the cannibalistic practices into the 17th century.
What happens to the narrator at the end of the story?
He is found crouching over the half-eaten body of Captain Norrys after three hours in the dark, with his cat clawing at his throat. He is confined to Hanwell asylum and insists it was the rats, not him.
Who is the narrator of "The Rats in the Walls" and what is his background?
He is an elderly, wealthy, retired American manufacturer and the last of the Delapore (de la Poer) line. His family fled from England to Virginia after the 1610 tragedy, and he grew up in Massachusetts after the Civil War.
Who is Captain Edward Norrys and what role does he play in the story?
Norrys is a plump, amiable young man from the family that owns the Exham Priory estate. He befriended the narrator's son during WWI, helped with the priory restoration, and ultimately becomes the narrator's victim in the underground grotto.
What is the significance of the narrator's son, Alfred?
Alfred served as an aviation officer in WWI in England, where he learned the local legends about Exham Priory from Captain Norrys. He returned as a maimed invalid and died in 1921, leaving his father bereaved and motivating the restoration.
Who is Sir William Brinton and what does he contribute to the expedition?
Sir William Brinton is a renowned archaeologist famous for excavations in the Troad. He leads the seven-man exploration party, is the only member who retains his composure upon seeing the grotto, and translates the shocking Roman ritual inscriptions.
What role does the narrator's cat play throughout the story?
The cat acts as a supernatural early warning system, detecting the spectral rats that only the narrator and the cats can perceive. It leads the narrator to the hidden vault by pawing at the altar, and at the climax it claws at the narrator's throat as he descends into madness.
How does the story explore the theme of hereditary evil?
The narrator discovers his ancestors practiced cannibalism for centuries, and he ultimately succumbs to the same primal savagery by attacking Norrys. The story suggests that ancestral sin is inescapable, encoded in blood and place.
What does the story suggest about the relationship between civilization and barbarism?
The priory's layered architecture mirrors layers of savagery beneath civilization. Each era (Druidic, Roman, Saxon, English) built over the same atrocity, and the narrator's refined American exterior ultimately gives way to primal cannibalistic instinct.
How does the theme of forbidden knowledge function in the story?
Each character who learns the priory's secrets is destroyed by the knowledge. Walter de la Poer murdered his family after his discovery, and the narrator's own investigation leads to his madness and imprisonment.
What role does psychological regression play as a theme in the story?
The narrator's final breakdown is marked by speech that regresses through time: modern English to Early Modern English to Middle English to Gaelic to pre-human gibberish, mirroring a descent through evolutionary and historical layers.
How does Lovecraft use architectural layering as a literary device?
Exham Priory is built in successive layers (Druidic, Roman, Saxon, Gothic, modern) that physically represent the accumulated horrors of centuries. Each deeper layer reveals older and more primitive atrocities, creating a descent through time and morality.
What is the function of the recurring dream about the swineherd in the twilit grotto?
The dream of a white-bearded swineherd driving flabby fungous beasts in a twilit grotto serves as foreshadowing. It becomes increasingly vivid and detailed, preparing both narrator and reader for the literal discovery of the underground cavern where sub-humans were herded like livestock.
How does Lovecraft employ the unreliable narrator technique in this story?
The narrator insists the rats are real and that he did not kill Norrys, but no other humans can hear the rats, and he is found over Norrys's half-eaten body. His final framing from an asylum cell casts doubt on everything he has reported.
What narrative technique does Lovecraft use in the narrator's final breakdown speech?
Lovecraft uses linguistic regression, having the narrator's speech devolve from modern English through Early Modern English, Middle English, and Gaelic into pre-linguistic sounds, symbolizing a mental descent through centuries of human development to primal savagery.
What does "Magna Mater" refer to in the context of the story?
Magna Mater ("Great Mother") refers to the goddess Cybele, whose dark worship involved ecstatic and sometimes violent rites. Roman inscriptions in the sub-cellar confirm her cult was practiced at the temple site beneath Exham Priory.
What is the significance of the word "pithecanthropoid" as used in the story?
Pithecanthropoid means resembling Pithecanthropus (now Homo erectus), an early human ancestor. Lovecraft uses it to describe the degraded sub-human skulls found in the bone pits, suggesting the herded creatures had devolved over centuries of captivity.
What does "Nyarlathotep" represent when mentioned in the narrator's final ravings?
Nyarlathotep is a deity from Lovecraft's mythology described as "the mad faceless god" who "howls blindly in the darkness." Its invocation during the narrator's breakdown connects his personal horror to Lovecraft's larger cosmic mythology of indifferent, alien gods.
What is the significance of the narrator's line: "Why shouldn't rats eat a de la Poer as a de la Poer eats forbidden things?"
This line, spoken during the narrator's madness, reveals his subconscious acceptance that his family were cannibals. It draws a parallel between the rats devouring human flesh and the de la Poers doing the same, implying cosmic justice.
What does the narrator mean when he says: "They must know it was the rats; the rats, the rats in the walls"?
These are the story's final words, spoken from his asylum cell. The narrator insists the rats, not he, killed Norrys, but the ambiguity is the point: the "rats" may be literal, supernatural, or a metaphor for the hereditary evil that finally consumed him.
What is revealed by the narrator's outburst: "He lived, but my boy died! Shall a Norrys hold the land of a de la Poer?"
During his breakdown, this outburst reveals suppressed resentment that Norrys survived the war while his son Alfred died. It suggests his attack on Norrys may be partly motivated by grief and jealousy, not purely hereditary madness.