H. P. Lovecraft's The Rats In The Wall

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On July 16, 1923, Delapore moved into Exham Priory that overlooked the desolate valley three miles west of the village of Anchester, after the last workman had finished his labors (Lovecraft 15). After nature struck down the building, his family, a once-prominent English clan, decides to restore the ancestral home, Exham Priory. Delapore was the only one to survive. The short story The Rats in the Wall by H.P. Lovecraft begins to unravel the mysterious background of the Narrator Delapore, releasing wise tales and rumors about his family. The mysterious myths about this place are horrifying. The darkness of the Priory overtook Delapore’s body. Reaching out to him through his dreams and hallucinations, forcing him to take actions he couldn’t control. Although there are many shadowy tales to the Exham …show more content…

Norrys, his plump face utterly white and flabby, resembling the beasts in Delapore’s nightmares. This is where Delapore begins to piece together his dreams with reality. Found in the darkness lies a sea of skeleton, horror piled on horror (Lovecraft 27). Delapore describes the darkness as a butcher shop. As his cat stalks, Delapore wanders towards a pit leaving him speechless in fear (Lovecraft 28). In the depths he hears rodents scurrying. Starting to act paranoid, he believed the rats bumped into him, the ones who feasted on the living and dead (29). After three hours of investigating, Delapore was found in the shadows muttering tongues over top of the half-eaten, plump and flabby body of Norrys. No idea of what he has done, striking Norrys and killing him, the rats crazed him to act as one of them. Exham was then destroyed after this incident and his cat was taken from him. Delapore is then placed in an asylum. Every time he speaks of Norrys he demands he did not do it, that it was the daemon rats. The ones that no one could hear racing behind the walls in his room and giving him great horror

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