The Rats in the Walls
Encyclopedia
"The Rats in the Walls" is a short story
by American author H. P. Lovecraft
. Written in August–September 1923
, it was first published in Weird Tales
, March 1924
.
species following the rise of Homo sapiens). In the end, the protagonist, unknowingly maddened by the revelations of his family's past and driven by the stronger force of his own heritage, attacks one of his friends in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him. He is subsequently subdued and locked in a mental institution. Soon after, Exham Priory is destroyed. The protagonist of the story maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls," who ate the man. The rats still persist, however, as he continues to be plagued by the sounds and sights of rats in the walls of his cell.
The idea of a character reverting to ancestral speech may have come from Irvin S. Cobb
's story "The Unbroken Chain", published in the September 1923 issue of Cosmopolitan
. The story depicts a Frenchman with a small percentage of African descent shouting out "Niama tumba!" when struck by a train — the same words spoken by a distant African ancestor attacked by a rhinoceros
.
Critic Steven J. Mariconda points to Sabine Baring-Gould
's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1862–68) as a source for Lovecraft's story. The description of the cavern under the priory has many similarities to Baring-Gould's account of St. Patrick's Purgatory
, a legendary Irish holy site, and the story of the priory's rats sweeping across the landscape may have been inspired by the book's retelling of the legend of Bishop Hatto, who was devoured by rats after he set fire to starving peasants during a famine. See the story of the Mouse Tower
of Bingen.
The Gaelic
quoted at the end of the story is borrowed from Fiona Macleod
's "The Sin-Eater". Macleod included a footnote that translated the passage as: "God against thee and in thy face… and may a death of woe be yours… Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!" Lovecraft wrote to Frank Belknap Long, "[T]he only objection to the phrase is that it's Gaelic instead of Cymric
as the south-of-England locale demands. But as with anthropology — details don't count. Nobody will ever stop to note the difference." Robert E. Howard
, however, wrote a letter in 1930 to Weird Tales
suggesting that the language choice reflected "Lluyd's theory as to the settling of Britain by the Celts" — a note that, passed on to Lovecraft, initiated their voluminous correspondence.
The title of Baron de la Poer
actually exists in the Peerage of Ireland
, and the spelling is indeed derived from le Poer, Anglo-Norman for "the Poor"; it is of some interest in peerage law.
Alfred Delapore: The narrator's son, born c. 1894. He goes to England as an aviation officer during World War I, where he hears stories about his ancestors for the first time. He is badly wounded in 1918, surviving for two more years as a "maimed invalid".
Edward Norrys: A captain in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, Edward Norrys befriends Alfred Delapore and amuses him by telling him the "peasant superstitions" surrounding the de la Poer family that Norrys picked up in his native Anchester. He is described as "a plump, amiable young man".
Sir William Brinton: One of the "eminent authorities" that accompanies Delapore's expedition beneath Exham Priory, Sir William Brinton is an archaeologist "whose excavations in the Troad excited most of the world in their day." It is Brinton who figures out how to move the counter-weighted altar that leads to the caverns, and who noted that the hewn walls "must have been chiselled from beneath." He is the only member of the expedition who retains his composure when they discover the horrors below the priory.
Dr. Trask: Another eminent authority, Trask is an anthropologist who is "baffled" by the "degraded mixture" he finds in the skull
s below Exham Priory -- "mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human." (The Piltdown man
, a supposedly prehistoric specimen discovered in 1912, was not revealed as a hoax until 1953, thirty years after the publication of The Rats in the Walls). Trask determines that "some of the skeleton things must have descended as quadrupeds through the last twenty or more generations."
Thornton: The expedition's "psychic investigator", Thornton faints twice when confronted with the nightmarish relics below Exham Priory, and ends up committed to the Hanwell insane asylum
with Delapore, though they are prevented from speaking to one another.
Hanwell was an actual asylum, which Lovecraft probably read of in Lord Dunsany's "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap" in The Book of Wonder (1912).
Gilbert de la Poer: The first Baron Exham, granted title to Exham Priory by Henry III
in 1261. There is "no evil report" connected to the family name before this point, but within 50 years a chronicle is referring to a de la Poer as "cursed of God".
Lady Margaret Trevor: Lady Margaret Trevor of Cornwall
married Godfrey de la Poer, second son of the fifth Baron Exham, probably in the 14th or 15th centuries. Such was her enthusiasm for the Exham cult that she "became a favourite bane of children all over the countryside, and the daemon heroine of a particularly horrible old ballad not yet extinct near the Welsh
border."
Lady Mary de la Poer: After marrying the Earl of Shrewsfield (a title invented by Lovecraft), she was killed by her new husband and mother-in-law. When they explained their reasons to the priest they confessed to, he "absolved and blessed" them for their deed.
Walter de la Poer: The eleventh Baron Exham, he killed all the other members of his family with the help of four servants, about two weeks after making a "shocking discovery", and then fled to Virginia
, probably in the 17th century. He is the ancestor of the American Delapores. He was remembered as "a shy, gentle youth", and later as "harassed and apprehensive"; Francis Harley of Bellview, "another gentleman-adventurer", regarded him as "a man of unexampled justice, honour, and delicacy."
Randolph Delapore: Randolph Delapore of Carfax, the Delapore's estate on the James River
in Virginia
, "went among the negroes and became a voodoo priest after he returned from the Mexican War." He is a cousin of the narrator, who regards him as "the one known scandal of my immediate forbears", and who sees this race-mixing life as "unpleasantly reminiscent" of the "monstrous habits" of the ancestral de la Poers.
Carfax Abbey is the name of Count Dracula's British outpost in the novel Dracula
-- a setting that has been suggested as an inspiration for Exham Priory.
Nigger Man: A cat owned by the narrator.
stories; toward the end, the narrator notes that the rats seem "determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's centre where Nyarlathotep
, the mad faceless god, howls blindly to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players." In this reference to Nyarlathotep, the first after his introduction in the prose poem of the same name
, the entity seems to have many of the attributes of the god Azathoth
.
Before moving to Exham Priory, Delapore lives in Bolton, Massachusetts, a factory town where the title character of "Herbert West–Reanimator" performs some of his experiments. The town is also mentioned in "The Colour Out of Space
"; it is not thought to be the same place as the real-world Bolton, Massachusetts
.
Later Mythos writers have suggested the Magna Mater ("Great Mother") worshipped by the Exham cult was Shub-Niggurath
.
It is notable in that Lovecraft uses the technique of referring to a text (in this case a real life work by Petronius
) without giving a full explanation of its contents so as to give depth and hidden layers to his work. He later refined this idea with the infamous Necronomicon
so prevalent in his Cthulhu Mythos stories.
Equally important to the later development of the Cthulhu Mythos
was that it was a reprint of this story in Weird Tales
that inspired Robert E. Howard
to write to the magazine praising the work. This letter was passed on to Lovecraft and the two became friends and correspondents until Howard's death in 1936. This literary connection became reflected in each author adding aspects from the others works to their own tales and Howard is considered one of the more prolific of the original Cthulhu Mythos authors.
Lin Carter
calls "Rats" "one of the finest stories of Lovecraft's entire career." S. T. Joshi describes the piece as "a nearly flawless example of the short story in its condensation, its narrative pacing, its thunderous climax, and its mingling of horror and poignancy."
The name of the cat, "Nigger
Man", has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft's racial attitudes. Lovecraft himself owned a beloved cat by that name until 1904.
and Donald Wandrei
have adapted the story for the comic book
format.
The Atlanta Radio Theater Company has produced a radio adaptation.
In 1973, Caedmon Audio
published a cassette featuring David McCallum
reading the story.
The film Necronomicon: Book of the Dead
adapts three Lovecraft tales, including "Rats". Though rather than an adaptation of the story, the film involves Edward DeLapoer, a member of the family line in a different setting.
Stephen King
's short story "Jerusalem's Lot
" is something of a homage to this story as well, and features many similar elements.
The 2003 video game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
borrows heavily from the plot of The Rats in the Walls. It features one character, Maximillian Roivas who discovers an ancient underground city below his acquired property. He hears in the manor not rats but the creatures who possess his house servants, whom he eventually kills. This action lands him in an asylum, where he deliriously screams, "May the rats eat your eyes! I Am now lost to your cause! The darkness comes! It will damn us all!"
Exham Priory is mentioned in The New Traveller's Almanac
and "The Adventure of Exham Priory
."
H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House
, the Masters of Horror
adaptation of "The Dreams in the Witch House
", references "The Rats in the Walls" in a line of dialog.
Tim Uren adapted the story into a one-man play of the same name which was performed at the 2006 Minnesota Fringe Festival
.
Dave Walsh adapted and performed a one-man play of the same name at the 2007 Shakespeare by the Sea, Newfoundland
Festival.
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by American author H. P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft
Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
. Written in August–September 1923
1923 in literature
The year 1923 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Fictional detective Lord Peter Wimsey makes his first appearance in print....
, it was first published in Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
, March 1924
1924 in literature
The year 1924 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Ford Madox Ford publishes the first book of a four-volume work titled Parade's End published between 1924 and 1928.-New books:*Michael Arlen - The Green Hat...
.
Plot summary
"The Rats in the Walls" is narrated by the scion of the Delapore family, who has moved from Massachusetts to his ancestral estate in England, known as Exham Priory. On several occasions, the protagonist and his cats, specifically his favorite cat, hear the eponymous sounds of rats scurrying behind the walls. Upon investigating further, he finds that his family maintained an underground city for centuries and that the inhabitants of the city fed on human flesh, even going so far as to raise generations of human cattle, who eventually began to de-evolve due to their sub-human living conditions. (Another possibility is that Lovecraft is providing a suggestion of the fate of early pre-human HomininaeHomininae
Homininae is a subfamily of Hominidae, which includes humans, gorillas and chimpanzees, and some extinct relatives; it comprises all those hominids, such as Australopithecus, that arose after the split from orangutans . Our family tree, which has 3 main branches leading to chimpanzees, humans and...
species following the rise of Homo sapiens). In the end, the protagonist, unknowingly maddened by the revelations of his family's past and driven by the stronger force of his own heritage, attacks one of his friends in the dark of the cavernous city and begins eating him. He is subsequently subdued and locked in a mental institution. Soon after, Exham Priory is destroyed. The protagonist of the story maintains his innocence, proclaiming that it was "the rats, the rats in the walls," who ate the man. The rats still persist, however, as he continues to be plagued by the sounds and sights of rats in the walls of his cell.
Inspiration
Long after writing "The Rats in the Walls", Lovecraft wrote that the story was "suggested by a very commonplace incident — the cracking of wall-paper late at night, and the chain of imaginings resulting from it." Another entry in Lovecraft's commonplace book also seems to provide a plot germ for the story: "Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle—discovered by dweller."The idea of a character reverting to ancestral speech may have come from Irvin S. Cobb
Irvin S. Cobb
Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb was an American author, humorist, and columnist who lived in New York and authored more than 60 books and 300 short stories.-Biography:...
's story "The Unbroken Chain", published in the September 1923 issue of Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitan (magazine)
Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...
. The story depicts a Frenchman with a small percentage of African descent shouting out "Niama tumba!" when struck by a train — the same words spoken by a distant African ancestor attacked by a rhinoceros
Rhinoceros
Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....
.
Critic Steven J. Mariconda points to Sabine Baring-Gould
Sabine Baring-Gould
The Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould was an English hagiographer, antiquarian, novelist and eclectic scholar. His bibliography consists of more than 1240 publications, though this list continues to grow. His family home, Lew Trenchard Manor near Okehampton, Devon, has been preserved as he had it...
's Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (1862–68) as a source for Lovecraft's story. The description of the cavern under the priory has many similarities to Baring-Gould's account of St. Patrick's Purgatory
St. Patrick's Purgatory
St Patrick's Purgatory is an ancient pilgrimage site on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, Republic of Ireland. According to legend, the site dates from the fifth century, when Christ showed Saint Patrick a cave, sometimes referred to as a pit, on Station Island that was an entrance to...
, a legendary Irish holy site, and the story of the priory's rats sweeping across the landscape may have been inspired by the book's retelling of the legend of Bishop Hatto, who was devoured by rats after he set fire to starving peasants during a famine. See the story of the Mouse Tower
Mouse Tower
The Mouse Tower is a stone tower on a small island in the Rhine, outside Bingen am Rhein, Germany. The Romans were the first to build a structure on this site. It later became part of Franconia, and it fell and had to be rebuilt many times....
of Bingen.
The Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic language
Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Primitive Irish....
quoted at the end of the story is borrowed from Fiona Macleod
William Sharp (writer)
William Sharp was a Scottish writer, of poetry and literary biography in particular, who from 1893 wrote also as Fiona MacLeod, a pseudonym kept almost secret during his lifetime...
's "The Sin-Eater". Macleod included a footnote that translated the passage as: "God against thee and in thy face… and may a death of woe be yours… Evil and sorrow to thee and thine!" Lovecraft wrote to Frank Belknap Long, "[T]he only objection to the phrase is that it's Gaelic instead of Cymric
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
as the south-of-England locale demands. But as with anthropology — details don't count. Nobody will ever stop to note the difference." Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
, however, wrote a letter in 1930 to Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
suggesting that the language choice reflected "Lluyd's theory as to the settling of Britain by the Celts" — a note that, passed on to Lovecraft, initiated their voluminous correspondence.
Characters
Delapore: The narrator. His first name is not mentioned. He changes the spelling of his name back to the ancestral "de la Poer" after moving to England.The title of Baron de la Poer
Baron La Poer
Baron La Poer, de la Poer, or Le Pour, is a title in the Peerage of Ireland held by the Marquess of Waterford. Its creation is the sole instance of the law of the Kingdom of Ireland recognizing a peerage by writ.-The origin of the title:...
actually exists in the Peerage of Ireland
Peerage of Ireland
The Peerage of Ireland is the term used for those titles of nobility created by the English and later British monarchs of Ireland in their capacity as Lord or King of Ireland. The creation of such titles came to an end in the 19th century. The ranks of the Irish peerage are Duke, Marquess, Earl,...
, and the spelling is indeed derived from le Poer, Anglo-Norman for "the Poor"; it is of some interest in peerage law.
Alfred Delapore: The narrator's son, born c. 1894. He goes to England as an aviation officer during World War I, where he hears stories about his ancestors for the first time. He is badly wounded in 1918, surviving for two more years as a "maimed invalid".
Edward Norrys: A captain in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, Edward Norrys befriends Alfred Delapore and amuses him by telling him the "peasant superstitions" surrounding the de la Poer family that Norrys picked up in his native Anchester. He is described as "a plump, amiable young man".
Sir William Brinton: One of the "eminent authorities" that accompanies Delapore's expedition beneath Exham Priory, Sir William Brinton is an archaeologist "whose excavations in the Troad excited most of the world in their day." It is Brinton who figures out how to move the counter-weighted altar that leads to the caverns, and who noted that the hewn walls "must have been chiselled from beneath." He is the only member of the expedition who retains his composure when they discover the horrors below the priory.
Dr. Trask: Another eminent authority, Trask is an anthropologist who is "baffled" by the "degraded mixture" he finds in the skull
Skull
The skull is a bony structure in the head of many animals that supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain.The skull is composed of two parts: the cranium and the mandible. A skull without a mandible is only a cranium. Animals that have skulls are called craniates...
s below Exham Priory -- "mostly lower than the Piltdown man in the scale of evolution, but in every case definitely human." (The Piltdown man
Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England...
, a supposedly prehistoric specimen discovered in 1912, was not revealed as a hoax until 1953, thirty years after the publication of The Rats in the Walls). Trask determines that "some of the skeleton things must have descended as quadrupeds through the last twenty or more generations."
Thornton: The expedition's "psychic investigator", Thornton faints twice when confronted with the nightmarish relics below Exham Priory, and ends up committed to the Hanwell insane asylum
Hanwell Asylum
The County Asylum at Hanwell, also known as Hanwell Insane Asylum, and Hanwell Pauper and Lunatic Asylum, was built for the pauper insane and is now the West London Mental Health Trust ...
with Delapore, though they are prevented from speaking to one another.
Hanwell was an actual asylum, which Lovecraft probably read of in Lord Dunsany's "The Coronation of Mr. Thomas Shap" in The Book of Wonder (1912).
Gilbert de la Poer: The first Baron Exham, granted title to Exham Priory by Henry III
Henry III of England
Henry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...
in 1261. There is "no evil report" connected to the family name before this point, but within 50 years a chronicle is referring to a de la Poer as "cursed of God".
Lady Margaret Trevor: Lady Margaret Trevor of Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
married Godfrey de la Poer, second son of the fifth Baron Exham, probably in the 14th or 15th centuries. Such was her enthusiasm for the Exham cult that she "became a favourite bane of children all over the countryside, and the daemon heroine of a particularly horrible old ballad not yet extinct near the Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
border."
Lady Mary de la Poer: After marrying the Earl of Shrewsfield (a title invented by Lovecraft), she was killed by her new husband and mother-in-law. When they explained their reasons to the priest they confessed to, he "absolved and blessed" them for their deed.
Walter de la Poer: The eleventh Baron Exham, he killed all the other members of his family with the help of four servants, about two weeks after making a "shocking discovery", and then fled to Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, probably in the 17th century. He is the ancestor of the American Delapores. He was remembered as "a shy, gentle youth", and later as "harassed and apprehensive"; Francis Harley of Bellview, "another gentleman-adventurer", regarded him as "a man of unexampled justice, honour, and delicacy."
Randolph Delapore: Randolph Delapore of Carfax, the Delapore's estate on the James River
James River (Virginia)
The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is long, extending to if one includes the Jackson River, the longer of its two source tributaries. The James River drains a catchment comprising . The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million...
in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, "went among the negroes and became a voodoo priest after he returned from the Mexican War." He is a cousin of the narrator, who regards him as "the one known scandal of my immediate forbears", and who sees this race-mixing life as "unpleasantly reminiscent" of the "monstrous habits" of the ancestral de la Poers.
Carfax Abbey is the name of Count Dracula's British outpost in the novel Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
-- a setting that has been suggested as an inspiration for Exham Priory.
Nigger Man: A cat owned by the narrator.
Connections
"The Rats in the Walls" is loosely connected to Lovecraft's Cthulhu MythosCthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
stories; toward the end, the narrator notes that the rats seem "determined to lead me on even unto those grinning caverns of earth's centre where Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep, also known as the Crawling Chaos, is a malign deity in the Cthulhu Mythos fictional universe created by H. P. Lovecraft. First appearing in Lovecraft's 1920 prose poem of the same name, he was later mentioned in other works by Lovecraft and by other writers and in the tabletop...
, the mad faceless god, howls blindly to the piping of two amorphous idiot flute-players." In this reference to Nyarlathotep, the first after his introduction in the prose poem of the same name
Nyarlathotep (short story)
"Nyarlathotep" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft written in 1920, and first published in the November 1920 issue of The United Amateur. It is the first mention in fiction of the Cthulhu Mythos entity Nyarlathotep.-Synopsis:...
, the entity seems to have many of the attributes of the god Azathoth
Azathoth
Azathoth is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of H. P. Lovecraft and other authors. Its epithets include Nuclear Chaos, the Daemon Sultan and the Blind Idiot God.-Inspiration:...
.
Before moving to Exham Priory, Delapore lives in Bolton, Massachusetts, a factory town where the title character of "Herbert West–Reanimator" performs some of his experiments. The town is also mentioned in "The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space
"The Colour Out of Space" is a short story written by American fantasy author H. P. Lovecraft in March 1927. In the tale, an unnamed narrator pieces together the story of an area known by the locals as the "blasted heath" in the wild hills west of Arkham, Massachusetts...
"; it is not thought to be the same place as the real-world Bolton, Massachusetts
Bolton, Massachusetts
As of the census of 2000, there were 4,148 people, 1,424 households, and 1,201 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 1,476 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 97.76% White, 0.19% African American, 0.05% Native American, 1.30%...
.
Later Mythos writers have suggested the Magna Mater ("Great Mother") worshipped by the Exham cult was Shub-Niggurath
Shub-Niggurath
Shub-Niggurath, often associated with the phrase “The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young”, is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft...
.
Literary significance and criticism
The story was rejected by Argosy All-Story Weekly before being accepted by Weird Tales; Lovecraft claimed that the former magazine found it "too horrible for the tender sensibilities of a delicately nurtured publick". The publisher of Weird Tales, JC Henneberger, described the story in a note to Lovecraft as the best his magazine had ever received. It was one of the few Lovecraft stories anthologized during his lifetime, in the 1931 collection Switch on the Light, edited by Christine Campbell Thompson.It is notable in that Lovecraft uses the technique of referring to a text (in this case a real life work by Petronius
Petronius
Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman courtier during the reign of Nero. He is generally believed to be the author of the Satyricon, a satirical novel believed to have been written during the Neronian age.-Life:...
) without giving a full explanation of its contents so as to give depth and hidden layers to his work. He later refined this idea with the infamous Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
so prevalent in his Cthulhu Mythos stories.
Equally important to the later development of the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...
was that it was a reprint of this story in Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....
that inspired Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
to write to the magazine praising the work. This letter was passed on to Lovecraft and the two became friends and correspondents until Howard's death in 1936. This literary connection became reflected in each author adding aspects from the others works to their own tales and Howard is considered one of the more prolific of the original Cthulhu Mythos authors.
Lin Carter
Lin Carter
Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft and Grail Undwin.-Life:Carter was born in St. Petersburg, Florida...
calls "Rats" "one of the finest stories of Lovecraft's entire career." S. T. Joshi describes the piece as "a nearly flawless example of the short story in its condensation, its narrative pacing, its thunderous climax, and its mingling of horror and poignancy."
The name of the cat, "Nigger
Nigger
Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a pejorative context to refer to black people , and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts. It is a common ethnic slur...
Man", has often been cited in discussions of Lovecraft's racial attitudes. Lovecraft himself owned a beloved cat by that name until 1904.
Adaptations
Richard CorbenRichard Corben
Richard Corben is an American illustrator and comic book artist best known for his comics featured in Heavy Metal magazine...
and Donald Wandrei
Donald Wandrei
Donald Albert Wandrei was an American science fiction, fantasy and weird fiction writer, poet and editor. He wrote as Donald Wandrei. He was the older brother of science fiction writer and artist Howard Wandrei...
have adapted the story for the comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
format.
The Atlanta Radio Theater Company has produced a radio adaptation.
In 1973, Caedmon Audio
Caedmon Audio
HarperCollins Audio is a record label that specializes in audio books and other literary content. Formerly Caedmon Records, the name was changed when the label switched to CD-only production. Its marketing tag-line was Caedmon: a Third Dimension for the Printed Page.Caedmon was formed in 1953 by...
published a cassette featuring David McCallum
David McCallum
David Keith McCallum, Jr. is a Scottish actor and musician. He is best known for his roles as Illya Kuryakin, a Russian-born secret agent, in the 1960s television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., as interdimensional operative Steel in Sapphire & Steel, and Dr...
reading the story.
The film Necronomicon: Book of the Dead
Necronomicon (film)
H.P. Lovecraft's: Necronomicon, original title Necronomicon, also called Necronomicon: Book of the Dead or Necronomicon: To Hell and Back is an American anthology horror film released in 1993. It was directed by Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans and Shusuke Kaneko and was written by Brent V...
adapts three Lovecraft tales, including "Rats". Though rather than an adaptation of the story, the film involves Edward DeLapoer, a member of the family line in a different setting.
Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's short story "Jerusalem's Lot
Jerusalem's Lot
"Jerusalem's Lot" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.-Setting and style:"Jerusalem's Lot" is an epistolary short story set in the fictional town of Preacher's Corners, Maine, in 1850...
" is something of a homage to this story as well, and features many similar elements.
The 2003 video game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a psychological horror action-adventure video game released for the Nintendo GameCube. Developed by Canadian developer Silicon Knights and originally planned for the Nintendo 64, it was first released and published by Nintendo on June 24, 2002 in North America...
borrows heavily from the plot of The Rats in the Walls. It features one character, Maximillian Roivas who discovers an ancient underground city below his acquired property. He hears in the manor not rats but the creatures who possess his house servants, whom he eventually kills. This action lands him in an asylum, where he deliriously screams, "May the rats eat your eyes! I Am now lost to your cause! The darkness comes! It will damn us all!"
Exham Priory is mentioned in The New Traveller's Almanac
The New Traveller's Almanac
The New Traveller's Almanac was a series of writings included in the back of all six issues of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II, covering the timeline and the world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen....
and "The Adventure of Exham Priory
The Adventure of Exham Priory
"The Adventure of Exham Priory" is a short story about Sherlock Holmes written by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. It was originally published in Shadows Over Baker Street, a 2003 anthology edited by Michael Reaves and John Pelan for Del Rey Books...
."
H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House
H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House
H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch House is the second episode of the first season of Masters of Horror, directed by Stuart Gordon. It is adapted from the short story "The Dreams in the Witch House" by American horror author H. P. Lovecraft...
, the Masters of Horror
Masters of Horror
Masters of Horror is an informal social group of international film writers and directors specializing in horror movies and an American television series created by director Mick Garris for the Showtime cable network.- Origin :...
adaptation of "The Dreams in the Witch House
The Dreams in the Witch House
"The Dreams in the Witch House" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, part of the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction. Written in January/February 1932, it was first published in the July 1933 issue of Weird Tales.-Inspiration:...
", references "The Rats in the Walls" in a line of dialog.
Tim Uren adapted the story into a one-man play of the same name which was performed at the 2006 Minnesota Fringe Festival
Minnesota Fringe Festival
The Minnesota Fringe Festival is a performing arts festival held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, every summer, usually during the first two weeks in August. The eleven-day event, which features performing artists of many genres and disciplines, is one of many Fringe Festivals in North...
.
Dave Walsh adapted and performed a one-man play of the same name at the 2007 Shakespeare by the Sea, Newfoundland
Shakespeare by the Sea, Newfoundland
The Shakespeare By The Sea Festival is a theater company in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, that specializes in the works of William Shakespeare....
Festival.
External links
- Story text