The Rats in the Walls quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary genre best describes "The Rats in the Walls"?

   • Pastoral romance
   • Detective fiction
   • Correct answer: Gothic horror
   • Literary realism

   Correct. A crumbling ancestral priory, a hereditary curse, secret vaults, nightmares and a narrator's slide into madness are the marks of Gothic horror, which Lovecraft pushes into his own 'weird fiction'.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Why does the narrator decide to buy and restore Exham Priory?

   • He hoped to open a museum of Roman relics for visiting antiquarians
   • Correct answer: His son's letters about family legends turned him toward his English roots
   • His father's sealed envelope told the heir to reclaim the English seat
   • Captain Norrys needed a buyer to keep the ruin from being torn down

   Alfred, stationed in England, sent home the legends Norrys told him. The narrator says "this legendry which definitely turned my attention to my transatlantic heritage" and made him resolve to restore the family seat. The sealed envelope burned with Carfax unread.

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3. 3

   Question 3. Who besides the narrator hears the rats in the walls?

   • Thornton, who blames the noise on spirits
   • The servants, who search the house for them
   • Captain Norrys, who hears them by the altar
   • Correct answer: Only the cats, which yowl and claw at walls

   The servants say they heard nothing, and in the sub-cellar the narrator wonders why Norrys cannot hear the commotion. He satisfies himself "that no one had heard the rats save the felines and me."

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4. 4

   Question 4. The narrator keeps dreaming of a swineherd driving 'fungous, flabby beasts' through a twilit grotto. What device is this dream?

   • Correct answer: Foreshadowing: the searchers find that grotto
   • Flashback: he relives the night Carfax burned
   • Allegory: the herd stands for the villagers
   • Satire: the dream mocks the scholars' theories

   The dream previews the real discovery. Beneath the priory the men find "a twilit grotto of enormous height," and the narrator calls it "an area so hideously foreshadowed by my recurrent dream."

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5. 5

   Question 5. How many cats live in the priory when the narrator moves in?

   • Seven
   • Two
   • Correct answer: Nine
   • Five

   He writes: "My household consisted of seven servants and nine cats." Seven is the number of servants.

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6. 6

   Question 6. In the line "nor had the accused man made any attempt to exculpate himself or regain his property", what does exculpate mean?

   • Correct answer: To clear oneself of blame
   • To pay off a debt owed
   • To excuse oneself from duty
   • To confess one's guilt

   To exculpate is to free someone from blame or show them innocent. Walter de la Poer, accused of killing his family, never tried to clear his name; he simply fled to Virginia.

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7. 7

   Question 7. The priory is Gothic towers on Saxon or Romanesque walls on Roman and Druidic foundations. What does this layering suggest about its evil?

   • The evil began when Henry the Third granted the site away
   • Correct answer: The same dark rites passed from each culture to the next
   • Only the newest Gothic towers were ever truly haunted
   • Each new people tried to stamp out the rites of the last

   The legends say the priests of Cybele "lived on in the new faith without real change" and that "the rites did not vanish with the Roman power." The building's layers mirror an evil that each new culture inherited and kept alive.

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8. 8

   Question 8. In the line "was largely condoned by the villagers, and so slackly treated by the law", what does condoned mean?

   • Loudly condemned
   • Closely examined
   • Mourned in public
   • Correct answer: Forgiven or let pass

   To condone is to accept or overlook a wrong without punishing it. The villagers forgave Walter's slaughter of his family, feeling "he had purged the land of an immemorial curse."

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9. 9

   Question 9. What does the narrator realize his ancestors' vast gardens were really for?

   • Hiding the cliff fissures that lit the grotto
   • Correct answer: Fattening the human herds penned in the grotto
   • Feeding the bat-winged devils of the village tales
   • Supplying grain to the Roman legion at Anchester

   The penned herds were "evidently fattened on the coarse vegetables" found in the stone bins, and the narrator says, "I knew now why my ancestors had had such excessive gardens." The bat-winged devils were only the villagers' guess.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What is on the seal ring the narrator finds in a Saxon cell?

    • Correct answer: His own coat-of-arms
    • The rayed sun sign
    • A Roman legion's eagle
    • The Magna Mater's name

    On a skeleton in the low Saxon building he found "a seal ring with my own coat-of-arms": proof that his own family kept the cells.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Given what the grotto reveals, why did Walter de la Poer kill his family in the reign of James the First?

    • The king's men had ordered him to purge the house of witchcraft
    • He wanted the estate before his elder brothers could inherit it
    • Correct answer: He had discovered the family's secret cult and acted to end it
    • He led the cult himself and feared the villagers would expose it

    Walter acted after "a shocking discovery which changed his whole demeanour." In the grotto the narrator learns the butcher shop's activities "were stopped only by the dagger of my ancestor Walter de la Poer," which is why the villagers forgave him.

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12. 12

    Question 12. In the dark, the narrator's words slide from modern English to older English, Latin and Gaelic, and end in sounds like 'Ungl unl.' What does this show?

    • He is mocking the scholars and their learned languages
    • He reads the crypt's inscriptions aloud for the others
    • He is praying in every tongue the priory has ever heard
    • Correct answer: He sinks back through his ancestry toward the beast

    His speech runs backward through history, from Elizabethan oaths ('Sblood, thou stinkard') through Middle English, Latin and Gaelic to animal noise. Each stage is an older layer of his bloodline, until nothing human is left.

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13. 13

    Question 13. Where is the narrator shut away at the end of the story?

    • Anchester
    • Richmond
    • Bolton
    • Correct answer: Hanwell

    He writes from "this barred room at Hanwell," while workmen blow up Exham Priory. Bolton, Massachusetts, was his old home.

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14. 14

    Question 14. Confined at the end of the story, what does the narrator insist about Norrys's death?

    • Correct answer: That the rats killed him, not the narrator
    • That he fell while chasing the narrator's cat
    • That he died of fright at the grotto's sight
    • That Thornton pushed him into one of the pits

    He was found "crouching in the blackness over the plump, half-eaten body of Capt. Norrys," yet he protests that "they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats."

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15. 15

    Question 15. In the line "told of the diet of the antediluvian cult which the priests of Cybele found", what does antediluvian mean?

    • Recently founded
    • Correct answer: Extremely ancient
    • Openly forbidden
    • Wildly violent

    Antediluvian literally means 'before the Flood' and so means extremely old. The cult was ancient even when the Romans arrived, which fits the Druidic or older temple beneath the priory.

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16. 16

    Question 16. In the last lines the rats "beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known." What do the rats most likely stand for?

    • The doctors who refuse to believe a word of his story
    • The cost of the restoration eating away his fortune
    • Correct answer: His family's buried past, pulling him down into itself
    • The villagers' old hatred of the de la Poers closing in

    The rats only ever move downward, toward the grotto where his family's crimes lie, and only he and the cats hear them. They are the pull of an inheritance he cannot escape, still calling him even in his cell.

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17. 17

    Question 17. Which theme does the story's ending most strongly support?

    • Correct answer: Inherited evil can overtake even a rational, modern man
    • Money and hard work can redeem a family's bad name
    • Superstitious villagers destroy what they fear most
    • Science can explain any legend if experts dig deep

    He meant to "prove that a de la Poer" need "not be a fiend" and called himself "a pronounced sceptic." In the grotto the old family hunger takes him over, and he is found over Norrys's half-eaten body.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which of these happen in the story?

    • The narrator's old black cat sniffs restlessly at the walls before any rat is heard.

      Happened

      On 22 July the cat "roved from room to room, restless and disturbed, and sniffed constantly about the walls."

    • The servants hear the rats too and refuse to sleep in the tower rooms.

      Didn't happen

      When he asked the two servants if they had heard the rats, "they replied in the negative."

    • Norrys lends the narrator traps and Paris green after the noises begin.

      Happened

      After the night in the tower, "Norrys lent me some traps and Paris green."

    • The narrator finds the sealed family envelope hidden in the priory walls.

      Didn't happen

      The envelope burned with his grandfather at Carfax during the Civil War, and no one ever read it.

    • The traps set around the house are all found sprung but empty.

      Happened

      He made a round of the traps: "All were sprung, yet all were tenantless."

    • Sir William Brinton smashes the central altar apart with explosives.

      Didn't happen

      Brinton "caused it to tilt backward, balanced by some unknown species of counterweight." Explosives come only at the end, when the priory is blown up.

    • Thornton, the psychic investigator, faints at the sight of the grotto.

      Happened

      The sight was so terrible "that Thornton, the psychic investigator, actually fainted."

    • The narrator walks into the English building and sees the butcher shop.

      Didn't happen

      Norrys went in. The narrator says, "I could not go in that building."

    • Dr Trask opens a prehistoric mound and finds skulls with strange carvings.

      Happened

      Trask "opened one of the prehistoric tumuli" and found skulls that "bore indescribably ideographic carvings."

    • The narrator's cat hides in the sub-cellar, too frightened to follow.

      Didn't happen

      The cat "stalked unperturbed" through the grotto and at the end darted past the narrator into the dark.

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