Freud would argue, for instance, that one is not afraid of a zombie because of its disgusting form, but because it brings up the fact that death is not something we can understand, and we do not want to face that ambiguity (Freud). That is to say, something known in some capacity but which one is unable or unwilling to actively think about. Freud’s central argument is that the fear of the uncanny is not caused by any manner of grotesqueness or categorical crisis but instead comes from something repressed. The uncanny, as described by Sigmund Freud, is related to things repressed coming back to light. It should first be noted that the uncanny monster is something different from a strictly cultural or personal monster. By exposing of the repressed ancestral urges of the narrator, the story gives us the chilling message of the inevitability of the regression to the primitive stages of man. A connection may be seen both between the protagonist and the deadly swarm of rats and between the protagonist and the human-cattle species discovered beneath the protagonist’s ancestral home. Throughout The Rats in the Walls, the uncanny is clearly seen through the direct comparison between humanity and a primal inhuman state that is prevalent throughout the story. The story constructs this parallel through the device of the rats in the walls, the sound of which only the protagonist can hear and which are revealed at the end of the story to be a reflection of the fact that his ancestors were ritualistic cannibals.

The story diverts from cosmic horror to give us a much more human villain and creates horror not through cosmic indifference but through the parallel it draws between humanity and our animalistic nature. Lovecraft breaks his usual mold, moving away from typical science fiction stories and taking a decidedly more Gothic approach. In his 1924 story “The Rats in the Walls,” horror writer H. Issue 6: Brave New Worlds: Utopias and Dystopias.Issue 1: Historical Hauntings & Modern-Day Manifestations.👻 Find us on Twitter! 👻 Tweets by Categories

The house of rats lovecraft