the rats are inescapable.

If you've stumbled upon the legacy of your family's human-livestock operation but can't come to terms with your transient, cannibalistic frenzy then the incessant scurrying of your rats will always haunt you. What might be the most terrifying thing about this story is how natural and inherent cannibalism is to the De la Poers. Though estranged and ignorant of his families practice the narrator quickly resumes the crimes Walter De la Poer tried to stop by murdering his family. If the criminal sickness pervading the De la Poers and those adopted into the family is either inherent or heritable, which it seems to be, there's not much hope for humanity. The narrator cannot escape the rats because they are a part of him. The narrator is tied to this scourge by his heritage. Its clear that the family has been harvesting humans for a long time because they've bred their own variety of human for consumption. The time it has taken for an upright De la Poer to emerge is astounding, as is the quickness that our narrator steps in, unknowingly, to resume his family's practices and undo Walter's work. Its clear that the narrator is horrified by his family's and his own crimes and that his urges are ineluctable. Maybe he'll learn to live with the rats, the De la Poers before him had gone undisturbed in their ways for so long before Walter interfered. Regardless, it seems De la Poer-monsters will inevitably pop up again, with or without intention.