The Rats in the Walls

The short story, The Rats in the Walls, reminds me of the novel a Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The stories differ in significant ways; such as the fact that Brave New World is set in the distant future whereas Rats in the Walls takes place in the early to mid nineteen hundreds with references to the Roman times. The genres of the two stories are completely polarized, with one being gothic and written as a rejection of the romantic ideas and the other being a modern text that was written to expose the flaws of an industrialized society. Despite the vast differences, both involve the idea of human farming as a practice, though the manner by which the farming is perceived differs between the two stories. In The Rats in the Walls the remnants of the farming indicate that humans were raised for consumption by other beings, the farms were located in the underground world beneath the house and the practice was hidden, as it was perceived as a Satanist deed at the time of its occurrence. Whereas in Brave New World humans are raised in hatcheries, in a manner similar to chickens in order to achieve control of reproduction as a means to create a more perfect society. Thus human farming in this context was an accepted norm in society. It is interesting that the same practice can be used to achieve two different intended effects in both a gothic and a modern story.