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Rats in literature are frequently the messengers or minions of infernal beasts, as in "Dracula." For other 19th century writers, particularly journalists, rats were the expression of man's bestiality to man. When Charles Dickens came to Manhattan, in 1842, he was appalled by the conditions in the Tombs, a Manhattan prison, where the corpses of detainees are left to rot, and a man "is half-eaten by rats in an hour's time."
The severest circumstances can heighten ingenuity and lessen dietary scruples. After the Battle of Gettysburg, a group of captured Rebel soldiers was held at Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island. Here is a recollection of one prisoner, Captain John S. Swann: "Not long after my arrival I heard a cry ?Rat call! Rat call!'... A number of prisoners were moving and some running up near the partition, over which a sergeant was standing and presently he began throwing rats down. The prisoners scrambled for the rats like school boys for apples.... Of course but few were lucky enough to get a rat. The rats were cleaned, put in salt water a while and fried. Their flesh was tender and not unpleasant to the taste."
And what if rats are the tasters, not the tastees? That's the purring motor behind "The Graveyard Rats," the begetter of my pre-teen rat-reticence. In his first published story (the March 1936 issue of Weird Tales), Kuttner relates the grim saga of Masson — caretaker of an ancient Salem cemetery — and his battle with the creatures who keep stealing coffin treasures (diamond stickpins, cufflinks and the occasional laboratory corpse) that Masson wants for his own. One night he opens a coffin to see that the rats have just dragged a corpse through the gnawed-out end of a coffin. Grabbing a flashlight, he follows the cadaver and its verminous thieves into the cemetery's tunnels, when...
"Agonizing pain shot through his leg. He felt sharp teeth sink into his flesh, and kicked out frantically. There was a shrill squealing and the scurry of many feet. Flashing the light behind him, Masson caught his breath in a sob of fear as he saw a dozen great rats watching him intently, their slitted eyes glittering in the light. They were great misshapen things, as large as cats, and behind them he caught a glimpse of a dark shape that stirred and moved swiftly aside into the shadow; and he shuddered at the unbelievable size of the thing."
But I can quote no more. Find it, read it and soil yourself with fright.
ROOM 101
In the 20th century, the great literary anatomizer of rats was Eric Blair, who wrote as George Orwell. Rats find him, or he them, in his memoirs of public school days, of service in the Burmese police, of indigency in Paris and London. "Animal Farm," his parable of Soviet Communism, begins with a supposedly egalitarian society, but even in the rosy dawn of socialism rats are the natural enemy and victim of dogs and cats.
In "Homage to Catalonia," a vibrant recollection of fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell's revulsion for rats reflects his growing disillusion with Iberian Communism. He writes of a barn where he and his squad waited to attack the fascists: "the place was alive with rats. The filthy brutes came swarming out of the ground on every side. If there is one thing I hate more than another it is a rat running over me in the darkness. However, I had the satisfaction of catching one of them a good punch that sent him flying."
These recollections are similar to those of the Civil War soldiers: in dire circumstances, the rat is likely to be man's first companion and adversary. But the idea of rat — as that thing that goes scratch in the night, as the lurking evil — can be more terrifying than the grinding reality in an enforced community of rat and man. Orwell dramatized this in "1984," when the hero Winston Smith must face his worst fear in an interrogation session with his torturer O'Brien. He must enter Room 101, which is literally a rats' nest.
"?The worst thing in the world,' said O'Brien, ?varies from individual to individual.... ?In your case,' said O'Brien, ?the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.'
"...the cage with the rats was not two metres away from him. They were enormous rats. They were at the age when a rat's muzzle grows blunt and fierce and his fur brown instead of grey.
"?The rat,' said O'Brien, still addressing his invisible audience, ?although a rodent, is carnivorous. You are aware of that. You will have heard of the things that happen in the poor quarters of this town. In some streets a woman dare not leave her baby alone in the house, even for five minutes. The rats are certain to attack it. Within quite a small time they will strip it to the bones. They also attack sick or dying people. They show astonishing intelligence in knowing when a human being is helpless.
... "?When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.'
"The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless."
WILLARD THE RAT-BOY
I don't recall any trauma-inducing rat movies from my youth, but watching them now can leaves wounds on my inner child. Sitting deep in my seat for the new "Willard," I was edgy from the film's first line" a Mother Bates-type voice shouting, "Willard, there are rats in the basement!" Willard (Crispin Glover) treads downstairs looking for rats. He dutifully sets traps. Later, he hears them all snap shut, but when he checks he sees that all are empty. Then the critters scuttle into view.
A good beginning to a medium-spooky movie. Willard finds that one of the invaders, a white rat, seems brighter than the others, a leader; Willard calls him Socrates. The lad also finds a huge brown rat (Gambian, if you care to adopt one) whom he names Ben, for Big Ben. Soon Willard leads his brood into a revenger's tragedy against his sadistic nemesis Mr. Martin (R. Lee Ermey). He packs them in a satchel, takes them to Martin's garage and in a trice they've gnawed through the bottom of the wooden door and demolished Martin's beloved sports car. Pursued by a neighborhood mutt, Willard impulsively tosses the dog into the satchel, but shortly opens it and allows the dog to escape unharmed.
The PG-13 horror-movie code apparently ordains that canines may not be devoured alive by rats. Ah, but felines... Later, an anxious Willard tosses a cat into his house. The cat is pursued by Ben and his carrion legion; it jumps to the top of a china cabinet, whose legs the rats methodically gnaw away. Down goes the cat toward the floor and the eager incisors of a hundred ravenous rodents. (Stay tuned for word of the ultimate cat-rat movie, "Men Behind the Sun.")
By this part of the movie, I had ceased being a pathetic ratophobe test case and was now only an interested observer. Allow me to explain. For me, the frightening thing about rats is their movement: fast and furtive, out of nowhere, into my path. (No, the rat would say, "my path"). This flash of motion jolts my sluggish nervous system, like a shock cut in a horror movie. I know I'm not at serious risk; it just takes a scary second for my brain to tell my body. And once I know the creature is there, on screen or on the street, I can accommodate myself to a general unease. So my favorite parts of "Willard" are the early scenes, when I tested my reactions against director Glen Morgan's timing — his ability to send a rat across my field of vision without my being prepared for it.