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  • The Rat - Ashoka Mitran: Abstract

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    The story follows a middle-aged man named Ganesan as he tries to catch a rat that has been visiting his house at night. Unable to find any food to use as bait, he gets into an argument with his wife and storms out of the house. After walking for some time, he finds a vendor selling vadais and uses one as bait to catch the rat. The next morning, Ganesan finds the rat trapped but instead of killing it, he lets it go. However, a crow swoops down and catches the rat, creating a sense of irony as the rat had not eaten the bait. The story examines the complex relationship between humans and animals.

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    The Rat

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    The story follows a middle-aged man named Ganesan as he tries to catch a rat that has been visiting his house at night. Unable to find any food to use as bait, he gets into an argument with his wife and storms out of the house. After walking for some time, he finds a vendor selling vadais and uses one as bait to catch the rat. The next morning, Ganesan finds the rat trapped but instead of killing it, he lets it go. However, a crow swoops down and catches the rat, creating a sense of irony as the rat had not eaten the bait. The story examines the complex relationship between humans and animals.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    970 views1 page

    The Rat - Ashoka Mitran: Abstract

    Uploaded by

    migase
    The story follows a middle-aged man named Ganesan as he tries to catch a rat that has been visiting his house at night. Unable to find any food to use as bait, he gets into an argument with his wife and storms out of the house. After walking for some time, he finds a vendor selling vadais and uses one as bait to catch the rat. The next morning, Ganesan finds the rat trapped but instead of killing it, he lets it go. However, a crow swoops down and catches the rat, creating a sense of irony as the rat had not eaten the bait. The story examines the complex relationship between humans and animals.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    The Rat - Ashoka Mitran

    Abstract:

    The Rat is a short story, originally written in Tamil, by Ashokamitran, a prominent figure in
    the post-independence Tamil literature scene. The story deals with a middle-aged and
    ordinary man’s attempt to capture a rat that frequently visits his house at night.
    Ashokamitran does not seek to write in the form of complex parables, as is the case with
    many other writers. Instead, he writes about the world he knows. His stories are set in cities,
    either Hyderabad or, in this case, Chennai. His characters are mostly middle-class people,
    dealing with the small and inevitable problems of everyday urban life. He often pays
    attention to, what is on the surface, an uneventful moment, and then slowly zooms in, giving
    the reader an up-close look at the inner workings of the human mind. This type of writing
    style is prominent in “The Rat”.

    Summary:

    The story begins with the main character, the narrator operating under the name of the man
    Ganesan, returning home after work one day. Finding that there is no vadai or udappam left
    in the house for him to bait the rat with, he finds himself irritated and goes to bed. Around
    ten-o’clock however, he hears a rustling in the kitchen, the sound of the rat knocking over the
    jars of oil. He rushes to the kitchen with his wife just as the rat scurries away. He then gets
    involved in a heated argument with his wife does not keep any dosais or vadais for the rat.
    The argument ends with Ganesan hurling an onion at his wife, and storming out the front
    door in search of vadais. Unable to find any vendors selling vadais, he continues searching,
    walking further and further. Seeing a crowd of 40 odd people in the distance, he makes his
    way towards them.
    He observes a man speaking emphatically on political issues to the crowd. Nearby however,
    he sees a wala frying bajis on a cart nearby. After waiting for a while, the vendor fries a batch
    of vadais and Ganesan takes two, eating one himself and saving the other as bait. He returns
    home, sets the trap and sleeps. In the morning he finds that the rat has been caught. Rather
    than killing it, Ganesan walks a fair distance and lets it loose. As the rat scurries away to
    freedom, a crow swoops down from the sky, snapping up the rat and carrying it away. A
    sense of dark irony is also created in the final lines by the fact that, even the next morning,
    the rat had not eaten the vadai placed in the trap.

    Analysis:

    The story is quite a simple one, dealing primarily with the seemingly ordinary tale of a
    middle-class urban-dweller in which the writer details his night-out in search of bait for the
    rat trap. The rat has the last laugh, it gets caught in the trap, and there is devastating irony in
    it leaving the bait untouched. However, there does appear to be a glimmer of symbolism
    present throughout the tale. The end of the story, in which Ganesan frees the rat, only to see it
    killed, examines the complex relationship between man and animal. As is the case with many
    of Ashokamitran’s other stories, the concept of how humans are in a constant relationship
    with their surroundings, is reinforced gradually and continually by the narrative as the story
    progresses. The fight between a man and a rat that he is set to capture, is both physical and
    psychological in Ashokamitran's story ‘The Rat’. While the former wins the physical battle,
    the rat gets his moral victory over his captor.

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