The Rat

The Rat (, literally The Ratess) is a 1986 novel by the German writer Günter Grass. Structure and content The plot is composed of many narrative strands and oscillates between fairytale, travelogue and surreal novel. It also contains cinematic perspectives and some poems. Grass incorporates some narrative threads of his success novels The Tin Drum as well as the Butt; further passages on maritime disasters, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, anticipate aspects of his book Crabwalk. Grass has conceived the novel as a counter-image to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's picture of the education of the human race: Humanity (Grass used deliberately old-fashioned word "mankind") have indeed learned "the virtue to eat with spoons, diligently the subjunctive and practice tolerance", all enlightenment but not their tendency to get their violence under control. In the dreams of the narrator, who seems to be in a spaceship orbiting the devastated earth, a speaking female rat compels the narrator to review the destruction of humanity, and follow their dominant position by rats. Rats build accordingly, in a world destroyed through deforestation, pollution, and nuclear warfare, a new civilization based on solidarity.