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The Rats (novel)
Encyclopedia
The Rats is a horror novel written by British
author
James Herbert
. This was Herbert's first novel and included graphic depictions of death and mutilation. A film adaptation
was made in 1982, called Deadly Eyes
. A 1985 adventure game
for the Commodore 64
and ZX Spectrum
based on the book was published by Hodder & Stoughton
Ltd and produced by Five Ways Software Ltd. The Rats was followed by two sequels, Lair and Domain.
's Dracula
; specifically, after seeing the scene where Renfield
describes a nightmare he had involving hordes of rats. Linking the film to childhood memories he had of rats in the London suburbs, Herbert stated in later interviews that he wrote the book primarily as a pastime; "It seemed like a good idea at the time, I was as naive as that." The manuscript was typed by Herbert's wife Eileen, who sent it off after nine months to nine different publishers.
, resting in an abandoned and forgotten lock-keeper's house by a canal. As he is ruminating over the injustices inflicted upon him in his life, he is suddenly set upon by a pack of dog-sized rats and is devoured alive.
Harris, a young, east London art teacher notices that one of his students has a bloodied bandage around his hand. When he enquires as to what caused the damage, the student answers that he was attacked by a rat.
Meanwhile, a baby girl and her dog are killed by the giant rats, now aided by packs of smaller black rat
s. The girl's mother rescues her daughter's mutilated body, but not before sustaining bites as well.
Harris takes the student to the hospital and sees the grieving mother with her dead child. According to the doctor, the number of seemingly unprovoked rat attacks have strangely increased.
The next rat attack occurs at the remains of a bombsite
, where a group of squabbling vagrants are slaughtered.
Harris is visited at work by the Minister of Health, Mr Foskins, who reveals that the bitten student, and all the other surviving victims of rat attacks, died of a mysterious disease 24 hours after being bitten. Foskins asks Harris to keep the existence of the disease a secret and lead an exterminator to the area where the student had been bitten. Accompanied by the exterminator, Harris goes to the canal described by the student and sights a group of giant rats. Harris attempts to contact the police while the exterminator follows the rats who then attack and kill the exterminator.
The rat attacks become increasingly more daring, as more and more public places are attacked. A tube station is assaulted, leaving few survivors. Next, Harris’ own school is attacked, resulting in the death of the headmaster.
With the existence of the rats' disease now becoming public knowledge, a meeting is held, in which a young researcher by the name of Stephen Howard comes up with the idea of using a virus to infect the rats. The virus is injected into several puppies which are left in areas of the attacks. This results in the deaths of thousands of rats, which crawl to the surface to die. A few weeks later however, the rats adapt to the virus, yet at the same time, losing the toxicity of their bites. The rats brutally attack a cinema and overrun the London Zoo
.
Based on the fact that rats communicate with each other using ultrasound, a plan is formulated to use ultrasonic machines to lure the rats into gas chambers.
Foskins is dismissed as Health Minister and reveals to Harris that he’s been investigating possible clues as to the rats origins and comes to the conclusion that they were smuggled from the tropics by a Zoologist living near a canal. Pursuing the disgraced health minister past waves of entranced rats; Harris finds the abandoned house and enters it. He goes into the cellar and finds Foskins' corpse being devoured by rats of unusually great size. He kills them after a bloody battle and discovers the rats' leader hidden in the shadows; a white, hairless and obese rat with two heads. Harris kills the creature and leaves.
The epilogue indicates that one rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white rat.
The underlying theme of the novel is the lack of care by government toward the underclass and a lack of reaction to tragedy until it is too late. Fellow author Peter James
stated "I think Jim reinvented the horror genre and brought it into the modern world. He set a benchmark with his writing that many writers subsequently have tried, without success, to emulate."
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
James Herbert
James Herbert
James Herbert, OBE is a best-selling English horror writer who originally worked as the art director of an advertising agency. He is a full-time writer who also designs his own book covers and publicity.-Family:...
. This was Herbert's first novel and included graphic depictions of death and mutilation. A film adaptation
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
was made in 1982, called Deadly Eyes
Deadly Eyes
Deadly Eyes is a 1982 Canadian film directed by Robert Clouse, based on the horror novel The Rats by James Herbert. The story revolves around Giant Black Rats who begin eating the residents of Toronto after ingesting contaminated grain.-Plot:...
. A 1985 adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
and ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
based on the book was published by Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...
Ltd and produced by Five Ways Software Ltd. The Rats was followed by two sequels, Lair and Domain.
Background
Herbert became inspired to write The Rats in early 1972, whilst watching Tod BrowningTod Browning
Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...
's Dracula
Dracula (1931 film)
Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
; specifically, after seeing the scene where Renfield
Renfield
R. M. Renfield is a fictional character in the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.-In the novel:A description of Renfield from the novel:R. M. Renfield, aetat 59. Sanguine temperament, great physical strength, morbidly excitable,...
describes a nightmare he had involving hordes of rats. Linking the film to childhood memories he had of rats in the London suburbs, Herbert stated in later interviews that he wrote the book primarily as a pastime; "It seemed like a good idea at the time, I was as naive as that." The manuscript was typed by Herbert's wife Eileen, who sent it off after nine months to nine different publishers.
Plot summary
The novel opens introducing the reader to an alcoholic vagrantVagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
, resting in an abandoned and forgotten lock-keeper's house by a canal. As he is ruminating over the injustices inflicted upon him in his life, he is suddenly set upon by a pack of dog-sized rats and is devoured alive.
Harris, a young, east London art teacher notices that one of his students has a bloodied bandage around his hand. When he enquires as to what caused the damage, the student answers that he was attacked by a rat.
Meanwhile, a baby girl and her dog are killed by the giant rats, now aided by packs of smaller black rat
Black Rat
The black rat is a common long-tailed rodent of the genus Rattus in the subfamily Murinae . The species originated in tropical Asia and spread through the Near East in Roman times before reaching Europe by the 1st century and spreading with Europeans across the world.-Taxonomy:The black rat was...
s. The girl's mother rescues her daughter's mutilated body, but not before sustaining bites as well.
Harris takes the student to the hospital and sees the grieving mother with her dead child. According to the doctor, the number of seemingly unprovoked rat attacks have strangely increased.
The next rat attack occurs at the remains of a bombsite
Bombsite
A bombsite is the wreckage that remains after a bomb has destroyed a building or other structure.-World War II bombsites:After World War II many European cities remained severely damaged from bombing. London and other British cities which had suffered the Blitz were pock-marked with bombsites,...
, where a group of squabbling vagrants are slaughtered.
Harris is visited at work by the Minister of Health, Mr Foskins, who reveals that the bitten student, and all the other surviving victims of rat attacks, died of a mysterious disease 24 hours after being bitten. Foskins asks Harris to keep the existence of the disease a secret and lead an exterminator to the area where the student had been bitten. Accompanied by the exterminator, Harris goes to the canal described by the student and sights a group of giant rats. Harris attempts to contact the police while the exterminator follows the rats who then attack and kill the exterminator.
The rat attacks become increasingly more daring, as more and more public places are attacked. A tube station is assaulted, leaving few survivors. Next, Harris’ own school is attacked, resulting in the death of the headmaster.
With the existence of the rats' disease now becoming public knowledge, a meeting is held, in which a young researcher by the name of Stephen Howard comes up with the idea of using a virus to infect the rats. The virus is injected into several puppies which are left in areas of the attacks. This results in the deaths of thousands of rats, which crawl to the surface to die. A few weeks later however, the rats adapt to the virus, yet at the same time, losing the toxicity of their bites. The rats brutally attack a cinema and overrun the London Zoo
London Zoo
London Zoo is the world's oldest scientific zoo. It was opened in London on 27 April 1828, and was originally intended to be used as a collection for scientific study. It was eventually opened to the public in 1847...
.
Based on the fact that rats communicate with each other using ultrasound, a plan is formulated to use ultrasonic machines to lure the rats into gas chambers.
Foskins is dismissed as Health Minister and reveals to Harris that he’s been investigating possible clues as to the rats origins and comes to the conclusion that they were smuggled from the tropics by a Zoologist living near a canal. Pursuing the disgraced health minister past waves of entranced rats; Harris finds the abandoned house and enters it. He goes into the cellar and finds Foskins' corpse being devoured by rats of unusually great size. He kills them after a bloody battle and discovers the rats' leader hidden in the shadows; a white, hairless and obese rat with two heads. Harris kills the creature and leaves.
The epilogue indicates that one rat survived the purge by being trapped in the basement of a grocery shop. There, it gives birth to a new litter, including a new white rat.
Critical reception
The first paperback edition sold out after three weeks. The Rats received harsh criticism upon its publication. It was deemed to be far too graphic in its portrayals of death and mutilation and that the social commentary regarding the neglect of London's suburbs was too extremist. For some reviewers, the novel was not literature, and not a good example of good writing. However, many consider the novel to be social commentary influenced by Herbert's harsh upbringing in immediate post-war London.The underlying theme of the novel is the lack of care by government toward the underclass and a lack of reaction to tragedy until it is too late. Fellow author Peter James
Peter James (writer)
Peter James is a British writer of crime fiction and film producer.-Life:James is the son of Cornelia James, the former glovemaker to Queen Elizabeth II. He was educated at Charterhouse School and went on to Ravensbourne Film School. Subsequently he spent several years in North America, working as...
stated "I think Jim reinvented the horror genre and brought it into the modern world. He set a benchmark with his writing that many writers subsequently have tried, without success, to emulate."