Rat Torture in Fiction, It’s More Common Than You Think

Posted by 4th in the Trilogy on May 8, 2012 · 1 Comment 

Everyone’s talking about rat torture at the moment.

Following the recent episode of Game of Thrones, which appears to be converting fans left, right and centre in its second season, the office was abuzz with the scene whereby a bucket is strapped to a young man with a rat in it (in the book apparently it’s a weasel). The bucket is then heated at one end, forcing the rat to flee the flame by the only other means. Not so much, out, as through the body.

Whilst the grizzly details were related, those listening were in rapt silence, making appropriate gasps of shock, horror and disgust, whilst their own curiosity kept them from walking away – the car crash phenomenon in action. Post-explanation, each listener was keen to cite their own reference for the origin of rat torture – 2 Fast 2 Furious and Nineteen-Eighty Four were both touted, Wikipedia has a good lowdown.

Rat torture is not new, but it certainly makes an impression. Here’s my list of the most memorable references in fiction:

1. The Torture Garden by Octave Mirabeau

Had The Torture Garden been written minus a tale of sodomy involving a rat, there would, I am sure, have been outrage. In a scene with echoes of Marlowe’s Edward II, a red hot poker is used to encourage the rat towards, and eventually into, the buttocks of the prostrate victim.

Here the pleasure seems undoubtedly in the telling of the story and the reactions of the shocked onlookers, much like the retelling in the office.

                                       

2. Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell

Drawn out in a magnificent display of writing, your heart is in your mouth as the rat cage is attached to the head of poor Winston – his ultimate horror revealed in the confines of Room 101. It is a truly horrific scene that leaves you thinking, it would have been kinder to have killed him.

3. The Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver

The first book of the Lincoln Rhyme crime series, popularised by the 1996 film featuring Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington, sees one of the eponymous killer’s victims eaten to death by rats. Rather than coercing the rats to feast on a thigh-slashed, bloodied victim, the rats are drawn out of their lairs around the disused slaughterhouse.

In a change to the previous two novels, this scene cements the depiction of the rat as an opportunistic killer rather than an unsuspecting participant.

                                   

4. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

The infamous Patrick Bateman has been forever immortalised by Christian Bale in the film of the same name, a man of seemingly unparalleled sado-masochistic sensibilities.

The scene of Bateman chasing two prostitutes around an apartment with a chainsaw was just close enough to the edge to make it into the film for cinema-going audiences. The scene where a live rat is forced into a prostitute’s vagina, unsurprisingly, did not.

Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged with American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis, Edward II, Game of Thrones, George Orwell, Jeffrey Deaver, Marlowe, Nineteen-Eighty Four, Octave Mirbeau, rat, Shakespeare, The Bone Collector, The Torture Garden, torture