The Rat (novel)

The Rat is a novel by the German writer Günter Grass, which was published in 1986. Its action is composed of many strands of narrative. The common thread to pull the dialogues between the unnamed narrator and a female rat, referred to him as She-rat, through the work. Grass continues his successful novel The Tin Drum in The Rat.

Content

All of humanity is wiped out. The narrator, who orbits the Earth devastated in a spaceship, the demise of humanity relives the basis of the destinies of different people.

One of them is the painter Lothar Malskat, which is described among other things as a forger of Gothic frescoes. He turns together with the now sixty years old Oskar Matzerath, who makes no more by his tin drum on social and political grievances attention, but this has replaced by the more modern video production, a movie. In addition, Oskar returns to the places of his childhood, to Danzig (Polish Gdańsk) and in the Kashubian region, to celebrate the birthday of his old grandmother.

At the same time, is a five-piece all-female crew on the Baltic Sea road, ostensibly to measure the density of jellyfish, which is an indicator of a disturbed ecological balance. In truth they are traveling to fabulous city of Vineta, a underwater in the sea, matriarchal utopia. In the course of the story it is clear that it is in all five women are former girlfriends of the narrator, an indication that at least parts of the story are most likely sprung from the imagination.

The different narrative levels are even more confusing, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand what the reality of fiction each just claims to be. What is clear is that all people inexorably to the "big bang ", a euphemism for the end of the world, are heading. This fact is particularly touching way in the constantly recurring motif of " farewell " expression.

The rats try to warn people of the impending disaster and come out of their holes. However, they are misunderstood. People use all means to be the alleged rat infestation Lord. The general hysteria culminates in the ignition of an atomic bomb which erases all of humanity, apart from some time surviving grandmother Oscars and the narrator in the spaceship.

Now begins the era of rats. However, the narrator wants this fact does not admit it and clings desperately to his dreams in which goes on people's lives. From this point, the reality begins to finally resolve.

The rats have the unique opportunity to once again " at zero to begin " to be so burdened by any criminal past. Although the She-rat compared to the narrator loudly claims to the contrary, they seem to go through the entire history of mankind again and thus their chance to gamble. To make matters worse place to even genetically modified rat-men on the coast, who, when they are still weak, be tolerated by the rats from a certain nostalgia for the extinct human race. But soon enslave the human rats, the rats, but are defeated after some time.

In a final conversation between Rättin narrator and all that went before is definitely questioned. The two can not agree, whether the She-rat is just a dream of the narrator or whether this in fact - along with the rest of humanity - is merely a figment of the imagination of remaining on earth rats. At the end of timid hope and resolute pessimism about the future of the narrator are undecidable in a state of suspension.

In the novel, Günter Grass designs express a counter-image to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing picture of the education of the human race: the human race (Grass used deliberately old-fashioned word " mankind " ) have indeed learned " the virtue to eat with spoons, hardworking the subjunctive and the to practice tolerance, " all education but not cause they've got their tendency to violence under control. This failure was eventually become the " human race " undoing ( " High brightness shone from every angle. Pity it then became so gloomy and no one found his school. ").