THE RATTRAP by Selma Lagerlöf

1.    Rattrap is a device for catching rats using baits (like a piece of cheese or bread) to make the rat enter the trap. Once inside the trap, the rat cannot escape as the only exit of the trap gets shut.

2.    Rattrap also means a daunting situation. (daunting makes you feel slightly afraid or worried about dealing with it.)

‘The Rattrap’ is a metaphor to highlight the human predicament. Just as a rat is fooled by a bait and gets trapped, most human beings are likely to fall into the trap of material benefits. Here human beings are compared to the trapped rat which is lured by the bait. The lucrative (profitable) baits for human beings is the material benefits such as food, shelter, clothing, good life, fame, joys or anything else that attracts a human. The story upholds the belief that the essential goodness of a human being can be awakened through love and understanding.

The protagonist of the short story the Rattrap, is a ratttap peddler.

The story begins like a fairytale. The central character is a beggar and a petty thief who goes about selling rattraps of wire to make a small living. He finds it difficult to make both ends meet. It makes him reflect about his own condition and the world at large.He fancies that the whole world is nothing but a big rattrap. This thought amuses him.

One dark and cold evening, he was made welcome at a cottage and the owner was alone without a family. This loneliness made the old man share porridge and tobacco with the peddler. He even played a card game with the peddler. The old man started talking about his days as a crofter and how now he lives by selling milk for the creamery. He even shows the 3 ten kroner bills he got last month as proof.

His confidence was not respected by the peddler when he stole the money next day by smashing the window pane, to get hold of the pouch with the thirty kroners. In order to escape from the authorities, he avoided the public highway and went into the woods. He got lost in the forest and did not know the way to get out and recalled his thoughts about the world being a rattrap waiting to trap the humans with many baits. He felt he was fooled by the money which was the bait.

His gloom and despair increased as it became darker with increased dangers in the forest. He thought he would die there itself. Suddenly he heard the sound of hammer and understood that there was an iron mill nearby. He located the mill and saw that the master smith and his helper sat near the furnace and on account of the noise in the forge they did not notice the peddler entering. The peddler lay down to warm himself and sleep. He did not exchange any words with the smith.

The owner of the iron mill’s greatest ambition was to ship out good iron to the market. He had made it a habit to check the work done both day and night. When he entered the mill that day, he saw the stranger. Unlike the blacksmiths, he went and removed the hat to get a better view and addressed the fellow as Nils Olof. The peddler, in the hope of getting some money did not refuse that he was misidentified by the ironmaster.

The ironmaster took the peddler to be one of his old regimental comrades (belonging to the same military unit), misunderstood that his pathetic condition was because he had resigned from the army.

He compelled the peddler to come with him to his house but the stranger continued to refuse this offer and the ironmaster left. Some time later, the ironmaster’s daughter returned accompanied by a valet. She was not at all pretty, but seemed modest and quite shy. She introduced herself as Edla Willmansson and noticed that the man afraid and concluded that “either he has stolen something or else he has escaped from jail.” She reassured him that he will be allowed to leave them as freely as he came but requested him to stay with her and her father over Christmas Eve. The peddler accepted the invitation and was offered a fur coat but regretted taking the kroners from the crofter.

The next day at breakfast Edla told her father that she never thought that the peddler was an educated person. Te ironmaster told her that she should have patience and with a little bit of cleaning up and good clothes, the tramp will lose his tramp manners and show that he was an educated army man.

The tramp entered and he was now clean and well dressed. The ironmaster understood that he had made a mistake in taking the tramp to be one of his regimental comrades and was angry with the peddler. The peddler answered that he did not accept the ironmaster’s invitation and said that he would wear his own torn clothes and go away from the place. The ironmaster threatened him the sheriff would definitely have something against the vagabond. Now the peddler struck the table with his fist and told the ironmaster that the whole world is but a rattrap. He said that if the sheriff takes him away then one day the ironmaster himself would be baited by the world and would be caught in the trap. The ironmaster asked him to leave immediately.

Edla was very happy that morning as she had planned to make the peddler comfortable. She felt that Christmas is a time for charity and good cheer which should be shared with the needy. She argued with her father that the peddler is never welcomed anywhere at anytime. He is always afraid of being arrested and Edla wanted him to enjoy a day of peace, just one day in the whole year. She said that they had promised Christmas cheer. The father gave in to the daughter’s plea and was fed.  He slept the whole afternoon, and again after lunch he slept. He went down to have Christmas dinner and saw the decorated Christmas tree. He went around and said tank you to everyone. Edla said that the suit he was wearing was to be a Christmas present and if he wanted to send next Christmas Eve in a place where he could rest in peace and be sure that no evil would befall him, he would be welcomed back again.

The next morning, the father and daughter went to church where they came to know that one of the old crofter’s had been robbed by a man selling rattraps.

As they entered their house, the valet informed them that the peddler had already left but he was empty handed. He had left behind a package for Miss Willmansson as a Christmas present.

Inside the package the girl found a rattrap containing the wrinkled three ten kroner notes.There was also a note which said that “I do not want to you to be embarrassed by a thief. You can give back the money to the old man and the rattrap is a Christmas present from a rat who would have been caught in this world’s rattrap if he had not been raised to captain.”

It was signed “Captain von Stahle”.

The peddler experiences a change of heart after experiencing Edla’s sincere kindness and essential human goodness. He attains nobility of spirit as he ‘becomes’ Captain von Stahle.

It is the victory of human goodness.

Selma Lagerlöf’s  THE RATTRAP as a fairytale…

One of the elements of fairy tales is that they often start and end with special words like "once upon a time," "a long, long time ago," When you read those words, you know that the story could be a fairy tale.

Another element of a fairy tale is that the story often takes place in a castle, a forest, or a town. This is called the setting. The setting is where the story takes place.

Fairy tales always have at least one good character, or person, in the story. An example of a good character is Cinderella.

One of the most important elements in a fairy tale is that they always have a problem that must be solved. For example, in the Princess and the Pea, the prince wants to find a real princess to marry. His mother, the queen, helps him find a real princess by putting a pea in the bed to find out if the princess can feel it.

·         A fairy tale begins with "Once upon a time...”

·         Fairy tales have a problem that needs to be solved.

·         Fairy tales have happy endings –

·         Fairy tales usually teach a lesson or have a theme.

In the fairy tales the magic and the supernatural permeate everyday life, showing that everybody can live happily ever after, that the poor man can make a fortune and that everybody has to face some trials and overcome some difficulties in order to get a better life. In this way the fairy tales deal with real problems and there is a deep meaning in them that you must be able to catch in order to understand the human nature and better realize one's own individual history.

Although we live today in a very different world, the fairy tales' language is still alive and rich in meaning: it is true that those tales always refer to distant times (Once upon a time there was…), but the message they include - success and happiness reached thanks to one's own merits and to other people's help - is universal.