Bram Stoker: The Burial of the Rats. Summary and analysis
In The Burial of the Rats, a young Englishman who spends a year in Paris, separated from his fiancée by his parent’s wishes, decides to explore the city’s outskirts to take his mind off things. Intrigued by the life of the chiffoniers (garbage collectors), he enters the garbage dumps of Montrouge, a sordid and dangerous place, where an older woman and an older man set a trap to kill him and let the rats devour his body. Surrounded by a group of silent and cruel criminals, he manages to escape through hostile terrain full of piles of garbage, swamps, and canals. After an agonizing nighttime chase, he swims across a river and arrives exhausted at the fortress of Bicêtre, where French soldiers rescue him. Together with them and a police commissioner, he returns to the place to look for his attackers. They find human remains eaten by rats and arrest a group of veteran ex-soldiers who live in the rubbish dumps. The story, narrated in the first person, mixes suspense, horror, and social criticism and shows how human degradation can reach extremes of almost animal brutality on the forgotten margins of the city.