Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

“She loped along briskly, moving in the easy, horselike canter mice use when they are trying to cover ground. Her progress was almost completely noiseless; she chose her path where the earth was bare, or where grass grew, and she avoided dead leaves, which would rustle and crackle even under her small weight.”

The majority of the story takes place either on the ground or below it in the natural environment. For this reason, the author regularly describes the scenery in great detail to provide lucid imagery for the reader. Here, the author describes the protagonist Mrs. Frisby, as she makes her way to Mr. Ages. Mrs. Frisby is skilled at going across the farm without being seen or heard while still managing to keep up a good speed. This skill will come in use later when she must sneak into the kitchen.

“This had been the beginning of his frailness. From that time on he tended to stumble a little when he walked, especially when he was tired; he never grew as vigorous as his brother, Martin. But he thought a deal more, and in that he resembled his father.” 

Timothy has been prone to illness since he was small. He developed a sickness as an infant, which required Mr. Ages’s care, and has not been able to recover to full health ever since. It is for this reason that he develops his current pneumonia and comes close to death once again. This quote also foreshadows the intelligence of Jonathan Frisby and the fact that he was part of an experiment that gave him that intelligence. Timothy seems to have inherited the most of it, though all of the Frisby children are keen learners.

“The thought of that trip made her wish Mr. Frisby were alive to reassure the children and tell them not to worry. But he was not, and it was she who must say it.”

Mrs. Frisby is still grieving over the loss of her husband the previous summer. She does not know how he died or anything about his past in the lab or with the rats. Jonathan was a level-headed and compassionate mouse who kept the family strong and collected. Now that he is gone, Mrs. Frisby has to take over that position for him, and she is still at a loss of exactly how to do that. She does not want the children to worry about her when she goes to visit the owl, but at the same time she does not know how to comfort them when she knows she may not return.

“She remembered something her husband, Mr. Frisby, used to say: All doors are hard to unlock until you have the key. All right. She must try to find the key. But where? Whom to ask?”

Many of the things Mrs. Frisby knows were taught to her by her husband. She often thinks of him and is guided by memories of his collected nature and strong knowledge base. Jonathan Frisby knew that all doors could be unlocked because he, Mr. Ages, and the rats managed to escape the NIMH laboratory even though it seemed impossible. Once they figured out a way, all they had to do was get through it. Now, Mrs. Frisby must determine how best to help her family when she knows they face a difficult situation ahead.

“It was obvious that they knew exactly what they were doing, and they looked as well drilled as a group of soldiers.”

This is the first time Mrs. Frisby sees the rats, and it foreshadows their intelligence and their ability to use machinery and electricity. She sees them pulling a large length of electrical wire toward the rosebush and is unsure why they are doing it. Mrs. Frisby later learns the rats use these cables to run electricity through their colony for lights and electrical tools. 

“Oh,’ said Mrs. Frisby, rather ashamed of her ignorance. She had heard of the river, of course, but had not known that it looked like a snake. She had never been there, since to reach it one had to cross the entire width of the forest. There were advantages to being a bird.”

Mrs. Frisby has ridden on Jeremy the crow’s back once before to save her own life as Dragon the farm cat lunged at them both. She saved Jeremy’s life by freeing him from the string he was entangled in, and he promised to help her in return. So, Mrs. Frisby asks for Jeremy’s help when she does not know what to do about plowing day coming so soon, and Jeremy offers to take her to see the wise owl who lives in the woods. As she flies with Jeremy over the tops of the trees, she sees the river that snakes through the forest and does not even know what it is. Mrs. Frisby realizes in that moment that different species have different advantages, and birds seem to have many more than she does as they are able to see everything and move quickly from point to point.

“The rats on Mr. Fitzgibbon’s farm have—things—ways—you know nothing about. They are not like the rest of us. They are not, I think, even like most other rats.”

When Mrs. Frisby goes to see the owl and he hears she is Jonathan Frisby’s wife, he advises her to seek out the rats for help because he knows the rats were friends of Jonathan’s. The owl explains to Mrs. Frisby that the rats are not ordinary rats, and they have knowledge that he and Mrs. Frisby cannot even begin to imagine. In fact, these rats are not like any other animals at all.

“Who am I, then? Mrs. Frisby asked herself in wonder.”

Mrs. Frisby is allowed into the rat colony when Mr. Ages explains to Justin and Brutus that she is the wife of Jonathan Frisby. She goes to meet Nicodemus and is then asked to wait in the library while the rats hold an important meeting about their plan. Mrs. Frisby has heard from the owl and the rats that she is important because of her name and relationship to Jonathan, and she begins to wonder if she knows anything about herself or her family’s past at all.

“Mrs. Frisby was gradually getting a picture of life in the rat colony […] They had a grain room (presumably for food storage); the females sometimes went to meetings and sometimes not; Nicodemus seemed to be the leader; they had a Plan for the future that some rats did not like; and one, named Jenner, had deserted.”

The more time Mrs. Frisby spends in the rat colony and the more Justin and Nicodemus tell and show her, the more she begins to understand about their life there. Although she has not yet heard about the lab experiment, she now knows the rats are sophisticated enough to hold meetings, store food that is not garbage, enlist a leader, and carry out some kind of great plan. Jenner, the deserter, ends up being the story’s foil when six or seven rats are found dead trying to steal a motor, and it is assumed that this group of rats is Jenner and his followers.

“I’m Timothy’s mother. If you, and Arthur, and others in your group can take risk to save him, sure I can, too. And consider this: I don’t want any of you to be hurt—maybe even killed—by Dragon. But even more, I don’t want the attempt to fail. Perhaps the worst that will happen to you, with luck, is that you will have to scatter and run, and leave my house unmoved. But then what will happen to us? Timothy, at least, will die. So if there is no one else to put the cat to sleep, I must do it.”

Courage and devotion are significant motifs in the novel, and Mrs. Frisby is the character who exemplifies these traits the most. She is extremely devoted to her family and as a result becomes courageous enough to undertake dangerous feats time and time again. When the rats discuss the plan to move the cinder block, they know they must put Dragon to sleep to be successful. Mr. Ages’s leg is broken, so Mrs. Frisby knows she must be the one to do it. She does not hesitate to volunteer herself for the job, as she will do anything to save her family.

“Just the fact that it was a cage made it horrible. I, who had always run where I wanted, could go three hops forward, three hops back again, and that was all. But worse was the dreadful feeling—I know we all had it—that we were completely at the mercy of someone we knew not at all, for some purpose we could not guess. What were their plans for us?”

Nicodemus describes being captured by the men in white suits and taken to the NIMH laboratory to be put in individual cages and experimented on. He explains that, although the rats were fed and generally taken good care of, it was nevertheless a life in a small steel cage. To make matters worse, the rats were unable to do anything to defend themselves against the poking, prodding, and shocking they endured at the hands of the scientists. They were at that point clueless as to why they were there or what the injections were doing to them.

“This was repeated over and over; yet each time I seemed to get a little closer to freedom.”

Nicodemus’s first experience with the endless Rat Race is when he is put into a training maze at the laboratory. The maze is designed to train the rats through the use of electric shocks to run it as fast as possible. It also includes an illusion that makes the rats believe they are going to make it to the outside (and thus to freedom) if they complete the maze. Of course, they are never actually released, but they continue to run the maze and try to reach its end nevertheless. Nicodemus and the rats become caught up in this illusion again when their lives become too easy and they find meaning dwindling.

“I couldn’t help it. When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running toward is an illusion.”

Nicodemus cannot help but continue to run the maze and strive toward freedom even though he intuitively knows the maze will never lead him out. Life in the cage has made him desperate and frantic, and the maze is the only escape from that steel enclosure. The pursuit of a false utopia is an important motif in the story and a trap that both the rats and humans fall into.

“In a matter of seconds I saw his door swing open. It was as simple as that—when you could read.”

Being taught to read by the scientists is instrumental in the rats’ escape from NIMH. Justin uses his reading skills to figure out a tiny, inscribed instruction at the bottom of his cage that explains how to open it. After he figures out how to escape, he is able to assess the room for exits and finds the air ducts. Knowledge is an extraordinarily powerful tool that helps bring the rats their freedom. Ironically, the captors they free themselves from are the very humans who taught them to read.

“We twenty were alone in a strange world. Just how alone and how strange none of us really understood at first; yet in a way we sensed it from the beginning.”

Now that the rats have become super intelligent, given extended life, and lived in a lab for several months, they do not know how to reintegrate into the world after escaping. They are alone together and unlike any other rats or creatures on earth. Because they have only just escaped the lab, they are not yet aware of just how different they have truly become. However, as they run the streets and interact with regular rats, they see they no longer have much in common with them.

“I read about the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans, and the Dark Ages, when the old civilizations fell apart and the only people who could read and write were the monks. They lived apart in monasteries. They led the simplest kind of lives, and studied and wrote; they grew their own food, built their own houses and furniture. They even made their own tool sand their own paper. Reading about that, I begam getting some ideas of how we might live.”

When the rats come to the Boniface Estate after escaping the lab, they find the house includes a massive study full of books on all sorts of topics. Nicodemus takes a particular interest in history and religion and uses this knowledge to form his philosophical ideas about what the new rat civilization should be like. Nicodemus is inspired by the monks he read about, who were humble and valued knowledge and independence from other powers like humans in a lab.

“The common rat is highly valued as an experimental animal in medical research due to his toughness, intelligence, versatility and biological similarity to man.”

Nicodemus learns about biology and history when he studies at the Boniface Estate, and he also listens to the scientists in the lab while he is part of the experiment. He discovers that the reason he and the other rats were taken to NIMH was because of their biological similarity to humans. Studies on rats can theoretically be applied to humans, and studies that would be considered unethical to perform on humans are acceptable to perform on rats.

“The reason I had read I so eagerly was that it was called ‘The Rat Race’—which, I learned, means a race where, no matter how fast you run, you don’t get anywhere.”

Nicodemus learns about the concept of the Rat Race while reading a story about a woman who buys a vacuum cleaner to save time cleaning in a book at the Boniface Estate. She inadvertently ends up spending twice as long cleaning when her floors become covered in soot after the new power plant is built to power all the new vacuums. Like the maze in the laboratory, Nicodemus feels like the rats have reached a point where they are no longer developing or gleaning any meaning from their lives because everything has become too easy living at the farm and after previously having access to the toy tinker’s truck.

“A thief’s life is always based on somebody else’s work.”

Nicodemus has developed a high sense of morality after learning to read and educating himself on history, religion, and philosophy. He wants to help the rats rise above the life of a common rat, and rising above includes no longer stealing or relying on humans in any way. Nicodemus does not believe the rats can be truly free and independent until they have learned to live without stealing, and thus devises a plan to develop their own agriculture and civilization in Thorn Valley as far away from humans as possible.

“We’re just living on the edge of someone else’s [civilization], like fleas on a dog’s back. If the dog drowns, the fleas drown, too.”

Perhaps the worst part about relying on humans is that if their civilization should collapse, or even if the farmer’s life does, the rats’ own lives will collapse in turn. They rely too much on the farm, stealing electricity, water, and food from the Fitzgibbons. Because these rats are highly intelligent and likely to live a long time, Nicodemus wants to see his colony successfully become self-sustaining.

“That was the beginning of an argument that never had a satisfactory ending. Jenner would not yield to my point of view, nor I to his.”

The dichotomy between Nicodemus and Jenner leads to the downfall of Jenner’s group and the destruction of the rosebush. Nicodemus does not know this yet, but he senses that after Jenner leaves, trouble will befall him that could ripple back towards the colony. When Nicodemus decides the rats should stop stealing and bring meaning back into their lives, Jenner disagrees that such a change is necessary. He is comfortable stealing and living a luxurious life and does not want to be involved in what he sees as a reversion back to a more difficult and primitive way of living.

“MECHANIZED RATS INVADE HARDWARE STORE.”

When this headline is published in the newspaper, it is only a matter of time before the humans trace the incident at the hardware store back to the rats on the Fitzgibbon farm. The rats are most likely Jenner and his group of defectors, and they died trying to steal a motor that happened to still be plugged in. When this news reaches Mr. Fitzgibbons, he reports the rats on his farm, leading to the scientists coming to gas the colony, which results in the death of two rats.

“So they won’t be curious, let’s make it open itself.”

Justin is the most intelligent rat and always one step ahead of the humans. From the time he learned to escape his cage in the lab without leaving any evidence, to helping Mrs. Frisby escape the bird cage, he is always thinking about how to trick the humans into believing it was an ordinary incident. Justin knows if the humans find out he and the other rats are super intelligent, they will likely alert the scientists who will likely either recapture or kill the rats. Sure enough, Justin’s prediction comes true just a day later.

“Justin had instantly volunteered for the rear guard. Brutus was second, and behind him, eight more; there were fifty more waiting behind them.”

Not only is Justin the most intelligent rat but he is also the bravest. He is always the first to guard the colony and put himself in harm’s way to keep the others safe. He ushers Mr. Ages to his home to fetch the sleeping powder for Dragon, saves Mrs. Frisby from the birdcage in the kitchen, and volunteers to stay back while the rosebush is gassed to fool the humans. Mrs. Frisby watches the event from above and cannot see which rats make it out in the end and which do not. She sees there are two dead rats left inside, but it is never known which rats they are. Teresa suspects it must have been Justin since Brutus reported that the rat who saved him went back to save someone else, and Justin was the sort of rat who would perform such an act of bravery.