Rats Symbol Analysis

The rats at the detention center symbolize the distance between the child characters’ youth and compassion, and the adult (or functionally adult) characters’ cynicism and hopelessness about their situation as refugees. Subhi is disturbed that Queeny describes the refugees being held at the detention center as “the dead rats [...] [l]eft out to rot so no one else bothers to try.” That is, Queeny and others believe that the Australian government is holding refugees in such horrific conditions to discourage other people from seeking asylum in the country. Additionally, the way that other adults or older children talk about and treat the actual rats also highlights their cruelty and lack of humanity. While Harvey implies that the Jackets trap rats to try to keep diseases at bay in camps—and while he frames this as a good and necessary thing—there’s a group of bullies in Family who trap and then torture rats as they kill them. Subhi sees those boys’ meanness as proof that they’ve internalized the camp’s violence, and they now inflict violence on the only beings around who have less power than they do: the rats.

Subhi, however, sees the rats as his friends. Until Harvey asks him to stop, he leaves rice out for the rats at night so the rats will eat the rice instead of nibbling on his toes and fingers. He also finds it abhorrent and disturbing how the bullies trap rats for sport. This highlights Subhi’s youth, his innocence, and his compassion. Subhi begins to lose these qualities when, after Eli is transferred to Alpha, the bullies force Subhi to kill a baby rat they trapped. Subhi feels awful for letting his friends down and violating their trust. However, it’s significant that Subhi feels so bad about this one act of violence—and that it doesn’t totally change his personality. Further, when he reveals to Jimmie what he did, she suggests that he can make it up to the rats by leaving them chocolate as an apology. Essentially, Jimmie proposes that Subhi doesn’t have to embrace the camp’s violence, just because he was forced to commit violence once. Instead, he can atone for his actions and continue to see the rats as living beings deserving of respect and kindness.

This compassion is something the novel suggests is sorely lacking in the camps: the Jackets—and, more broadly, the Australian people and politicians—see refugees like Subhi as nuisances, like the rats, that can be abused and exterminated. However, the refugees are people like anyone else, and the novel insists they deserve the same kind of compassion that Subhi shows to the rats.