A Wild Sheep Chase

The narrative here breaks off, and goes back in time, to introduce two letters from the narrator’s old friend, the Rat. As he reveals himself in these letters, the Rat is a nomadic, searching, and obscurely-unhappy character. He is driven to move from town to town and to repeatedly change his identity: “At times I forget what I was like originally” (90). At the same time, he is unsure of how fit he really is for his peripatetic life, and tells the narrator that if the two of them had only been born in 19th-century Russia, they might have fared better: “I’d have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such” (88-89).

In this first letter, the Rat does not reveal much about his present dwelling, other than that it is very cold. He instead describes his practiced method of adjusting to a new town: discovering a town’s center, getting a feeling for the concerns of the townspeople, and making up an according identity. It is a method that seems to work for him all too well, and to ensure his isolation and anonymity, rather than lead to any lasting connection.