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Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien Book Club
52 Plays3 months ago
In this episode of the Book Club Podcast, host Carly and guest Margaret, both elder millennials, discuss the book Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien. The discussion includes a detailed summary of the plot, touching on Mrs. Frisbee’s journey to save her sick son, her encounters with wise mice and intelligent rats, and the mysterious background of the rats of NIMH. They delve into themes such as ecosystems and civilizations, the impact of scientific experimentation, and the lack of significant character development. The conversation also compares the book with its darker, magic-filled movie adaptation. The episode concludes with reflections on how millennial childhood media, including dark movies, might have influenced their resilience. Tune in next time for our episode on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
00:00 Mysterious Marching Figures
01:37 Introduction to the Book Club Podcast
02:55 Summary of Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH
07:48 Discussion on Ecosystems and Civilization
13:24 The Role of Education and Longevity
23:00 The Farmer and the Natural Cycles
32:37 Morality and Justice in Mrs. Frisbee's World
33:34 Natural Disasters and Human Vulnerability
35:50 The Scary Imagery of Childhood Movies
36:41 Millennial Nostalgia and Dark Childhood Films
38:05 The Horror Elements in Mrs. Frisbee's Story
38:44 Magical Elements in the Movie Adaptation
43:07 Exploring Themes of Connection and Isolation
45:31 Female Characters and Their Roles
49:01 Hero's Journey and New Genre Themes
51:11 Final Thoughts and Reflections
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Transcript
Podcast Introductions
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey there, welcome to Rewind Rewatch. I am the oldest sibling, Andrey. And I'm her brother, Joelle. And we are siblings that decided to make a podcast about the thing that we love, 90s movies. Yes. I mean, we love everything 90s anyway, but for this podcast, what we want to do is basically look at 90s movies and then discuss whether or not they aged well based on today's standards.
00:00:26
Speaker
So we'll think about the themes, some of our favorite quotes, and at the end, we will rate these movies on a scale from one to five, rewinds, based on how likely it is for us to rewatch them again.
90s Movie Reviews
00:00:38
Speaker
How do you think we'll rate your favorite 90s movies? You gotta listen in to find out.
Book Club Podcast Introduction
00:00:51
Speaker
Beyond the cat, quite far beyond, between the barn and the house, she saw what looked like a troop of dark gray figures marching in columns. Marching, not exactly, but moving slowly and all in line.
00:01:05
Speaker
They were rats. There were a dozen of them, and at first she could not quite see what they were up to. Then she saw something moving between them and behind them. It looked like a thick piece of rope, a long piece, maybe 20 feet. No, it was stiffer than rope. It was electric cable.
00:01:22
Speaker
the heavy black kind used for outdoor wiring, and strung on telephone poles. The rats were hauling it laboriously through the grass, inching it along in the direction of a very large wild rose bush in the far corner of the yard. Welcome to the Book Club Podcast. I'm Carly, and I'm an elder millennial. Today, my guest is Margaret, and we are discussing Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nim by Robert C. O'Brien. Welcome, Margaret.
00:01:49
Speaker
Thank you so much. I'm Margaret. I am also an elder millennial and I first read Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nim in third grade and I have thought about it in very limited ways since then and so it's really interesting to come back to it.
00:02:05
Speaker
As an adult of interest, I also attended third grade in a country school where most kids had a parent or grandparent who was actively involved in farming. And my teacher was a biologist who took up teaching as a second career. So I don't know. I feel like that might shape how I think about the book as well. Yeah. Yeah. I never read the book and I grew up with the movie. So I remember the movie pretty well.
00:02:34
Speaker
It was kind of hard for me when reading the book to not have the images from the movie in my head. And we'll talk a little bit about the movie later.
Plot and Themes of 'Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of NIMH'
00:02:41
Speaker
There are some very significant differences that made that a little difficult for me, but Let's start off with the summary and listeners, we will spoil the book as we always do with a thorough summary. Mrs. Frisbee is a widowed field mouse with four children. They live in a cinder block on a farm. One February morning, her youngest son is very sick, so she visits a wise old mouse, Mr. H's. He gives her medicine and tells her that her son Timothy must be kept warm in bed for at least three weeks, but the weather turns warm quickly
00:03:16
Speaker
meaning the farmer will plow the area where their cinder block home is located. Mrs. Frisbee asks for help from a young crow she rescued from the farmer's cat. He takes her to see an owl and she bravely enters his home. When the owl learns that her husband was Jonathan Frisbee, he suggests she asked the rats who live in the rose bush for help. When Mrs. Frisbee goes to the rose bush, a guard at the doorway refuses to let her in until Mr. Ages comes and vouches for her. They take her into a multi-storied home underground with electricity and elevator, carpeting and running water.
00:03:49
Speaker
They have a library and their leader, Nicodemus, has an office with books and a radio. They agree to help her, but they will need Mrs. Frisbee to put a sleeping powder in the cat's food so that they can move the cinder block house without having to worry about him. Mr. Ages and the rat Justin go to get the sleeping powder while Nicodemus tells Mrs. Frisbee about the rat's history at NIM. Nicodemus was captured and brought to a research facility where scientists injected the rats with a serum to make them stronger and smarter and increase their lifespan. The scientists taught the rats how to read.
00:04:24
Speaker
Justin learned how to open his cage by reading the instructions below the door. And from that point, he and the other rats planned their escape through the ventilation system. They found mice who had had the same treatments. Mr. Ages and Jonathan Frisbee were part of that group and the only two mice to escape with the rats.
00:04:42
Speaker
After they escaped, they found a house with a large library that was empty for the winter. They figured out how to open canned foods and learned about human civilization from the books. When the owners returned to the house for the summer, they looked for a new home. The rats found a tinker toy repairman who passed away while camping in the woods, along with his work truck full of electrical tools and supplies. The rats used his tools to build their home under the rose bush on the farm.
00:05:10
Speaker
They stole crops and seeds. They had families and taught their children to read. Nicodemus and most of the rats decided they didn't want to steal from humans anymore. They developed a plan to form an independent rat civilization. They found a place to live in a valley away from human homes where they could build their own home in a cave and grow their own crops. Nicodemus's childhood friend, Jenner,
00:05:33
Speaker
left with six other rats because they disagreed with the plan. Justin takes Mrs. Frisbee to the farmhouse and tells her how to put the sleeping powder in the cat's food. He waits outside because he is too big to go in with her. She succeeds in drugging the food, but the farmer's son captures her when she tries to escape.
00:05:52
Speaker
They put her in a birdcage and she listens to their conversation as they eat dinner. The farmer says that there was a big story at the local hardware store. Seven rats had been found electrocuted and it looked like they were trying to take a generator that had been left plugged in. There was a story in the newspaper about it and government officials came to investigate.
00:06:12
Speaker
They offered to come to the farm and remove the rats living in the rose bush in two days. Once the family goes to bed, Justin rescues Mrs. Frisbee from the bird cage. They go to her home where the rats have built a pulley system and dug out the cinder block. They move it behind a big rock where it will be safe from the plow.
00:06:31
Speaker
Mrs. Frisbee tells the rats about the government officials coming to remove them. They move up their plan to move to the valley and have 10 rats stay behind to make the government officials believe they were ordinary rats who escape out of the tunnel.
Rats' Survival and Civilization
00:06:44
Speaker
Mrs. Frisbee watches the government officials arrive and pump poison gas into the tunnel under the rose bush. She sees seven rats escape from a back tunnel and how they run back and forth to fool the humans into thinking there were a lot more rats.
00:06:58
Speaker
She sees an eighth rat emerge from the tunnel and then collapse. The humans dig up the tunnel under the rose bush and find two dead rats. Mrs. Frisbee goes to the rat who collapsed, who left who was left behind by the seven other rats. Mr. Ages meets her there with an antidote to the poison. The rat, Brutus, tells them that he and two others weren't quick enough when they smelled the poison gas.
00:07:23
Speaker
Another rat helped him out of the tunnel and went back in for the last rat. A few days later, the farmer plowed his field as Mrs. Frisbee watched from the safety of her home's new location. After her son recovered, they moved to their summer house away from the farm. She tells her children everything that happened. They decide they want to ask the crow to take them to visit the rats in the fall.
00:07:48
Speaker
Our opening question is all about ecosystems. So the book doesn't mention the idea of an ecosystem explicitly, I don't believe. But it seems like such a big idea. I mean, we have Mrs. Frisbee, who is at the mercy of the seasons. You have Nicodemus and all of the rats who are pulled out of the ecosystem where they grew up. And then after they escape from the lab, they have to decide what their role in an ecosystem is. Famer Fitzgibbon, who owns the plow and is plowing his field, almost seems like a force of nature in some parts of the book, but he's also a guy who's trying to figure out when the best time to plow is because he's in an ecosystem as well. And so I'm wondering what it means for all of these characters, for mice, rats, cats, owls, crows, humans, whomever, to be in this ecosystem together.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, so the word ecosystem isn't used, and yeah, I don't think it's explicitly discussed, but the word civilization is used many times. It really stood out to me. So I wonder if if that that could be in contrast to the idea of ecosystem. And it's tough because Mrs. Frisbee herself, she was not at NIM.
00:08:59
Speaker
So she wasn't enhanced by the scientists, but yet she can still learn how to read. And none of the creatures wear clothing. On the cover of my book, it shows Mrs. Frisbee wearing a take, but that wasn't in the story at all. And so trying to distinguish what's the difference of Nim, right?
Character Development and Identity
00:09:20
Speaker
they I think Nicodemus describes a little bit after they escape, they find other normal rats and they kind of are scary to the normal rats. And so they they feel separated in some important way. But as a reader, it's not really clear because they can all talk to each other. They can all the animals understand what the humans are saying. So I find that distinction difficult.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I even think about how Jonathan and Mr. Ages, they don't want to just be part of the rat civilization. They're rat adjacent people. Jonathan goes out and finds Mrs. Frisbee and marries her, and they have children, and then you Mr. Ages lives alone in the woods. And so not only do Nicodemus and his parents group of rats, not fitting with other rats. The mice who escaped with them, who have also been through this process and also don't feel like they fit in quite with the rat. But Jonathan at least fits in well enough with them that he has a mouse family out there in the world. And so you do have
00:10:34
Speaker
you know, the children who Nicodemus gives Mrs. Frisbee the heads up like, your kids are going to be very smart and they're going to live a long time if we can get them through this terrible sickness that Timothy has. So that's, I think that's another interesting thing that nobody quite feels like they fit after they get out of NIM.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, I was also struck by Mrs. Frisbee. Her whole journey and learning about Nim and learning about her husband's past, she doesn't seem connected to it. At the end, I was really surprised at how she didn't seem to think about the two rats that died, especially since one of them was most likely Justin, who was very helpful and friendly to her and her kids.
00:11:21
Speaker
She seems to just go back to her normal routine, which is part of the natural ecosystem, right? Like you move to, she moves to the woods in the summer, back to her cinder block house in the winter. And this was just kind of like a blip that like the normal routine was disrupted.
00:11:43
Speaker
And as soon as the problems are solved, she's just right back into it. And she doesn't seem like deeply affected by the experiences that she's had. Yeah, there's this idea of, you know, you you think at the end of things, you think, what did we learn? And you kind of think, did we learn? And is that, I guess, part of the difference between her and the rats? Because we did, we talked about how she can read. There's a whole scene where Justin says, okay, do you see the blue bowl that says kitty? And she sees the blue bowl that says kitty and she identifies it. And that's how she knows that she's got to drop food in there.
00:12:20
Speaker
So she's, I think I joked in the prep call, she's not pulling out war and peace and like having a conversation about it, but like she's got those bones to develop literacy.
Human Impact and Ecosystems
00:12:32
Speaker
And sometimes like at this point that you talk about it feels to me almost like she's, almost like she's just not had an opportunity for education in the way that some of these other characters have, but also at the same time, like that juxtaposes with Well, at the end, you know, she's in her new house and kind of back to business. And what does it mean to be back to business? I don't know. I'm just like I'm trying to mull over that and trying to think about like, you know, my own experiences where I have some experience like with a person and then we both go back to what our lives were like before.
00:13:09
Speaker
And things may have changed, but also at the end of the day, like this is where my house is and I've got to get groceries every week and I've got to go to work. And maybe Mrs. Frisbee is just getting her groceries and going to work. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how much the longevity is a part of education, right? Like when the scientists, when he learns that the serum with this particular group of rats is helping them live a lot longer. He says something about that. That's an important key to being able to learn is having the time to put your new knowledge to use because yeah, as you said, Mrs. Frisbee has innate ability, but she's not educated. But if your lifespan is short and also you have a lot of work to do just to survive every day, then
00:14:00
Speaker
There's no point in the education. I'm still struck by the Nicodemus' use of the word civilization. He had studied all these books in that winter house and learned about human history and human civilization.
00:14:14
Speaker
And there seemed to be a yearning there, but also a sadness that rats had such a bad reputation in throughout human history. It just seemed like like his feelings were deeply hurt that rats had this reputation for bringing disease. And so that urge to create the first rat civilization on the planet in his dream to do that, it just was very striking.
00:14:41
Speaker
Yeah, and I think about so civilization is something that also exists within an ecosystem because part of the reason that rats have such a bad rap is because people associate them with things like, you know, for instance, the plague.
00:14:56
Speaker
And there was a civilization. it was not you know it It didn't have antibiotics yet, but it was chugging along as best it could. And 90% of it got wiped out because of bacteria that was carried by fleas that was in turn carried by rats that then hopped people. And so all of those things, the bacteria, the fleas, the rats, the people, y'all, I am not a biologist. If I am not explaining the plague correctly, please don't ask Carly about it. um Like, all of these things, they exist together and have to work together, even though some of them, in this case, the humans think they're civilized. And what happens then when the humans and then the rats also think they're civilized? Nicodemus has posed for himself a really interesting question of what am I to do in this world and how am I to impact it?
00:15:47
Speaker
And you can see how it plays out in how he and Jenner answer it in different ways and how he says, I want to take myself out of this. I don't want to be stealing. I don't want to be living off of humans. We're going to get enough grain together to get ourselves started. And then we're going to see what we can do on our own. And you were talking earlier in the prep call. I'm going to keep reference in that prep call because it was a good one the one about like philosophical arguments about what to do when you're placed in a situation outside of your control and Jenner coming to this conclusion that I did not choose to make me a super smart rat. But here I am and y'all have gotten me hooked on electricity and I like it. but Perhaps he liked it a little too much. But so thinking about then how they make those choices. I don't know. I thought that was something that was very interesting.
00:16:43
Speaker
Yeah, I remember listening to podcasts years ago about rats and how they have just thrived to everywhere humans have thrived. So it's, I don't know if we can call it a symbiotic relationship. But the reason why rats and humans, there's so much history between us is because they thrive where humans thrive. They thrive off of our discarded food. And and so je Jenner is continuing that, he's except he's expanded his, instead of just stealing food and seeds, he's not stealing seeds for rat agriculture. He's stealing food directly and he's stealing electricity directly. I mean, is that... It's not qua qualitatively different than rats that infest a home.
00:17:31
Speaker
I remember meeting with someone and but they had a winter home in Florida and she told me all of the precautions they had to take to keep the rats out. And one summer but they didn't leave a brick on top of the toilet.
Rats' Ambition for Independence
00:17:43
Speaker
so Like you're supposed to leave bricks on top of the toilet. And the rats got in and like nested and in their home. And it's horrible if it happens to you. But when she was telling me all of this, I was like, dang, those rats are so smart and fascinating. And they have complex social order. Like they're already so much like humans.
00:18:02
Speaker
compared to other creatures in the animal kingdom. Like that's why we have conflict, right? That's exactly what the rats do in the book is that they find a house where they know the people are going to be gone the whole winter and they hole up in there and they carefully make sure that they're taking just enough of the food stores and they're carrying the cans out to the garbage so that the caretaker won't get wise to the fact that they're there and they sit in the house all night reading books and teaching themselves how to build plows and like you know essentially reverse engineering like agriculture and engineering and electricity so that it can work on a rat scale
00:18:47
Speaker
And the big difference between your friends, rats in Florida and these rats in the story is that these rats are escaped lab rats. Yeah. They're still going to do things. I want a sequel to consider. They're going to live in a cave, right? Which is not humans lived in caves, obviously, but that's not my, I don't want to be in the dark underground. I want the sunlight, right? So I wonder if that's like a different, and if, you if all, if their whole society would grow differently because of things like that, that those very slight differences.
00:19:17
Speaker
And I think that's one of the things that they mentioned in the book is that they don't want to be up in a house above ground. They don't want to be like in these big spaces that humans turn into domiciles. Like they want a nice little burrow. And that's what they had under the rose bush, but also it was right next to a farmhouse where they were stealing electricity and somebody was going to get wise to that sooner rather than later.
00:19:44
Speaker
Now, so talking about rats in our symbiotic relationship, I mean, there's the cat has a very clear relationship with the humans in the book. And the owl says to Mrs. Frisbee, we all help each other against the cat.
00:19:58
Speaker
I think he's the second character to say that. I feel like that was said a couple times. I do feel like either the shrew or Jeremy the crow or somebody prior to the owl says that we all help each other against the cat. And I feel like that makes sense for most of these other smaller animals. Crows are not hunting mice, for instance, I don't think. Once again, please don't add Carly if I get biology all along.
00:20:26
Speaker
right but Anyway, but but thinking about all of those pieces, like even the owl, which is predatory, says we are all against the cat. And it's interesting, like I feel like the owl and the cat normally wouldn't think about each other that much. They have different spaces. Like Mrs. Frisbee's not just popping over to the owl's house. She's got to get a ride into the forest with Jeremy. They're both predators of about the same size. They're both hunting in different spaces. But that owl's got beef with that cat.
00:20:59
Speaker
We're all against the cat, he says. And so the cat's an interesting character, again, from that ecosystem position, um because he reminds me so much of my cat, who is, as described in the book, is a big, orange, ferocious cat with a giant head who looks a little bit terrifying. And to me, he weighs about 15 pounds, and he's an adorable little baby. But if you weigh less than 15 pounds, like the other cats in my house,
00:21:28
Speaker
He's a menace. And, you know, in the process of watching the movie earlier this week, prior to recording this podcast episode, I had to pause the movie and like pick him up and carry him away from one of the other cats. And then he finally decided he was going to sit in the window next to me and he was banging his head into the window because he thought he could get a bird. He would be an absolute menace if I left him out of the house, yeah yeah if I let him out of the house.
00:21:52
Speaker
he would just destroy all of the things that are going on there. And we can presume that the owl is there because owls have been there for however however long animals have been inhabiting these this forest, for instance. And so the owl is part of the system in a way that the cat is not. And human humans in a similar way of doing the things that they are doing without getting deeply, deeply into you know people who were there prior to European colonization and things like that, like they were there and in the ecosystem as well.
Interaction of Humans and Animals
00:22:32
Speaker
But we've got these people who have come in and they're doing different things with the ecosystem compared to all of the animals. and And then they've got this cat that comes out and just terrorizes everyone. So I'm really interested in like the farmer and his family and how like they exist in this world as well because like we were talking about like Nicodemus and wanting to have his own rat civilization, the farmer almost feels like a force of nature, like it's getting warmer so he's gonna plow. A plow is just a sign of spring for these animals, but also he's deciding to plow because it's a good time to plant whatever things he's deciding to plant.
00:23:17
Speaker
And so he is also at the mercy of that nature, but just in a different way. And he interacts with it differently. And it seems like he's, because he's in this more organized human system, he's got a tractor and he's got a hardware store he can go to to get parts for it. and He can use that tractor to plow his field and now he's got this diversity of crops. And definitely I am not a biologist, please don't at Carly. andm like yeah no but but you You mentioned that you grew up in a rural area around farmers. You told me that you know people who run plows.
00:23:56
Speaker
but so yeah that's now thinking about agriculture as like civilization as a gradual process and like agriculture is one of the early steps because it is very subject to natural cycles but it takes you a little bit away from being so dependent on like the daily weather, right? Because if you have a store of grain for the winter, you're not starving as as much as you would if you didn't have that store of grain. So it's just like a gradual process and the cat is encompassed in the human's authority against those natural systems.
00:24:44
Speaker
And the rats want to be too, but they don't want to be under the human's authority and protection from the natural cycles. They want to create their own protection from the natural cycles.
00:24:56
Speaker
And O'Brien really, that's kind of what he opens the whole book with. He explains that you've got Mrs. Frisbee, the head of the family, lives in a cinder block in a field in mr fitzgi on Mr. Pitts Gibbons' farm, right? And in one of those very first paragraphs of the very first chapter,
00:25:18
Speaker
It talks about how hard winter is. She talks about how January and February were the hardest months. The sharp hard cold that began in December lasted until March. By February, the beans and black eyes had been picked over with help from the birds. The asparagus roots were frozen into stone and the potatoes had been thawed and refrozen so many times that they had acquired a slimy texture and a rancid taste.
00:25:43
Speaker
Still the Frisbees made the best of what there was, and one way or another they kept from being hungry. And that sounds that sounds so different than the rats with their grain stores, than the humans who probably have a freezer full of potatoes that aren't rancid. Dragon, who has like his can of food. Dragon is the cat, by the way. Dragon the cat with his can of food in his little blue kiddie bowl, but still taking mice out. Things like that.
00:26:19
Speaker
so The immediacy of the ecosystem is so different for Mrs. Frisbee than it is for Nicodemus than it is for the Fitzgivens or for Dragon. Maybe that's why the owl's against the cat. Yeah, those first couple chapters, I love those first couple chapters. I feel like they really brought my perspective down to a mouse perspective. like looking at what is a threat and just how big this the world is. Like so she finds a store of food that some other animal had made and she figured, oh, that animal might have been killed by something, but she's going to take that food back to her children.
Animal Perspective and Morality
00:27:00
Speaker
And then she flies on Jeremy's back and is able to see the farm from a bird's perspective. And she's able to see
00:27:08
Speaker
the woods and she's able to conceptualize actually maybe visiting the valley where the rats are going to go. Like that ah huge shift in perception. Now the owl has that perception. The owl gets to see and probably sees a lot more because he's nocturnal. So who knows? He's like like in a whole separate world I think.
00:27:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He sees, I think, yeah. And some bird mentions that they think they've seen Thorn Valley at some point, which is where the rats want to go. So the birds know about it. And the birds have this whole way of knowing that not even the humans have, because that's part of the allure of Thorn Valley is the humans aren't thinking about it. It's not on their radar.
00:27:54
Speaker
I think it's even mentioned in the book that it's in like a national forest. And so there's not a lot of planes that fly over it. So even when the humans are trying to to do the things that birds do, they're not doing them in such a way that they're seeing this space. So that's really interesting.
00:28:13
Speaker
Yeah, and also the toy, Tinker toy guy, he tried to go camping and be one with nature and he passes away. Like I think it's a heart attack or something, some natural cause, but there's some barrier. Like once you go, maybe they tell me if I'm reaching, but like if you go too far along civilization, returning back to the ecosystem becomes more difficult or maybe even impossible.
00:28:42
Speaker
and I think that that makes a lot of sense. And it goes back to what you were talking about earlier, where Mrs. Frisbee's routine has been disrupted by this illness precipitates need to stay in the house longer. So we've got to pretend it's winter a little longer until my son can get up and move around. But once he can get up and move around,
00:29:06
Speaker
They head on down to their summer housing and things go back to normal. She is back in her element. And one of the, I guess one of the fundamental conflicts of this is the ability, is the inability of the rats to just go back to their element. And I feel like I'm almost talking in circles now. So.
00:29:30
Speaker
Sure. So let's I would like to talk briefly about the ending. And then maybe we can talk about the movie a little bit and then go into genre themes. So the ending, like but ending where just we I'm going to say it was Justin. I mean, I can't imagine it was anyone else. Justin the rat, who was so friendly, so open, and everyone had a crush on him. All of the other rats had crushes on him. And he just dies, and it feels unfair that his kindness and he's always his conscientiousness for every other creature around him would be punished in such a way that because he went back to help that final rat, he ended up dying.
00:30:19
Speaker
I just, it just does not fit in with my conception of the story at all. it's I'm actually kind of mad about it. But it really does fit in with a story where Mrs. Frisbee has found some food, some other animal squirreled it away and probably died, but now her kids get to eat. It's a world where whether they are human things, whether they are weather things,
00:30:46
Speaker
violent things happen. And this is a children's book where very violent things happen, where this woman's husband is murdered by this cat, where Mr. Ages gets his leg broken by the cat. And that's why Mrs. Frisbee has to go and do the drugging of the cat. So it's a violent world. And Justin is a kind man who always goes back for his friends. And that's a good guy to be. And I think that we're not going to have enough time in a podcast about a book about mice to really talk about what that means. But Justin is a good guy to be, but he's also a guy who at some point doing that good is going to catch up with him because this is a world that doesn't necessarily reward good, it rewards survival. And sometimes good is doing the right thing even though it's not a survival thing.
00:31:43
Speaker
Well, it seems to me that those examples you were giving of violence, those were all interactions with human civilization.
Violence and Civilization
00:31:51
Speaker
The most violent thing is the kidnapping of the rats and bringing them to Nim in the first place, right? the Jonathan and Mr. Age is drugging the cat and being injured and killed. That's because they were interfering with the humans.
00:32:08
Speaker
or trying to prevent the humans and the cat, um the cat is proxy for the humans, from interfering with them. And so that's why it's violent. So there's this also saying, leaving the ecosystem for civilization brings new forms of violence. But because I do, I would agree with you that being in the ecosystem, it rewards survival. And there's no moral piece to that. But civilization, you need to have, especially a social civilization,
00:32:37
Speaker
You need to have morality, you need to have justice and goodness. Yeah, yeah like like he's caught at this intersection between Mrs. Frisbee's world where you eat all your rancid potatoes and you starve in the winter.
00:32:54
Speaker
and the Fitzgibbons world where you have a field and you plow your field and you make a lot of food and you send off some and you probably have some in your freezer for winter. And so he's kind of stuck between those worlds. But I think that that gets that gets to a question that I know that you wanted to pose about the story reflecting the claim from the one in a millennial book about us being raised for a world that no longer exists, right? And so I felt like this is a world that exists. I thought about Mrs. Frisbee and a season has changed and now something is going to happen and her house is going to blow down. and I live in Texas. I have friends and co-workers and family members in Houston. They've all had their electricity. There it goes again, never going to get that electricity.
00:33:45
Speaker
not, they've had their electricity knocked out this summer as often as not because of first, but the retro and then the hurricane. And so I don't know. Can you, can you define, what did you say? dereo Yeah. So prior to the hurricane that Houston had earlier this month, they had, I think, and and once again, I'm not a meteorologist, if I'm pronouncing this wrong, my apologies, but it's a derecho and it's like a straight line wind that will just blow at like tornadic velocities. And so a lot of folks in Houston experienced these hundred mile per hour ah wind winds going through their neighborhoods and it knocked all of these trees over. It knocked power out to a significant chunk of the city.
00:34:27
Speaker
Like I was thinking about like a work colleague of mine who was, you know, just driving around trying to find somewhere that had wifi to take like client calls, things like that. And they've had just a couple of those big things and those straight line winds or something that just kind of happens in this part of the world in spring periodically, um just because it's severe thunderstorm season. And then hurricanes are just sort of a thing that happens.
00:34:55
Speaker
all along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts this time of year. And I think about how, from our perspective as humans, how is that so dramatically different than Mrs. Frisbee thinking, oh, it's plow season. you know And to a certain extent, I don't want to get into too much. If we think about climate change, we are creating those things. And so we're doing it to ourselves in much the same way we do it to Mrs. Frisbee. Which is like an inability to escape from the ecosystem, right? As much as we are protected and we're definitely protected. Like I have air conditioning in my house and I'm grateful for it every time I turn it on. Yeah, but, but that there's a certain, to a certain extent you can't, you can't escape from it. Not that
00:35:44
Speaker
Actually, not that I want to. I mean, my whole last season on Solarpunk made me want to get closer to nature. So I do want to talk a little bit about the movie. cause that's That's what I remember. That's a story I remember the most. And the most striking thing is how scary it is, right? It's a scary movie.
00:36:04
Speaker
It's terrifying. There's so much powerful
80s/90s Animated Movies and Nostalgia
00:36:08
Speaker
imagery. I mean, just the plow, it fills me with terror even as an adult to watch the the animals like running from the plow in those early scenes.
00:36:18
Speaker
it is it It's just horrific and watching the shrew has a much bigger part in the movie than she has in the book and watching Mrs. Frisbee and her shrew friend just desperately trying to take apart this giant piece of machinery as it hurdles toward her little family. Once again,
00:36:38
Speaker
Are we sure this is a children's entertainment? Well, and that gets to the broader theme of millennial nostalgia because there were so many terrifying movies and not all of them were Don Bluth. Although if we listed Don Bluth movies Land Before Time, very traumatizing. I did not want to watch that movie more than once. What else? An American Tale. There's some scary cats in that movie.
00:37:01
Speaker
Thumbelina, she almost freezes to death. I mean, I love Thumbelina. That's probably my favorite Thumblooth movie from growing up. And there's- I feel like called out to go to heaven from my memory. and Oh my god.
00:37:14
Speaker
I know there's trouble. I know there's a dog in it. I don't want to think about it. The dog is gambling and he's out at nightclub like and smoking cigars. like not like why And then one of my favorite movies as a kid was also The Dark Crystal, which terrified me, but I also loved it. like we would My sisters and I would watch the movie, there's one jump scare in that movie and we would watch it and we'd all sit there and wait for it. And then the jump scare would happen. it We'd all scream that like, why were we given these movies to watch as kids? What was going on? ah For our parents thinking. I loved those movies, Margaret. Did you enjoy the darker movies or did you prefer to watch more lighter movies as a kid?
00:37:57
Speaker
Well, I think as a child, I like lighter fare. It's really interesting as an adult, I've become a big horror fan. And in a lot of ways, at least the book, I'm not going to speculate on the movie really reminds me of like Dan Simmons, the terror where they're trapped on the ice. And they know that something supernatural is coming for them, but they're just stuck where they are. And I think that they The book brought up very similar feelings to that book for me as well, which is really interesting. And I think that might be telling is that we don't think of this as a horror book, but it brings up such similar feelings to things that actually are
00:38:43
Speaker
designed to scare us. um I think the movie, the thing that was interesting to me about the movie is the way that the movie incorporates all of these magical elements. There's a lot of stuff that does not exist. It does not take someone who is a biologist to know that mice do not fly around on crow's backs. But that's our big, outside of the big scientific conjecture of making the rats super smart.
00:39:06
Speaker
That's the big thing that you kind of raise your eyebrow and you're just like, that's not a real thing. In the movie, the rats have swords. Yeah. And they have a rat sword fights. Yeah. And there's like an amulet about and and having pure heart or strong heart or something like that.
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, there's an amulet of courage that Mrs. Frisbee winds up wearing. And like in fascinating she saves Also, the kids are in the house while they're moving it. The kids are in the house while they move the house.
00:39:38
Speaker
That's the whole plot is that like Justin's got to go. like When Mrs. Frisbee's in the cage in the book, Justin's got to dash because he's got to go make sure the kids are okay, right? And like get them out of the house so they can move the house. In the movie, he's sword fighting the whole time. Right. Well,
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah. I remember as a kid, that part where the house is sinking into the mud and the kids are like, this the mud is like seeping in and they're like, help. And they're like on top of the table. Why were they in there when they were moving it? They were asking the engineers, but they're terrible project managers. Yes, exactly.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, I want to think about that more. I think kids ah sometimes have an attraction to dark, like they want to understand like the dark and scary parts of the world.
Book vs. Movie Adaptation
00:40:28
Speaker
And I think maybe having these stories as a safe way to explore those dark, scary things is a good way to help kids manage fear and maybe anxiety even. Like I've heard that horror movies, people with anxiety often enjoy horror movies and watching them over and over again because it's a predictable scariness and there's a predictable resolution and it helps you practice just that emotional regulation of experiencing something scary, but then experiencing resolution and in that safe, contained way ah that a movie is.
00:41:07
Speaker
So i I think that the books are probably doing a similar thing. And I wonder, does that help millennials deal with the world we've had? We were adolescents when 9-11 happened. We had to deal with that with the crisis the economic crisis of 2008.
00:41:26
Speaker
you know I don't know, there's probably not data on how people have dealt with the COVID pandemic. Yes, it's probably too soon to have good data on that, but I would be really curious to know if there is, if someone is studying resiliency.
00:41:44
Speaker
in that way and yeah what kind of media it takes. I will say though, ah since the pandemic, I have enjoyed horror a lot less. like I ah do not seek it out as much as I did before. It sounds like you had a the opposite reaction, Margaret. Well, no. i Honestly, I think that it was late stage grad school that did it. Well, I was like, I need to escape. Let's escape into a world of nightmares. Sure.
00:42:10
Speaker
The movie, i am I'm curious why they had so much magic in the movie if they needed it so much, but I mean, I remember enjoying it a lot as a kid. I didn't question it. Like, of course there's a magical amulet that floats. And of course, Nicodemus looks into a ah magical reflecting glass that tells the history of the rats. Yeah, yeah.
00:42:31
Speaker
and And I think it's interesting. I think I mentioned this in the prep call that it very much what like the book Nicodemus to me gives kind of like Jean-Luc Picard vibes and the movie Nicodemus gives off much more Albus Dumbledore vibes. And it's like a very different interpretation of your somewhat older senior leader kind of person.
00:42:52
Speaker
Right. Well, and it's so clear that Justin is going to be the new leader of the rats in the movie. And in the book, Nicodemus is keeping his leadership position like he's their fearless leader. Let's talk about more genre themes. Connection. What is genuine connection? What is superficial connection? Now, I would think going through this experience, Mrs. Frisbee and the rats would that experience would form a connection, but it it doesn't seem to really happen. And I guess that, and that bugs me. We already talked about that, but you know, in the movie, she has a much clearer relationship with the Crow, Jeremy. It's a comedic part of the film and much, there's much more of Jeremy in the movie. I really liked that change, but like she doesn't connect with anyone. It's about her kids and getting the job done.
00:43:44
Speaker
And then it's over and she doesn't even seem to want to visit the rats when her kids bring it up at the end. Yeah. And it goes back to something I think we've talked about before, so I'm not going to hang on to it too much. But Jonathan and Mr. Ages really don't want to stay with the rats either.
00:44:02
Speaker
And so I'm wondering about that connection that the mice and the rats have, like the the lab mice and the lab rats. And if that's a continued expression of that they just, for whatever reason, the mice and the rats don't want to connect. Well, that leads me to a very sad conclusion that if you are different at some base level that there's not a possibility for connection. Yeah, and I don't I reject that hypothesis i mean in life and in fiction and in elsewhere. um But also, I'm not a mice a mouse trying to live with rats. They all expressed how much they felt like they didn't fit in the human house. And
00:44:48
Speaker
the mice are still considerably smaller than the rats. Like the reason that there's only the two mice is because all of the other mice kind of blew away and the ventilation ducts escaping nim. Maybe like the rat, it's not that they don't fit on an emotional or like an interpersonal level with the rats. Maybe they just literally don't like physically fit.
00:45:09
Speaker
Hmm. Like the rats don't fit with the humans you mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Well, the rats to even normal real life rats, I think they have a very complex social system and
Representation of Female Characters
00:45:24
Speaker
large families. I don't know if mice have families that are as large and complex as rat families. and Interesting to know.
00:45:31
Speaker
one of our other Jonathan themes, how are female characters treated? I've been gaming this out of why Mrs. Frisbee doesn't have a name. She's Mrs. Jonathan Frisbee. And she sounds like, I don't know a lady about my grandmother's age who takes tea, you know? lot And so she doesn't have this name. And I'm trying to think about who has a name and who doesn't have a name. All of the lab animals have name. So you've got Nicodemus, you've got Justin, you've got Jenner, you've got Mr. Ages, you've got Jonathan.
00:46:01
Speaker
Isabella the rat has a name. The young rat who is coming into the library and reads with Mrs. Frisbee and clearly has a crush on Jonathan and or Justin, right? Too many Js. Mrs. Frisbee's daughters have names, but then Jeremy has a name. He has no connection to the lab. I don't think the owl has a name or if the owl has a name, it's not mentioned because everybody's afraid of the owl.
00:46:26
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. Jeremy the Crow has an a name. Now, um because I, I would want to say that the animals that went through the scientific treatments would give themselves names like humans, but that's not the case. Nicodemus and Jenner have names before they get captured by them. Jeremy is different, but yeah, that I wonder.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't like that Mrs. Frisbee doesn't have a name. She's always Mrs. Frisbee. Yeah, she does so much and she's so resourceful and she goes to such just great risks for the people she loves and nobody even bothers to say, hey, Claire or Beth or whatever your name is, you know? Yeah, but and so there's one moment that I really liked where they're talking about how to drug dragon. And they say, well, Jonathan can't do it. He died doing this last time. Mr. Aegis is injured because he tried to do it the other night. And Mrs. Frisbee volunteers. And Justin's like, yes, Justin, I do remember what she named Justin. It's like, no, it's not a job for a lady. And she says, no, he's my son. You all are risking so much to save my children. And I have the privilege.
00:47:37
Speaker
um She's like, I'm claiming the privilege to risk my life to protect my children just as you. And I ah really liked that moment. But yeah, I would say there's no character development. But but like I don't see major changes in the characters. So the fact that Mrs. Frisbee is our main character, the one we're with throughout the whole story, it doesn't bother. If we had seen other characters with significant character belt development, Mrs. Frisbee did not, then that would be very upsetting. but We don't really see a lot of development at all. And she's always been risking her life for her children. She risks her life. Just leaving her house is risking her life. That is true. I feel neutral about the way female-ness is presented in the story.
Hero's Journey and Sequel Speculation
00:48:22
Speaker
Yeah, for a book with a female protagonist, it doesn't have a ton of female characters. It's got like the shrew neighbor who's kind of in and out in the book and much more active in the movie. It's got the two mouse daughters. It's got Isabella the rat. And, you know, it's got the human mom making dinner. It's got one of the human scientists reading to the rats.
00:48:48
Speaker
And everybody else is a dude. So. Yeah. And so it was written in 1971. So pretty typical, I would say stories from the seventies. The hero's journey trope. Does this follow the hero's journey? It has all of the plot markers of a hero's journey, but I don't see a personal transformation and I don't see, you know, something that is common and in in fantasy stories is Whatever individual journey the hero has to go through creates change in him or herself, but also in society as a whole. And so I don't really see that. I mean, there's a big change with the rats leaving the rose bush and going to the valley, but that was already in place before Mrs. Frisbee enters the story. She just overhears the conversation to speed that along.
00:49:42
Speaker
So I would say partial hero's journey. It's a hero's journey, but it's a walk around the block. The journey around the block. Grab a snack, eat the snack, and then you're back on your regular day. And so I and do you think maybe this book presents a new genre theme that is very resonant with a lot of stories that I think of as nostalgic, which is scientists inventing something that leads to their own destruction.
00:50:12
Speaker
does this new rat civilization have the potential to lead to destruction? I mean, I think it does. I think it's really- I think it depends on succession planning. I think that Nicodemus has the goal of going out into the woods and having rat civilization and not bothering anyone.
00:50:33
Speaker
but They're, they're rats. They are, there's going to be lots of rats eventually. And they're long lived rats. And so they're going to have longer lifespans and reproduce more. Is the world going to be overrun by very smart, very long lived rats who just want to have their little agrarian lifestyle cave party? Maybe. Well, they stay happy. Will they stay? Yeah. Well, they stay happy with that. Is Nicodemus going to have a son who thinks, ooh, uncle Jenner knew what he was talking about. So. Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think we have a new genre theme. We'll be looking for that in the next episodes. Margaret, do you have final thoughts about this book, Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nim? It was really interesting to come back to something that I hadn't really thought about since I was very young.
00:51:22
Speaker
And to think about how I approached it as a child versus how I approach it now as an elder millennial. So as somebody cruising toward needing reading glasses in the next five years or so. And so I appreciated that. And I appreciated being able to think about what the book meant to me then and trying to to contextualize it, knowing what I know about myself and the world around me now.
00:51:46
Speaker
I think about like even just the pacing of the book. It's one of those books that I think as many of us will have experienced as something that a teacher read to us in a classroom somewhere in that kind of late elementary school phase of life, right? And so something where It almost feels like the difference between a TV show that you get like a week of and then you've got to wait a week for the next bit of it. So you'd get a chapter here and then we're not going to read a chapter again until, you know, the next time we have teacher reading time next Wednesday or something like that. And so it felt much more, I felt much like I had a lot more time to think about the atmosphere.
00:52:27
Speaker
when I was a child. And I think I spent a lot of time imagining like what a house in a cinder block would look like and things like that. Because, you know, I had my own cinder block in the backyard and I'm just like, oh yeah, they would fit there. I can see how this would work, that kind of thing. And it felt much more fast paced, much more like, um almost like you've got a Netflix show and you you marathon the whole thing in a weekend. And that's kind of how I read the book, This Go Around. It was really interesting, even at that level, just to think about like,
00:52:56
Speaker
how I think about this book differently now than I would have when I was, I don't know, 10-ish. That's exactly the experience I wanted for listeners and everyone who participated in this season of the podcast. So that's excellent. My final thoughts, I really enjoyed our conversation thinking about moving civilis moving civilization, how it's a gradual process of getting more and more civilized civilized and the tension with being part of the natural ecosystem. I really enjoyed that. I was really coming into the this conversation like with this big question mark on civilization. I think we really tackled that. So yeah, I think I will always prefer the movie. I like the drama of the movie. I like the animals wearing clothing.
00:53:45
Speaker
that like think this hand I can't do it. I loved this was and I don't even like her having a cape on the cover. Like I love this is just a book about a mouse doing mouse things and how real it felt just to be reading about a mouse doing mouse things. Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate that. I also I just have to shout out the show.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah, the shrew in the movie is the hero. She saves them more than once. And I love her. And so I definitely love the shrew in the movie, though. I think that everybody needs an anti shrew. Yeah.
00:54:25
Speaker
For sure. Listeners, what did you think of Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Nim? Have you read any other books by Robert C. O'Brien? What do you think about our millennial nostalgia season so far? Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing openingquestion at gmail dot.com. You can also comment on our substack at bookclubpod dot.com. You can contact me on Twitter, at book, underscore club, underscore pod, and on threads, at crosejack.
00:54:55
Speaker
Those are all linked on the sub-stack so you can find everything there at Bookletpod.com. And please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help new listeners find the show. Our next book discussion will be on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling. Read with us so you can listen to the discussion next week.
00:55:15
Speaker
The book club podcast is produced by me, Carly Jackson, music and audio production by Alex Marcus. Special thanks to Margaret Gary. Thank you for listening.