Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Mrs. Frisby meets Brutus, who is young but large and muscular, and who appears to be extremely confused by her presence. He is taking Justin’s post while all the other rats are at a meeting. She asks to see Justin or Nicodemus, but Brutus tells her to leave. He threatens to force her if she does not listen, so Mrs. Frisby leaves, frustrated, but she decides to wait in the dark tunnel to the entrance for Justin to return. She is sure he will understand if she mentions the owl’s instructions. While she waits down the tunnel, she encounters Mr. Ages, who claims to be on his way to the meeting but is limping badly after breaking his leg. After hearing everything Mrs. Frisby had been through so far, Mr. Ages is impressed by her courage. He assures her he will reason with Brutus, whom he has known since Brutus was born, and get Mrs. Frisby entrance to see Nicodemus. Mr. Ages warns her to tell nothing of what she sees or hears to anyone else. Justin is with Brutus now and is honored to meet the wife of Jonathan Frisby. Mrs. Frisby still does not understand why she or her husband and children are of particular note to the rats, but finds that Justin reacts with the same admiration and esteem that the owl did upon hearing her name. Justin ushers Mr. Ages and Mrs. Frisby inside, leaving Brutus at his post.

Mrs. Frisby, Mr. Ages, and Justin make their way down the tunnel when Mrs. Frisby stops in amazement to see a long hallway with carpeted floors, an arched ceiling, and working lightbulbs covered by colored glass windows lining it. Justin explains that they find lights from Christmas trees, noting that they waited until after New Years to do so and only took a few bulbs from each tree. Mrs. Frisby remembers learning about electricity from her husband long ago. They next come to a large oval chamber, also fully lit, which has a tunnel leading upward, a stairwell leading down, and an elevator. Justin suggests the elevator due to Mr. Ages’ limp. Mrs. Frisby hangs on in fright as they descend downward into a huge room with endless passageways leading off from it. The room is full of rats of all shapes and sizes, who stare at Mrs. Frisby briefly before returning to their conversations, “as if the rats were too polite to stand and stare” (76). Nicodemus approaches them, a scar and patch over his left eye and a satchel over his shoulders. He announces that Mrs. Frisby is most welcome, as her husband was a dear friend of the rats and asks Justin to take Mrs. Frisby to the library while the rats finish their meeting. Justin leaves her there quite abruptly, noting that the meeting is important because the rats are “finishing up the schedule for the Plan” (78). Mrs. Frisby starts making connections about her past that she had no idea about before, wondering if the rats are the ones who taught her husband to read or about electricity. Mrs. Frisby herself can read a little, and her children can read well—also thanks to her husband. In the corner of the library, Mrs. Frisby finds a blackboard with the words, “THE PLAN OF THE RATS OF NIMH” (79) written on it and is once again left with more questions than answers.

Mrs. Frisby sits in the library, wondering what lies behind the other doors, what NIMH is, and where the rats came from. She sees more words on the blackboard that seem to indicate the type of harvest and when it was completed. Moments later, a young female rat comes into the room and is alarmed to see Mrs. Frisby there. She accuses her of being a spy but soon her worry subsides when she realizes Mrs. Frisby does not know much of anything. Mrs. Frisby asks this rat, Isabella, what NIMH is and finds out it is the place the rats originally came from. Isabella remarks that she is too young and was not born there, but her parents were, and she thinks that NIMH is white. Isabella explains that the rats do not want to go back to NIMH or ever be caught, which makes all the secrecy surrounding their home finally make sense. Isabella explains that her mother does not like the Plan because it involves a move back to a more difficult way of life, free of electricity and running water. She talks about a deserter of the group named Jenner, and nobody knows where he went. This information from Isabella helps more pieces come together for Mrs. Frisby, as she now understands that the rats store food, hold meetings, and have a Plan of which not all of them approve. Mr. Ages, Justin, and Nicodemus enter the library then with another new rat, Arthur, alongside them.

The rats begin discussing the plan to move Mrs. Frisby’s house to the sheltered side of the rock where the plow is sure to miss it and they will be protected while Timothy recovers. Arthur, an engineer, is confident it is a job that can be done and quickly. All they have to do is put some sleeping powder in Dragon’s food—a tactic they use often when they need to get projects done at night. This explains why Dragon was too tired to chase Mrs. Frisby the other day. Dragon’s food bowl is in the kitchen inside the farmhouse, and Mr. Ages is usually the one who doses him with the sleeping powder. However, with his leg being broken (as a result of dosing Dragon the day before), Mr. Ages is unable to do it this time. Mrs. Frisby offers to be the one to do it, citing her responsibility for Timothy as his mother, and Nicodemus agrees but warns her that it is doing that very thing that killed her husband last summer.

Mrs. Frisby begins crying after finding out the way her husband died. She has learned so much about her husband’s past that she never knew and finds it all overwhelming. Nicodemus remarks that it is a long story to explain everything, but says that Jonathan came to the farm with the rats from NIMH. As Mr. Ages and Justin go to fetch the sleeping powder, Nicodemus takes Mrs. Frisby to his office to tell her the story. In his office is a radio, which the rats use to hear the local news or listen to music. Nicodemus begins telling the story of NIMH by describing his happy life in a marketplace that was regularly filled with food for the many rats who lived there to eat. He lived with his large family and often played with his older brother Gerald and best friend, Jenner. One night, they, along with a large group of rats, find a huge pile of food in the middle of the marketplace. Nicodemus sees a white truck, which he later realizes has the word NIMH on it, parked nearby but thinks nothing of it at the time. He and the other rats run toward the food pile and are suddenly accosted by several men with nets wearing white uniforms and flashing lights on the rats as they panicked to escape. Nicodemus, along with many others, were picked up by the nets and taken.

Mrs. Frisby asks many questions, mainly about why the people would want to kidnap rats. Nicodemus explains that at first, he thought it was because they had been eating the food but soon realized they were being taken to a lab. The men load several nets filled with rats into a wire-caged truck. All the rats are terrified, and Nicodemus soon hears Jenner calling to him from somewhere inside. They are all driven to a white building, and three men in white come out with cages to take the rats inside. Nicodemus overhears them discussing how lively the rats are and how they caught 63 of them. Each rat is shoved into a tiny cage inside the lab, and Nicodemus overhears one man calling the obvious leader “Dr. Schultz.” Nicodemus remarks, “I did not know it then, but I was to be his prisoner (and his pupil) for the next three years” (104). Each cage is given a bottle of drinking water, and then the rats are left in the dark to wonder what will happen next.

Nicodemus describes the horror of being in a cage where he could only move three feet each direction—nothing compared to the freedom he had before. On top of that, the rats were “at the mercy of someone [they] knew not at all, for some purpose [they] could not guess” (105). The next morning, Nicodemus overheard Dr. Schultz explaining the plan for the experiment. The rats were all to be fed the same, but there were to be three groups: two would each get a different injection, and the third a blank injection. Each rat, completely powerless to the biologists’ hands, was then tagged with a plastic collar. The next day each rat was injected with a needle, and Nicodemus explains they all got used to these injections since they happened “at least twice a week,” noting, “for twenty of us those injections were to change our whole lives” (108).

As time went on, the purpose of the experiment became clear to Nicodemus: They were trying to determine if the injections could make the rats learn faster. They also began sending the rats through mazes. When Nicodemus was put in a maze, he realized he was trapped in a series of corridors, some of which led to floors that would shock him. Nicodemus explains that the maze was designed to trick the rats into believing they would be freed if they could finish it; instead, they were always snatched up when they reached the end rather than set free. They were timed to see how quickly they completed the maze and how fast they learned the correct path. Nicodemus explains the haunting reality behind why the rats continued to run the maze, even knowing they would never actually be freed: “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” (111).

The activities, Nicodemus explains, helped pass the time in the lab but did not quell the rats’ desire to escape and be free. They were also taught concepts, such as shape recognition, and trained to run through doors of certain shapes. One night, a rat, who turns out to be Justin and the youngest of the group, decided he was going to try to escape when they opened his cage the next day. The biologist came to give him his injection, and Justin jumped out and scurried across the floor. The scientists watched him in awe as he analyzed his situation and discovered the group of mice nearby. They noted he and the others of his group were now three-hundred percent smarter than the control group and with steroids may live much longer as well. Justin studied the mice as Dr. Schultz commented how one of the mice groups is “doing almost as well as the A group” (116).

Justin did not escape and “submitted meekly enough” (117) when he was picked up and put back in his cage. From the experience, Justin learned about the air ducts, the windows, and the fact that he could get away with hopping out of his cage now and then. All of this would be instrumental in their later escape from the lab. As the weeks went on, the rats became smarter and smarter, and the steroids combined with the other injection seem to have halted the aging process in them almost completely. Nicodemus overheard that the mice in the G group had been experiencing the same thing. The biologists next began teaching the mice how to read, first by showing them the letters “R A T” with a picture of a rat and moving on from there. Nicodemus describes how the rats quickly learned to distinguish the shapes with their pictures but had not yet comprehended that they were learning to read or the purpose of reading. One day, a message came from Jenner though Justin to Nicodemus, saying that there is a sign on the wall that says “RATS.” It is then that the rats first realized they were learning to read, as they could clearly recognize the set of symbols from the ones paired with the picture of the rat. The idea of learning to read soon became exciting to Nicodemus, who eventually learns to read more and more. The rats are trained to read full instructions, and Justin proclaims that he is going to escape again. He has found a sign on the side of his cage that explains how to open it, and that night he gets out. Nicodemus tells Mrs. Frisby about the importance of knowledge and knowing how to read in the rats’ move toward freedom: “in a matter of seconds I saw his door swing open. It was as simple as that—when you could read” (124). Nicodemus and Justin both believed that they might have a chance at freedom.

“And so it was. By teaching us how to read, they had taught us how to get away” (126), Nicodemus explains. Justin crawled around on the shelf above Nicodemus and felt confident enough to invite Nicodemus out of his cage as well. Nicodemus met Justin face to face for the first time, and Justin explained that there was a cabinet at the end of the shelf that would allow them to crawl down to the floor and back up without ever making the scientists suspicious. Justin explained the air ducts and how they were big enough to crawl through. He reasoned that they must eventually lead to the outside since they supplied fresh air. They decided to let the other rats out as well, and they all met together in the center of the laboratory. Nicodemus describes a type of comradery that developed quickly among them, as they were alone but together. Being that Justin and Nicodemus set the other rats free, and Justin was quite a bit younger, Nicodemus became the natural leader.

The rats decided to start exploring the air ducts and slowly mapped them out, “the maze of all mazes” (129). Thankfully, they had been trained for this type of thing, and eventually found an opening after several nights of trying. The opening was covered by a thick wire, so the rats decided to wait until early the next night to leave. That is when Jonathan, a mouse from the G group, called down and asked for the rats’ help in freeing him and his fellow mice. The rats agreed to help. Later that night, Jenner expressed concerns to Nicodemus about where a group of civilized and highly intelligent rats would fit in. They were no longer fit for the sewer life of the average rat. The next night, the rats and mice left through the ducts, and just before they were about to escape, the duct’s air changed speed and blew the mice back into the ducts. Nicodemus caught one, Mr. Ages, and Jonathan crashed into the rat ahead of Nicodemus. The other six could not be saved, and they were never seen again, though Justin searched to no avail, and the rats left an opening in the screen as they left in case the mice found their way out on their own. At the end of the air duct, there was a screen that the rats could not open. It was secured from the other side, but they could not see how, so whatever they tried did not work to open it. Finally, Mr. Ages suggested they pry open enough of the wire at the bottom for him and Jonathan to squeeze through. The rats followed the suggestion, and Mr. Ages and Jonathan were able to get through and figure out the sliding bolt on the other side, finally freeing the rats from the lab.