Thirteen Hundred Rats by T. Coraghessan Boyle is a short story about a widower, who keeps rats as pets. The main character of the book Gerard Loomis has never had any pet but the tragic event in his life, the death of his wife, urges him to have a pet and he chooses comfort in rats. In this story, it is quite symbolic that after the death of his wife, he chooses rats as his pets because the author develops the metaphor that in a way, evokes the comparison between Gerard’s wife, who has just died, and rats, who have become a sort of her substitutes, because Gerard decided to keep them as his new companions. In this sense, it is particularly interesting that Gerard, who has never had pets, chooses the snake first, which may be another metaphoric reference to his wife, but he ultimately failed to keep snake as a pet and preferred rats. …show more content…
His wife seemed to be the one that took care of the responsibilities because in the beginning it says that at the funeral he had looked like he had let him self go in a sense such as, looking older than he is and wearing mismatched clothes. Gerard quickly became bored with the snake and didn’t take as much responsibility as he should’ve because he never paid attention and never really cared for the snakes health. I think the reason he never paid much attention is because he had never taken care of anything by himself before and he didn’t really know how to cope with all the extra responsibilities that came with having a