He then abandons all the rats at the scene of the crime, ridding himself of that part of his life. He devises a plan to have the rats kill Mr. Jones, he is forced to use Ben in his criminal escapades. When Socrates is killed at the young man's workplace by his boss Mr. After his mother dies, the young man inherits the house. His 'ratman' robberies become a newspaper sensation in the area and the man makes quite a stash of money for himself and for the girl he is courting at work. The young man uses the rats to wreak revenge upon his boss and havoc among the local shop owners and home owners, whom he has robbed with the aid of his rats. A rival to Socrates is 'Ben', a large rat that the narrator grows to despise when it refuses to listen to him. His favorite is an Agouti Berkshire rat (normal wild rat color, only with white markings on the belly, who in the film adaptations was portrayed as a white rat) which he calls 'Socrates'. In these entries, the young man dwells on the hatred he feels for his boss, the stresses of caring for his aging mother, a nameless girl he becomes fond of and above all the families of rats which he has befriended and which he uses for company and companionship.Įventually, the young man trains the rats to do things for him.

The book is set as a series of journal entries, where the unnamed narrator goes back and forth between his life with the rats and his work, in a low-level job at a company that his father used to own. After the release of the original film, the book was re-released and re-titled Willard. It was the basis for the 1971 film Willard, its 1972 sequel Ben, and the 2003 remake of the original film. It features an unnamed social misfit who relates better to rats than to humans. Ratman's Notebooks is a 1968 short novel by Stephen Gilbert.

Willard by Stephen Gilbert