The Great Rat Hunt Analysis

The story “The Great Rat Hunt” written by Laurence Yep take place in Chinatown San Francisco, California, USA. The setting is important to the story because it helps the reader visualize that most of the people, and probably the narrator, are Chinese. This setting also helps the reader visualise the climate, which would be sunny most of the year, and what vocabulary and/or accent the characters of the story have.

The conflict of this story is that there is a rat (literally) in the family’s grocery store and house. The conflict is resolved partially when the rat leaves the store while the store is getting fumigated. However the problem is not fully resolved because they find that the rat has migrated to their house in the apartment above the

The author further hooks the reader and sets the tone for the story when he explains how this happens all year round, and how it is not uncommon for him not to join his brother and father outside, but rather how it is more uncommon for him to actually join them. By setting the tone of the story early on, he had a good foundation to write the rest of the story on, which he used very well, keeping the reader’s interest peaked all the way until the end, after the conflict had been resolved. The author uses dialogue, or more lack thereof, to make this story powerful. He does this by making the father a quiet man who prefers to speak by action instead of by words, so when he does say something, it means more. Another example of this is while the narrator and his dad are barricading the living room to wait for the rat, the two don’t speak, but work in silent unison. Another technique that the author uses is by creating strong characters. The father was the strongest character of all of the characters because he is often portrayed throughout the story as a man who says little and does a lot. He is also a strong character because he is teaching throughout the story, teaching Eddy how to play sports, teaching the narrator how to shoot a gun, and multiple other instances in the