CBSE Class 12 Board Examination

Chapter 4: The Rattrap

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Summary

Written by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf and told in the manner of a fairy tale, this story carries the belief that the essential goodness in a human being can be awakened through understanding and love. A poor, homeless peddler who sells small wire rattraps survives by begging and petty thievery. To amuse himself in his dreary wanderings, he conceives the idea that the whole world is one big rattrap that baits people with riches, food and shelter, and snaps shut once they are tempted. One night he is given kind shelter and food by a lonely old crofter, who trustingly shows him thirty kronor. The next morning the peddler steals the money and, fleeing into the forest, becomes lost — caught, he feels, in the rattrap of his own making. He stumbles into the Ramsjö ironworks, where the ironmaster mistakes him for an old regimental comrade and invites him home; the peddler declines, fearing exposure. The ironmaster's kind daughter, Edla, persuades him to come and stay for Christmas, treating him as a guest even after his true identity is discovered. Moved by her unexpected kindness and trust, the peddler undergoes a change of heart. He leaves behind a Christmas gift — a rattrap containing the stolen thirty kronor and a note signed 'Captain von Stahle', asking Edla to return the money to the crofter. Kindness has redeemed him from the world's rattrap.

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