Fairy Tale Spotlight: Brown John's Body [Short Story Review]

[I spoil the entire story.]

"Brown John's Body" is a short science fiction story written by Winston K. Marks. It was published in 1955. It's a rat story!

This was a very short and grungy story about a cold-hearted, evil man who lived his life away from society. He incurred the distrust of most people by just being surly with everyone. It also didn't help that he shot a kid's dog for being near his property. Also his name was Erd Neff. What kind of horrible name is that?!

Anyway, the thing that made this man so interesting is that he had a pet project at home. He managed to teach a rat, named Brown John, how to speak English, although the muzzle of a rat isn't really made for pronouncing words fluently. This is something that I feel the author handled extremely well. That rat would pronounce the first letters of the alphabet like this: "Eh, bih, fih, dih, ih, eff, jih, etch..." It was about as good as a rat could do it.

Erd did not treat the rat good at all, although he would feed him food. It was a vile relationship, but it was something the rat put up with in order to get free snacks. That's actually very much rat behavior, but if you think on it, Erd was kind of acting like a rat too. It was a human rat owning a real rat.

I didn't really want to spoil such a great story, but it's just so short and I want to talk about it. The thing Erd didn't understand about Brown John is that animals may seem like they are your friends, but they are still animals at the end of the day. There comes a point where Erd was invaded by a group of kids who were sore about him shooting their dog. They tied him up and locked him up in his own unventilated home.

He calls for his Brown John to come and gnaw the ropes off him, but the rat is a bit more interested in the free meat that Erd seems to be offering him. Yep, little Brown John may have learned to speak English, but he's still a rat. Why would he pass up a meal like Erd Neff? It's a brutal ending, but it's honestly perfect.

I absolutely loved "Brown John's Body." I tend to like rat stories anyhow, such as with Percy in the Oz books. Winston Marks did a good job showing us the dark side of rats, and I really appreciate him for doing so. I recommend this story a whole damn lot.

This blog was written on May 24, 2024.

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