Zohar Shavit on "I Was a Rat"

This is a short outline of Zohar Shavit's analysis and her arguments and interpretations on the story I Was a Rat. Shavit's work was published in the book titled The Concept of Childhood and Children's Folktales by Norton, New York in 1999. 

1.     Historically there was no distinction between children and adults because life was considered as analogous to that of nature.

2.     Then, children perceived as delicate needed protection and education according to pedagogical goals that demanded books.

3.     Upper-class regarded folktales “childish”, and yet they enjoyed but only vicariously through children.

4.     For social acceptance, authors called children as an official audience, by the mid-nineteenth century this was not possible as the child was distinct from the adult with special needs and abilities.

5.     Childhood determines folktales change and purposes, e.g. “educational” concept replaced “amusement”.

Featuring pages of the local paper “The Daily Scourge” in I Was a Rat, one can use Shavit’s argument to analyse the story in the way it refers to how media draw public attention by providing false information which is the dominance contemporary phenomenon.