Rat Tales #2

In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, there is a memorable scene during the climax of the book in which Winston is threatened with having a cage of starving rats strapped to his face. This is what the villains use to break the hero. (As such, it hasn't done much good for poor ratties' PR image)

'They will leap onto your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.

... Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal.

... Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.'

Meanwhile, me:

To be fair to Winston, the point is that he has a deep-rooted phobia of rats. They wouldn't just strap rats to anyone's face. 

'But for everyone there is something unendurable-something that cannot be contemplated.'

So I guess if it had been me, and they wanted me to betray The Housemate, they'd ask me to phone a hairdressers.