Anti-Semitism in Freddy the Detective (Second Part): The Evidence

Freddy the Pig encounters a variety of antagonists in Freddy the Detective (1932), ranging from strangers (a pair of looney bank robbers, a city-slicker detective) to various misbehaving barnyard residents. The chief ‘bad guys’ in the book, however, are neither strangers nor community members. They are a gang of rats, who had once maintained “a large establishment” under Mr. Bean’s barn.  A series of battles with Jinx the Cat (before the book begins) resulted in their formal expulsion from the barnyard community. The book’s primary storyline follows the rats’ attempt to resettle their “old family mansion” in the barn, despite “all the rules” as enforced by Jinx and Freddy. The rats’ leader is “old Simon,” and his sons “Zeke” and “Ezra” are his henchmen. None of the other rats are named (with the brief exception of “Olfred,” who has a bit part at the end of the book).

Jinx and Freddy confront Simon and his sons (illustration by Kurt Wiese)

Now, rats will be rats. Thus, one expects certain behaviours of rats in barnyards: stealing food, damaging property, annoying the other animals, being selfish, etc. It’s familiar from other classic barnyard tales, such as Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Samuel Whiskers (1908) and E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952). Robert O’Brien’s Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1979) is an intriguing inversion of this pattern, with the former lab rats labouring to invent a non-thieving lifestyle for their community.

On this level, the ‘rat profile’ in Freddy the Detective didn’t raise any red flags for me. It seems natural that Simon’s family is unwanted in the barnyard. They are a “gang of thieves,” stealing grain (and a toy train!) from the Beans. They are entirely untrustworthy, alternately flattering, taunting, or deceiving the other animals. Their mischief culminates in an attempt to frame Jinx for killing and eating a crow, which elicits Freddy’s detective masterpiece. In the trial scene at the end of the book, Freddy is able to shred the rats’ evidence against Jinx – partly through the rats’ own testimony – and the barnyard court condemns the perjured rats to prison “at hard labour.” Though the rats escape back to the woods at the last minute, they are once more blocked out of the barn, and order is restored…till the next book in the series.

Freddy interrogates Simon (illustration by Kurt Wiese)

This would be a predictable and satisfactory storyline, IF the rats had different names. But Brooks chose Simon, Zeke (short for Ezekiel) and Ezra. These names, I realized in a flash about two-thirds of the way through the book, are unmistakably Jewish...post-exilic, in fact. The namesakes are famous leaders and prophets of the return from exile. I was aghast. Suddenly the innocuous rat-barnyard relationship took on a nightmare tint, echoing of the history of anti-Judaism and the stereotypes of anti-Semitism at every turn.

The most obvious connection to this history is the expulsion of the rats from their old home, their bid to return, and the other animals’ concerted effort to banish them once more. “But we have to live! Even the humble rats have to live,” Simon protests. Freddy himself admits, “You know…there’s really something in what they say. It must be rather hard to be driven out of your home and hunted from pillar to post.” But Jinx blames the rats for their predicament: “[Y]our sympathy is wasted on these rats. Nobody’d hunt ‘em if they’d behave themselves.” Although this exchange makes sense on the rat-barnyard level, the rats’ names force me to think further. Expulsion, demonization, legalized persecution – the West’s horrible history of atrocities against Jews throbs in my head.

Worse still, Simon’s character is gratuitously coloured on the stereotype of the hypocritical, self-serving Jew. He’s a “sly old wretch,” with an “oily smile,” a “malevolent glare,” a “hypocritical leer,” a “mock humility.” He starts with insincere and thus insulting flattery, but underneath the “soft-soap” (as Brooks likes to call it) he has deep-laid plans for the subversion of the order that has excluded his family.

Who knows how much Brooks actually knew of the history he was evoking. One or two literary classics such as The Merchant of Venice or Ivanhoe would have supplied all the necessary shades. But let the history shout back; it’s the only antidote I know for this casual handling of poison. Here’s the most compact description I found among the Medieval & Early Modern Europe history textbooks on my shelf:

“While relations between Christians and Jews had always been difficult, the high and later Middle Ages witnessed an intensification of popular and official hostility, with Jews expelled from England in 1290, France in 1306, Spain…in 1492, and Portugal in 1497. Even where Jews were allowed to remain, outbursts of fury against them were a recurrent possibility, often fuelled by the ‘blood libel’ that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian boys to use their blood in the baking of Passover bread. A related charge was that of host desecration: Jews were believed to wish to steal consecrated eucharistic wafers in order to torture them, and thus perpetuate their violence against the body of Jesus. Hostility to Jews was often stirred up by the preaching of the friars, but by and large secular and religious authorities sought to restrain popular violence against them, mindful of their importance to the urban economy and state financing arrangements.”  - Peter Marshall, The Reformation: A Very Short Introduction (2009), p. 118

This is a tame description of the historical roots of anti-Semitism, with many details missing, but it captures the basic gist: recurring expulsions, obscene hysterical rumours, official exploitation. Anyone who knows this history will feel very uncomfortable with Brooks’ decision to present his rat characters under Jewish names, and thus to tint them with anti-Semitic stereotypes. That angle was unnecessary to the story, and given Brooks’ pungent character snapshots elsewhere in the book, I assume this one was no accident. So how do I respond?

...to be continued...