Once upon a time there was a man who went around selling small rattraps of wire.
By beginning the story in this traditional fashion with the words "one upon a time," Lagerlöf sets the reader up to expect what she ultimately delivers—a didactic, moralistic tale. In addition to telegraphing the genre of the story to the reader, by using this specific and evocative set of words, Lagerlöf puts "The Rat Trap" in conversation with centuries of fairy tales and nursery rhymes.
“Now I am going to tell you, Mr. Ironmaster, how things are. This whole world is nothing but a big rattrap. All the good things that are offered to you are nothing but cheese rinds and bits of pork, set out to drag a poor fellow into trouble.”
In this quote, the vagabond is sharing the allegory he has devised for the world for the first time. Before this moment, the idea of the world being a rat trap is a private thought of the vagabond, but here, he is being accused of deceiving the Ironmaster, and so he uses the metaphor as a defense.
“I am thinking of this stranger here…there is probably not a single place in the whole country where he is welcome and can feel at home. Wherever he turns he is chased away…afraid of being arrested and cross-examined. I should like to have him enjoy a day of peace with us here—just one in the whole year.”
Edla is the young daughter of the Ironmaster with whom the vagabond has shared his fundamentally cynical philosophy of life. Through an unlikely case of mistaken identity, the Ironmaster mistakes the vagabond for one of his old military commanders who has fallen on hard times. Upon learning of the mistake—which the Ironmaster assumes to be an intentional deception—he attempts to toss the old man out, but Edla intervenes and becomes the agency of the fairy tale/fable happy ending, setting up the circumstances which will enable the tale's moral to be demonstrated.
“The rattrap is a Christmas present from a rat who would have been caught in this world’s rattrap if he had not been raised to captain, because in that way he got power to clear himself.”
In addition to discovering that the vagabond is not a captain from the Ironmaster’s old regiment, they also find out in church about his having stolen money from a crofter who had earlier shown him kindness. Inside the rattrap, Edla finds the stolen money, and the letter directs her to its actual owner. So the moral of the story is that the vagabond learns that not every kind offering is a "rat trap," and some kindnesses are not too good to be true, but simply good.
One dark evening as he was trudging along the road he caught sight of a little gray cottage by the roadside, and he knocked on the door to ask shelter for the night. Nor was he refused. Instead of the sour faces which ordinarily met him, the owner, who was an old man without wife or child, was happy to get someone to talk to in his loneliness.
Here, Lagerlöf furnishes the reader with a few pieces of vital information that inform the tone of both the scene and the overall story. First, she hints at how the vagabond is usually treated when he knocks on doors, reluctantly asking for help. Ordinarily, he's greeted with "sour faces." These sour faces and gestures of unwelcome inform the vagabond's pessimism. Then, Lagerlöf tells us that the crofter is a childless widower who is "happy to get someone to talk to in his loneliness," telling us that the part of the crofter's motivation is to alleviate his own sense of isolation.
He tried, to be sure, to walk in a definite direction, but the paths twisted back and forth so strangely! He walked and walked, without coming to the end of the wood, and finally he realized that he had only been walking around in the same part of the forest. All at once he recalled his thoughts about the world and the rat trap. Now his own turn had come. He had let himself be fooled by a bait and had been caught. The whole forest, with its trunks and branches, its thickets and fallen logs, closed in upon him like an impenetrable prison from which he could never escape.
At this point in the story, the vagabond finds himself ironically ensnared in his own grim metaphor. Even though he, himself, previously states that all opportunities are really just setbacks in disguise, the potential relief he saw in those three ten-kronor notes outweighed any grand ideas he had about the world. But once he steals them and gets lost in the forest, he realizes that he was right all along, and perhaps it wasn't worth it to take the money.
“Please don’t think that I have such a fine home that you cannot show yourself there,” he said. “Elizabeth is dead, as you may already have heard. My boys are abroad, and there is no one at home except my oldest daughter and myself. We were just saying that it was too bad we didn’t have any company for Christmas. Now come along with me and help us make the Christmas food disappear a little faster.”
Here, Lagerlöf demonstrates the Ironmaster's consciousness about the vagabond's potential shame around being destitute. The Ironmaster thinks the vagabond is a former military captain, and if this were the case, he would clearly have fallen several rungs down the socioeconomic ladder. The Ironmaster is also recognizing his own position in society as one of power, comfort, and privilege.
