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Animals have always embodied the memory and trauma of troubled times in human history. The alienization of animals in terms of their  non-human  essence results in their gothification, resulting in irrational fears of animals that represent cultural anxieties and taboos. For instance, rats are the most culturally accepted symbol of the ravages of bubonic plague. Even though scientifically proven otherwise, the rat has become one of the indelible  animal  constructions of fear, Other-ness and the  evil with-out , signifying the harbinger of the poison of untidiness and unsanitariness into an otherwise healthy society. This paper examines the sociopolitical conflicts in Albert Camus’s  The Plague  through the human-rat relationship. It uses the lens of Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler’s conception of the  pharmakon , where the  pest  becomes the  pharmakon  (a malign/benign entity) as well as the  pharmakos  (scapegoat) in a society riddled with the  pestilence  of cleansing the invasive Otherness. We have argued, through key theories in critical animal studies and the theories of pharmacology in discursive psychopolitics, that the rat becomes the Gothic icon in the narrative, exposing human foibles and affects our perception of chaos and order.

“For Rats Died in the Street; Men in their Homes:” The Pharmacology of the Human-Rat Relationship in Camus’s The Plague