The Rat

I think, like most songs, this song's lyrics can be interpreted in multiple ways. I like the lyrics of this song by the Walkmen, because unlike many of their other songs, they are descriptive enough to suggest a concrete interpretation without having to "fill in too many blanks." To me the most straightforward interpretation of the lyrics, even before having gone through such a situation myself, suggests they are written from the perspective of either a cheating spouse or partner, or the person with which the partner is cheating.

From either perspective, it is then implicit from the lyrical content that the other party's actions have resulted in the transgression's being revealed to the other partner in the relationship, and likely to all of their friends (hence the title, "The Rat".) I tend to see it as being most clearly from the perspective of the individual who is not in the relationship (the mistress or .. Sancho?). This is likely because I have recently been this person. But I think it can easily be seen the other way (if I wrote the song, I probably would have tried to make it work either way.) For brevity I only explain the first perspective.

When looking from the outside into such a situation, it is the tendency of most people to think of it in terms of the feelings of the partners of the relationship; however, try to assume the perspective of the mistress (or Sancho) for a second, and suppose you actually have feelings for the party in the relationship (if you're going "well I would never do that," suppose you didn't know they were in a relationship until several weeks after having met the person. Yeah, kind of sucks, doesn't it?) Suppose also that you, the cheater, and their partner have many of the same friends. The cheating partner always goes to social functions with their boyfriend/girlfriend, who expressly does not ever want to see you because of what happened. Furthermore, many of your previous friends now dislike you because of it. Both of these circumstances would explain the lyrics "When I used to go out, I knew everyone I saw, now I go out alone...".

Communication and physical interaction are sporadic in general, they can cease without warning for days at a time ("can you hear me now, I'm calling out your name, can you hear me now, i'm .."), but since the cheating has been revealed, you have not heard from this person in a very long time. You are left to wonder if this person (the cheater) will ever talk to you again. When they do, your feelings are similar to the one's expressed in "you've got a nerve to be calling my number, you've.." Suppose they call you to ask you to not say something or to lie when asked about something. This makes you pretty angry.

I think The Rat can be seen as a symbol representing "sancho" or "the mistress", in addition to symbolizing the one who divulged. The person not in the relationship feel as though they are "scurrying around in the dark" like a rat, and that they are also being treated like a piece of garbage. Their feelings are constantly belittled in comparison to the people in the relationship. Noone seems to care that much. (As I said one time in a frustrated text to a friend, "Sancho gets NO representation, GAHH.")

I do also like leonspruce's interpretation of the lyrics.