Question

In the struggle with the rats, how does Le Gleo react differently from the others? What does this suggest about the ways people react to extreme pressure or danger?

Answer 1

"Three Skeleton Keys" is a short story written by French author George G. Toudouze and it was published in 1937 in its English version. Although a pretty prolific writer, author Toudouze is best known for this story. The tale is about three men who are serving as guards in a lighthouse in French Guiana. The island where the lighthouse is located is known as Three Skeleton Keys, because of the story of three escaped convicts who die from thirst and hunger in the rocky island and whose only remains are their bones. These three men, Itchoua, the eldest of the three, Le Gleo and the narrator, whose name we never learn, are faced with the terrible fate of a horde of rats who are set on devouring them. For days these men struggle to defend and protect themselves and are finally saved by a guard boat and by the rats being attracted away and destroyed. However, in the end, the result of the ordeal is that Itchoua dies from infection due to the rats´ bites and scratches, the narrator stays at the tower until the end of his service and Le Gleo becomes deranged by the entire experience and ends up in a French asylum. Le Gleo´s different reaction, a negative one, to the entire experience shows that the human mind is not always equipped to deal properly with traumatic events and one escape it has from trauma is precisely insanity; a break-off from reality in order to preserve the integrity of the person who cannot escape from the effects of the traumatic event.