Sandhu, Sukhdev. “Ratatouille: Pixar’s French recipe for a delectable film.” The Telegraph 12 Oct. 2007. Web. < http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/3668488/Ratatouille-Pixars-French-recipe-for-a-delectable-film.html >

In “Ratatouille: Pixar’s French recipe for a delectable film”, The Telegraph’s Sukhdev Sandhu writes, “Remy is a rat, a creature that has been traditionally seen as a symbol of diseased, alien immigrants eager to encroach on and take over the pure land of the native population / there is a telling moment in Ratatouille when Remy sees the corpses of some of his pals hanging in a shop window; their inert bodies are a reminder that not all Frenchmen are fans of inter-species mixing” (57). Not only does this claim place Remy as a member of the lower class, but it also names the rat, in this case in the eyes of the French, as a symbol for immigrants – correctly so. For when an immigrant arrives in a new country and tries to better his or her own life, he or she is extremely far from being welcomed by the native population with open arms. Instead, he or she is perceived as a threat – as a carrier for pestilence, as a pest his or herself, as someone who is bound to get stuck in the cogs of the societal machine and bring everything to a grinding halt –, and in turn becomes the subject of degrading, abusive treatment. There is vehement resistance in allowing the immigrant to integrate into society. Remy himself is met with the same adversity. In most of his initial encounters with the humans he later becomes friends with (his encounter with Linguini being the exception), Remy faces severe bodily danger – being captured more than once, threatened all the while with various means of death.  He is seen, like the immigrants, as a contaminant, something that has to be gotten rid of before he causes any damage to the established human order within Gusteau’s.