60 Pun Examples in Literature That Are Literally Hilarious

Rats have been showing up in literature for centuries, from the Pied Piper to Orwell’s 1984 to that one scene in The Departed that’s technically a film but whatever, and honestly, they don’t get enough credit as a pun delivery vehicle. The word “rat” hides inside so many other words it’s almost suspicious. Like the rats themselves, these puns are everywhere once you start looking.

I’ve been collecting these for a while. Some are genuinely clever. Some are crimes against language. Here they are.

1. The One That Started It All

What do you call a rat who writes novels? A lite-rat-ure enthusiast.

Yeah, I know. We’re starting obvious. It gets better. (It also gets worse.)

2. Shakespeare’s Favorite Rodent

To squeak, or not to squeak, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrat-geous fortune…

I’m genuinely proud of this one. “Outrat-geous” is doing heavy lifting and I think it deserves a raise.

3. Quick Hits

• Every rat’s favorite Brontë novel? Jane Eyre-at.
• Their favorite Dickens? A Tale of Two Kitchens.
• And obviously, The Rat-catcher in the Rye.

4.

I told my friend I was writing rat puns and she said “that’s a niche you’re gonna regret.” She’s probably right but here we are.

5. The Instagram-Ready One

Living my best rat-ical life 🐀✨

6.

What genre do rats prefer? Nar-rat-ive nonfiction.

7. Genuinely Proud of This One

A rat walks into a library and asks the librarian for books on self-improvement. The librarian says, “Fiction or nonfiction?” The rat says, “What’s the diffe-rats?”

This is the kind of pun that works better spoken aloud, which is a problem for a blog, but I’m keeping it anyway because I spent twenty minutes on it and sunk cost is real.

8.

Rats don’t prose-ecute, they just gnaw their way through the evidence.

9.

Why did the rat fail English class? He couldn’t stop using ir-rat-ional arguments in his essays.

10. For the Poetry Nerds

I’m not a-verse to rat puns. In fact, I find them quite moving. Stanza-still, even.

(That second pun was a stretch and I know it. Moving on.)

11.

My rat’s favorite book is bound for glory, mostly because he chewed the binding off three other copies first.

12.

Rat-ionale: the philosophy section at a very specific bookstore.

13.

What did the literary critic say about the rat’s memoir? “It’s a real page-gnawer.”

14. Okay This One’s Terrible

What’s a rat’s favorite punctuation mark? The semi-gnaw-lon.

I’m sorry. I’m genuinely sorry. That barely qualifies as wordplay. It’s more like word-assault.

15.

“Have you read the rat’s new novel?”
“No, how is it?”
“It’s quite the tail.”

16.

Sent this to my group chat last week and got zero responses: “Currently reading a book about rats in Victorian England. It’s a real tome-cat situation.” I stand by it even though nobody else will.

17. The Obscure One

In Camus’s The Plaguethe rats die first. You could say the whole novel is about the degenerat-ion of society. Camus would hate that I did this to his work and honestly that makes it funnier.

18.

A rat-ified classic: any book your rat has approved by not eating.

19.

Why do rats love mystery novels? They can always smell a rat.

This one writes itself. Which is good because I was running out of energy around pun fifteen.

20. Triple Threat

• Rat’s favorite Austen: Sense and Sensibil-rat-y
• Favorite Fitzgerald: The Grat Gatsby
• Favorite Kafka: The Metamorpho-rat (okay Kafka wrote about a bug but the energy is similar)

21.

These puns are the write stuff. Rat stuff. Same thing.

22.

Fun fact that has nothing to do with puns: rats can laugh. They make ultrasonic giggling sounds when tickled. Scientists discovered this. With funding. I think about this a lot.

23. Caption Material

Rat-her be reading 📚🐀

24.

What do you call a rat who only reads first editions? A biblio-rat.

25.

I tried to write a rat into my novel and my editor said the nar-rat-ive was getting too cluttered. I said that’s the whole point of rats.

26. This One Requires Niche Knowledge

In Robert Browning’s “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” the rats follow music to their doom. You could call it the first rat-ified review, one star, would not follow again. But the real pun is that Browning wrote it for a sick child to cheer him up, making it perhaps the most gene-rat-ive act of literary kindness in the Victorian era.

I spent way too long on that one. It’s my favorite though. Don’t @ me.

27.

What’s a rat’s writing process? First draft, second draft, third draft, cheese break, abandon manuscript.

(Not a pun. Just accurate.)

28.

Rats make terrible editors. They always want to cut the cheese.

29.

“I told my rat about literary symbolism.”
“What’d he say?”
“Nothing, but he ate my copy of Animal Farmwhich feels like a statement.”

30. The Deep Cut

HP Lovecraft’s cat had a horrifically racist name that I won’t repeat here, but you know what Lovecraft never wrote about? Rats being good. His “The Rats in the Walls” is pure derat-ion of character. The man had issues. The rats were just vibing in their walls.

31.

Ope-rat-ic: how a rat describes any book with dramatic flair.

32.

Why did the rat become a ghostwriter? He was tired of people calling his work liter-rat-ure and wanted to work in the shadows instead.

33. Absolute Garbage, Including Anyway

What’s a rat’s favorite literary device? A meta-fur.

That’s… that’s a stretch involving fur and metaphor and I should delete it but I won’t because this is MY blog.

34.

The rat’s autobiography was a gripping tail from start to finish.

35.

Text you’d send at 1am: “just realized ratatouille is basically a story about a rat who becomes a food critic and that’s more literary analysis than I did in college”

36. For the Academics

Post-structu-rat-ism: a school of thought where the text has no fixed meaning and also there’s a rat in it. Derrida would have something to say about this but it would take 400 pages and I’d still not understand it.

37.

Don’t take these puns for granite. They’re well-crafted. Rat-her painstakingly, in fact.

38.

What do you call a rat’s book club? A liter-rat-i gathering.

Ngl, “literati” is one of those words I’ve been waiting to rat-ify for months.

39.

Every rat’s dream? Getting sepa-rat-ely published.

40. The Cluster of Shame

• Elabo-rat-e: a rat’s writing style
• Collabo-rat-ive: two rats writing together
• Comme-rat-ive: a rat’s memorial essay
• Corpo-rat-e: a rat who sells out and writes for brands

I could do this all day. The “-rate” to “-rat” pipeline is disturbingly productive.

41.

A Midsummer Night’s Squeak.

42.

My rat tried to ink out a living as a freelance writer. Didn’t work. Kept eating the contracts.

43.

Why did the rat love Edgar Allan Poe? Because Poe understood that sometimes the horror is literally inside your walls.

(Not really a pun. More of an observation. But rats and Poe go together like rats and everything else rats get into.)

44. Caption Energy

Caught in a rat race but make it literary ✍️🐀

45.

What’s a rat’s favorite Shakespeare play? Ratseo and Juliet. Obviously.

46.

The gene-rat-ion gap in literature is real, old rats prefer the classics, young rats are all about BookTok.

47. I Love This One and No One Else Will

In Dostoevsky’s Notes from Undergroundthe narrator compares himself to a mouse, not even a rat, a mouse, because he considers himself too pathetic for full rodent status. This is nar-rat-ive self-deprecation at its finest. Dostoevsky understood the rat hierarchy and chose to deny his character entry. That’s devastating. That’s also the most pretentious thing I’ve ever written on this blog and I have no regrats.

48.

Despe-rat-e times call for despe-rat-e measures. Like writing sixty rat puns.

49.

“What’s your rat’s favorite book?”
“Charlotte’s Web.”
“That’s about a spider and a pig.”
“Templeton the rat is RIGHT THERE.”

50. The Halfway-ish Point Where I Question Everything

We’re deep in it now. I started this thinking “how hard can sixty rat puns be” and the answer is: harder than you’d think, easier than you’d hope. Anyway.

51.

A rat-ional approach to reading: start with the cheese, work backward to the plot.

52.

What do you call a rat who narrates audiobooks? A voice acto-rat.

Bad. I know. Keep scrolling.

53. The Actually Clever One

Rats in 1984 are Winston’s greatest fear, Room 101 is basically curated psychological rat-ture. Orwell knew that the most effective literary device is sometimes just putting a cage of rats near someone’s face. The pen is mighty but the rat is mightier.

54.

Accu-rat-e: a rat’s peer review of another rat’s work.

55.

Why do rats love libraries? Free real estate between the shelves. Also: atmosphere. Rats are big on atmosphere.

56.

I asked a rat what his favorite literary period was and he said the Plague years. Dark. But fair.

57. Rapid Fire Round

• Deco-rat-ive prose: when a rat writes too many adjectives
• Evapo-rat-ed: a plot that disappears halfway through
• Invigor-rat-ing: a really good opening chapter

58.

tbh the rat in The Wind in the Willows (yes, I know it’s technically “Ratty” the Water Rat) is the most well-read character in children’s literature and I will die on this hill.

59. Send This to Your English Major Friend

My rat just finished Infinite Jest and won’t shut up about it. He’s become unbear-rat-bly pretentious. Keeps leaving footnotes in the walls.

60. Last One

What’s the moral of every rat story in literature? It’s never really about the rats. Except when it is. And even then, there’s always a deeper nar-rat-ive.

Anyway, that’s sixty. My brain feels like it’s been gnawed on. If you made it this far, congratu-rat-ions, you’re either a pun enthusiast or a rat, and honestly either way I respect you.