The peddler got the idea of the world being a rattrap as he contemplated his own failures and thought of the way people treated him poorly. As he wandered the roads, he noticed that people often fell into various kinds of metaphorical traps that the world set for them. He made a connection between his own profession, where he sold actual rattraps, and the lives of people who get caught in the figurative traps of the world. He thought that the whole world, with its various temptations, pleasures, and material comforts, was nothing but a large rattrap. People were lured into it by these worldly enticements, and once they had entered, they found themselves trapped, unable to escape their predicaments. He even mentions: “And the rattrap peddler had comprehended this in his own way: that the whole world, with its lands and seas, its cities and villages, was really nothing but a big rattrap.”