Stuart Little

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1945

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

Margalo

Margalo is a character in the novel, but she also serves as a symbol. For Stuart, Margalo symbolizes inspiration. He loves her in the chivalrous way a medieval knight loves his lady. She represents the ideal of adventure and fantasy, and her disappearance is the inspiration he needs to leave the safety of his childhood home and venture into the world as an adult. Though he is searching for her, Stuart is not so much looking for a little brown bird as he is following an impossible dream because the dream is worth pursuing even if it can never be found. Indeed, Stuart feels irresistibly compelled to search. He is a dreamer and will never be content with anything less than the ideal that Margalo represents for him. Unlike Harriet and Ames’ Crossing, which symbolize stability and comfort, Margalo is the future and a reason to continue on his adventures.

It seems impossible that Stuart will ever find such a tiny bird in such a large world, but she is the thing that gives the world—and his life—meaning.

Snowbell

Snowbell is another character who occupies a symbolic role. He symbolizes lack of acceptance. Snowbell illustrates the way the world often reacts to people who are out of the ordinary. Snowbell taunts Stuart for being small and weak, which hurts Stuart’s feelings and angers him. Stuart is provoked into showing off in an attempt to prove his strength and ability. Unlike the rest of the family, Snowbell regards Stuart as an interloper and resents his inclusion in the family. People (or anthropomorphized animals) like Snowbell can make anyone who is a little out of the ordinary feel that there is something wrong with them and that they don’t deserve to be included.

In the novel, Snowbell is in the minority. No one else treats Stuart as inferior or different in a negative way.

Playacting

Most of Stuart’s adventures have some element of imaginative play to them. Stuart acts out the games that can only happen in the imaginations of full-size children. Even the adults in the story are limited to imaginary adventures. For example, the owners of the model ships on the pond pretend they are sailing on the high seas. For Stuart, the pond is large enough to mimic the ocean. Stuart can do in real life what they can only imagine.

The imaginative play motif is also expressed in Stuart’s use of costumes. When he goes sailing, he wears a sailor suit; when he teaches the class, he changes from his motoring clothes into a suit such as he imagines a teacher might wear, and the children are impressed to see such a well-dressed teacher.

Stuart makes a final attempt to live out a fantasy in his proposed canoe trip with Harriet. In the past, his adventures occurred organically, and thus became fond memories. But Stuart creates a picture in his head of the perfect date, and he is extremely upset when things don’t go according to plan. The attempt ends in disaster and disappointment, and Stuart learns that he has outgrown that kind of imaginative play. From now on, he must take the real world as he finds it and face it as his authentic self, not as a character in a scripted adventure.

Summer Memories

The motif of summer memories appears most prominently in Chapter 12, when Stuart is teaching school. Near the end of the episode, Stuart talks with a little girl named Katharine about the pillow that represents her one perfect summer. Stuart, with an air of nostalgia, advises the students to always keep their summer memories close. Stuart himself tries to recapture some of his own most precious summer memories when he plans his perfect canoe trip with Harriet. His canoe is named “Summer Memories,” which represents the past he is trying to recreate. The canoe is a callback to his sailboat race on the pond in Central Park; while harrowing in the moment, that adventure became a precious memory after the fact. But unlike the sailboat race, which ended in triumph and friendship, the canoe date is spoiled when the canoe is taken by children (to whom those perfect summer memories rightly belong). Stuart learns that however precious summer memories are, they belong in the past.