To a Mouse

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1786

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Coming Winter

The winter—for both mice and farmers—represents long months of relative inactivity and cold. Most importantly, however, the winter is a time that the speaker and the mouse have to spend much of the year preparing for. In this way, the winter, its “bleak December winds” (Line 23), and its “cranreuch cauld” (Line 36), represent the forces that make the “best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men” go awry (Line 39).

Much of the reason the speaker is distraught over destroying the mouse’s nest is that he sympathizes with the mouse’s preparations and understands that a lack of preparation for winter can mean death. The phrase “fields laid bare” suggest that the speaker has already harvested his crops (or that his crops have failed) and is in the final stages of preparing for the winter (Line 25). This is corroborated by the presence of winds that toss the mouse’s nest (Line 20). One of the poem’s underlying ironies is that the farmer’s attempt to prepare for the winter has undermined the mouse’s preparation.

The Mouse and the Farmer

The farmer and the mouse are interchangeable in their winter preparations. In either case, one stroke of bad luck—whether it be a destroyed nest or a failed harvest—can result in death. Though the poem focuses on one particular instance when the speaker-farmer runs through the mouse’s nest, the reference to how the mouse “may thieve” demonstrates that either one of them can turn the other’s luck. The mouse and the farmer, then, operate as mirrors for one another.

In fact, there are many suggestions that the farmer’s accidental destruction of the mouse’s nest is symbolic of how the farmer will fare that winter. The aforementioned phrase “fields laid bare” might suggest that the farmer’s crop has failed. This idea of crop failure is supported by the farmer’s reference to past “prospects drear” and his “fear” for the future in the last stanza (Lines 46, 48).

The disparity in size and perceived intelligence between the mouse and the speaker also suggests that creatures exist on a spectrum. Since both the mouse and the speaker are engaged in these struggles, it can be extrapolated that all creatures between them on this spectrum are also privy to the same struggles and life patterns.

The Nest

The mouse’s nest primarily stands as a symbol of the creature’s preparedness for the coming winter. This connection is made explicit when the speaker attempts to occupy the mouse’s perspective and considers that, with “weary Winter comin fast” (Line 26), the creature wanted to “cozie here, beneath the blast” of cold winds (Line 27). The nest’s destruction, then, is a case of mouse’s “best laid schemes” coming undone (Line 39).

The nest also works to further solidify the connection between human and animal and between the mouse and the speaker more particularly. The speaker empathizes with the hard work the mouse put into his “house or hald” (Line 34), and his choice to call the nest a “house” suggests that he sees something of an intelligent, human construction about it. The fact that animals too create artificial structures to protect themselves from the elements blurs the lines between the animal and the human.