Theodore Roethke's The Meadow Mouse

Well-intentioned actions sometimes lead to unforeseeable, disastrous consequences. Theodore Roethke’s “The Meadow Mouse chronicles a young boy’s experience with a mouse he finds in the meadow and briefly cares for in a shoebox.

Well intentions sometimes lead to unforeseeable, disastrous consequences. Theodore Roethke’s “The Meadow Mouse” chronicles a young boy’s experience with a mouse he finds in the meadow and cares for in a shoebox. His intense affection, naivety due to young age, and desire to domesticate the animal unintentionally lead him to taking away the mouse’s independence and _____________________. Though the mouse ultimately escapes and the speaker experiences separation anxiety and fear similar to that of a parent with a child leaving for college, the speaker fails to realize that his __________ sheltering only ____________ the mouse and leaves it less equipped and prepared to survive the dangers

Yet his affection and naivety due to young age

Through figurative imagery, ____________, and style,

The speaker employs the use of figurative imagery to reveal the speaker’s affection for the mouse and his reason and motivation

for desiring to care for the mouse.

The speaker employs the use of many similes to demonstrate his intense care and watching-over of the mouse. The speaker describes the mouse using only positive similes familiar with the speaker to describe his affection. That the mouse’s whiskers stick out “like a cartoon-mouse” and it wiggles “like a minuscule puppy” shows how much the speaker is watching the mouse and examining it.

By personifying the mouse into that of a vulnerable human baby, the speaker further qualifies his reason for taking care of the mouse. The mouse then becomes like a human baby, in constant need of care due to its vulnerable and undeveloped state. The speaker believes the mouse to be like a human baby- in constant need of care due to its vulnerable and undeveloped state. As the speaker believes himself to be more intelligent and capable than the mouse, the speaker becomes somewhat like a parent can cares for the mouse providing “an old nylon stocking” as a cradle, “three kinds of cheese” for nourishment, and ____________ for natural parental anxiety.

The speaker initially compares the mouse to wild animals; with descriptions of the mouse with “whiskers sticking out like a cartoon-mouse” (7), “little lizard-feet” (9), and “bat-like ears” (16), the speaker initially views the mouse as a creature from the meadow: wild, undomesticated, and _____________.

Yet, as his view of the mouse slowly transitions into believes that the mouse wiggles “like a minuscule puppy” (11) and “no longer trembles” (18) after some time with the speaker. By now viewing the mouse like a puppy, the speaker believes that the mouse can become domesticated, and in this revelation comes the speaker’s motivation to domesticate the wild animal. The belief that the mouse trembles just like a human being resembles the speaker’s belief that the mouse can become like human: obedient, trained, and

_______________.

The constant comparison to other animals, in which the mouse displays “little lizard-feet” (9), “bat-like ears” (16),

The use of free verse as the style of the poem serves as an ironic juxtaposition to the speaker’s actions. The speaker, naïve and innocent in thought due to young age, genuinely believes that he unless he supplies “an old nylon stocking” (1) and “three kinds of cheese” (12), the mouse would not be able to survive on its own. In doing so, the speaker believes that he is providing more independence, freedom, and opportunity for the mouse. Yet, the speaker does not realize that the mouse’s “trembling” (6) is due to fear and ___________ directly correlated with the speaker’s actions

Even when supplying a “shoe box” (1) as a home instead of a cage to provide the mouse more freedom, the speaker has already suffocated the mouse’s independence and left it ________. Had he wanted to permanently keep the mouse, he would have used a cage, attempting to domesticate this wild creature he believes to be similar to a house-trained “puppy” (11). But in reality, the speaker already chokes the mouse’s independence, __________ catching it “by the tail” (4) until “the whole body of him” was “trembling” (6) and desiring to escape.

Though the speaker hoped to demonstrate his well-intentioned encasement of the mouse, affection, and desire to give the mouse independence through his use of free verse and specifically used “shoe box” (1), the speaker ultimately suffocates the mouse, leaving it trembling and less capable of surviving in the wilderness due to intense pampering.

The speaker fails to recognize that like the “turtle gasping in the dusty rubble of the highway”, he ultimately removes the mouse from its natural habitat and places it in a ____________, _____________ place that is more dangerous than “the shrike, the snake, [and] the tom-cat”. The speaker makes the mouse more vulnerable; though he provides a shelter and food, he believes the mouse to be like a human baby and to have the same wants as a human. Though this sheltering, taking away from natural habitat, and ______________, the speaker only further ________, the mouse. Though well-intentioned and innocent in thought, the speaker has indeed made the mouse “innocent, hapless, [and] forsaken”.

The speaker serves as the greatest predator of them all.