Ralph S. Mouse

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1982

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapter 7-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 4 Summary: “Life at School”

Ralph hides in Melissa’s boot as the night custodian cleans the school. The custodian turns the boot over, spilling Ralph onto the floor, but doesn’t see the mouse. Without the familiar sound of the grandfather clock, Ralph can’t sleep and decides to defy Ryan’s rules and explore the school. In one classroom, Ralph finds art projects covered with legumes and rice, which he eats hungrily. He also enjoys eating from a bag of sugar in the lunchroom. In the library, he finds a nest and promptly snuggles into it and falls asleep. Ralph awakens the next morning just in time to return to the boot as the students arrive at school. Ryan arrives and Ralph scurries into his pocket, demanding that Ryan return his motorcycle. Ryan reminds Ralph that he will return it Friday after he runs the maze, but Ralph still refuses to do so.

Ralph watches the school day proceed from inside Ryan’s pocket. He marvels at how orderly the children are compared to his mice friends and family. The students work on their projects for the “Great Mouse Exhibit” on Friday (71), but as Ralph examines their artwork, he doesn’t think any of the pictures look like him. Ryan and Brad work on the maze but they disagree about the design. Brad wants to make the maze extra hard and include traps, but Ryan disagrees, saying it would be unfair to Ralph. Brad becomes angry and calls Ralph a dumb mouse, so Ryan decides to continue working on the design at home on his own. This makes Ralph upset as he was planning to use his time alone at night to practice in the maze. Miss K tells the students that a reporter from the Cucaracha Voice newspaper will be coming on Friday to write an article on their exhibit. Ralph prepares to spend a second night alone in the school, feeling sad and missing his home.

Chapter 5 Summary: “The Great Mouse Exhibit”

Ralph continues to roam the school at night. He tries to sleep in a dollhouse in the kindergarten room but prefers the nest in the library. One night he gets stuck on Scotch tape and almost doesn’t escape before the school day begins. Ryan tells Ralph that he can no longer stay in his pocket because his mother is angry about the holes and the smell. Ralph goes back to hiding inside the boot until he finds a discarded mitten that is much more comfortable.

The night before the mouse exhibit, Ralph spends a lot of time grooming himself. All the children arrive at school the next day dressed nicely, since they will be photographed for the newspaper. Miss K puts Ralph in a glass fishbowl at the front of the room, but it frightens him and he scrambles to find a way out. Other teachers, the principal, and the librarian attend the exhibit, and someone even brings popcorn for a snack. Brad delivers his poem to the class. The poem is short and declares Ralph to be an unintelligent rodent. Another student named Janet delivers a limerick that features Ralph getting stuck in glue. The students laugh, but Ralph doesn’t enjoy the poems. The reporter arrives as Gordon delivers his report about all the awful things mice do, such as destroying property and exponentially replicating. He also includes a list of the ways to exterminate mice. The reporter snaps photos of Ralph, who is becoming exhausted by the heat and all the attention. The reporter leaves after only a few minutes and Melissa reads a story she wrote about Ralph getting stuck to a sock in the laundry. Brad thinks her story doesn’t make sense, and the students start to argue about static cling and missing socks. Meanwhile, Ralph paces, knowing that the maze test looms. Gloria delivers her haiku about a mouse getting caught in a trap. Ralph cowers in fear as Miss K announces it is time for him to run the maze.

Chapter 6 Summary: “The Maze”

Ryan removes Ralph from the bowl and places him in the maze. He encourages Ralph to run toward the peanut butter, but the room is filled with confusing smells, disorienting Ralph. Brad brought his cap gun for the start, but it won’t fire, which gives Ralph more time to warm up. Once the gun fires, Ralph tears through the maze as the children cheer him on. Ryan begs Ralph to win so he can impress his classmates, but all Ralph can think of is regaining his precious motorcycle. Still unable to sniff out the peanut butter, Ralph has an idea. He jumps up to the ledge of the maze so he can see the end. Ryan grabs him and makes him start over, which infuriates Ralph. Brad fires the gun again, and Ralph immediately jumps to the ledge and easily finds the end of the maze and the peanut butter. Ryan is visibly angry, but Miss K says they don’t have time to try again and hurries the children to clean up and prepare for dismissal.

Melissa takes her boots home for the weekend. Brad taunts Ryan, saying, “Ralph Dumb Mouse” as he passes by (99). The two boys exchange heated words and before Ralph can jump out of Ryan’s pocket, they are fighting. The other students egg them on, but Miss K breaks up the fight, telling the boys that violence is not the answer to their problems. Ralph isn’t injured in the tussle, but his tiny helmet is smashed and his motorcycle is destroyed. Ralph is devastated. Ryan threatens to get back with Brad for breaking Ralph’s motorcycle. Brad thinks he’s absurd for saying the mouse owns a motorcycle. When they are alone, Ralph blames Ryan for ruining the motorcycle. Ryan blames Ralph for not completing the maze the proper way and says he regrets ever bringing Ralph to school. Ryan leaves Ralph in the hallway to dodge the students’ trampling feet. When the school is empty, Ralph runs to the safety and comfort of his nest in the library. He misses his home at the inn and even his annoying family members. Over the weekend, Ralph feels lonelier than ever.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

Ralph escapes to Ryan’s school in hopes of defusing the crisis at the inn and saving Matt’s job; however, living at an elementary school proves just as dangerous and Ralph struggles to adapt to his new surroundings. During the day he hides in a boot, and at night he’s left alone to roam the dark halls and classrooms looking for comfort. Without his trusty motorcycle, Ralph feels lost and uncertain about what he should be doing with his time, and in the absence of human contact, Ralph returns to his animal nature, searching for food and a nest. However, nighttime also becomes a period of intense introspection, which leads to anxiety and fear. Though Ralph taps into his inner mousiness to survive in an unfamiliar environment, he retains human-like emotions and feelings.

In these chapters, Cleary introduces another source of external conflict in the character of Brad. Whereas the rest of Miss K’s students view Ralph with wonder, Brad taunts the mouse and doubts his intelligence. When Miss K tasks Brad and Ryan with working together on the maze, they disagree about the design because Brad seeks to trick Ralph into failure.

As Ralph watches the class prepare for the exhibit, he experiences a mixture of emotions. He dreads being put on display and resents having to perform for their entertainment. However, he also fears failure and experiences intense anxiety as the day of the exhibit approaches. Ralph also learns from Miss K and the students as he watches them go about their daily tasks and he marvels at their orderly and calculated systems for behavior and productivity. Pushing aside his animal nature, Ralph wishes more mice would adopt these human qualities, once again highlighting the theme of An Animal Trying to Live in a Human World.

The children’s submissions for the exhibit, while creative and sometimes humorous, highlight the stereotypical ways humans view mice and creatures like them. They assume that all rodents carry disease, are destructive, and reproduce exponentially, which leads them to fear any small, scurrying creature. Ralph not only must listen to the horrific descriptions of his species but must do so from the confines of a glass bowl. As his anxieties grow, he can’t answer the primal call of all animals to escape danger. The class forcing Ralph to run the maze underscores the cruelty that animals often endure at the hands of humans. Ironically, Ralph, who admires and desires to act like humans, must perform for their entertainment at the expense of his well-being. Exhausted physically and emotionally from the day’s events, Ralph hardly has the strength to run the maze.

Cleary’s novels often explore children using their minds to find inventive solutions to their problems. Ralph isn’t a child, but his small size provides him with a unique perspective that helps him find a way out of his predicament. Ralph thinks outside the box when he climbs the maze wall to find the end, demonstrating that it is often necessary to see the bigger picture to find a resolution and highlighting the theme of Using Imagination to Overcome Obstacles. Ironically, the humans fail to appreciate Ralph’s unique intelligence and view his outsmarting of the maze as a failure.

Though Ralph’s victory in the maze represents an internal triumph for the mouse, his accomplishment leads to the culmination of the conflict between Ryan and Brad, which destroys Ralph’s motorcycle, plunging the mouse into despair. The scene is rich in irony, as two humans fight like animals while an animal watches in horror and laments the consequences of their impulsive, primal behavior.