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

Literary Devices

Protagonist and Antagonist

Stuart is the protagonist of the story—the person whose actions and decisions drive the narrative. The protagonist is often, though not always, the viewpoint character of a story, and is typically the character with whom readers are meant to form the closest attachment. As the titular character, readers follow Stuart’s adventures and get to know him best out of all the characters in the book.

Antagonists present conflict for protagonists and prevent them from reaching their goals or living their lives. Stuart encounters two kinds of antagonists. The first is Snowbell, a household “villain” whose actions negatively affect Stuart’s life. Snowbell goads Stuart into showing off and proving his strength; when Stuart ends up stuck in the window shade, Snowbell plants his items next to the mousehole to trick the Littles into thinking Stuart escaped into the household mousehole. Snowbell also attempts to attack Margalo, Stuart’s first friend, while she sleeps; this drives Stuart to defend her, and he heroically shoots Snowbell’s ear with his bow and arrow, “defeating” the villain.

The second kind of antagonists Stuart confronts are inanimate forces and untoward events. The storm on the water during the sailboat race is one example; being dumped into a garbage truck is another. In these cases, outside forces complicated and endangered Stuart’s life without any malicious intent. Many stories feature this kind of antagonist, where there is no human (or feline) enemy at all, just a circumstance that the protagonist must overcome. It’s also common for stories to have both kinds of antagonists.

Irony, Conceit, and Humor

The author employs understated humor throughout the story. The notion of a human family whose child is a mouse is quite funny in itself, and the author makes it more so by treating that situation as if it were quite ordinary. Stuart’s family is a little surprised to find a mouse in their midst but not so much as one would expect in the real world. Similarly, although the doctor remarks that it is unusual to have a mouse in the family, he is not particularly disturbed.

Irony can be used to create humor. Irony is when the author says one thing while meaning something different, often the opposite of whatever was said. The narrator says that by the time he is a few days old, Stuart acts like a mouse—wearing a little gray suit and carrying a walking stick, which is, of course, not at all mouselike.

The boat-racing scene employs conceit. A conceit is a fanciful parallel between two things that don’t go together. The author describes the sailboat race in a Central Park pond as if it is a grand adventure on the high seas, but he tempers this description with imagery describing New York City—a “flying peanut shell” and the sound of taxi cabs (37-38). This takes a sailing adventure and grounds it firmly near land.

This conceit also contains a good deal of humor. Stuart and Doctor Carey take the race very seriously, and their enthusiasm is funny because it is so out of proportion to the actual importance of a toy boat race.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism describes non-human objects or creatures—like animals—that behave in a human way. It differs from “personification”—the act of ascribing humanlike characteristics to non-human things—because personification typically uses humanlike attributes to create strong imagery. An “angry” sea is still a sea; it cannot talk, walk, or truly feel anger. Anthropomorphized items and creatures present as human. They are often capable of speech, intelligent thought, emotion, and independent movement.

In Stuart Little, Snowbell and Margalo are clear examples of anthropomorphism. Snowbell is a cat, while Margalo is a bird; however, both of these animals can talk, express humanlike thoughts and emotions, and behave in human ways. White specifically uses their animal instincts as plot points and moments of conflict. Snowbell expresses inner conflict over having to live alongside prey animals he instinctively wants to hunt. Margalo, when she flees the Little household, flies north purely because her instincts tell her to do so.

Stuart and Harriet are special cases. White opens the book with Stuart’s mouselike description, but his use of simile—claiming Stuart looks “like” a mouse, instead of saying he “is” a mouse—puts a heavier emphasis on the human aspects of Stuart’s identity. White humorously describes wearing clothes and using a cane as “acting like [a mouse],” and the doctor who examines Stuart is not shocked by his size or appearance. All of this implies that Stuart and Harriet, rather than being anthropomorphized mice in a regular human world, could be members of a humanlike mouse species that exist in the Stuart Little universe.