Stuart Little Essay Questions

What indications are there that Mr. Little envies Stuart’s independence and adventures?

It is Mr. Little who takes the time to make the little coins that Stuart uses as bus fare. That his father made the coins out of love is made clear by Stuart’s description of the coins as handsome little things. The time spent making them look like real coins even though they were hard to see speaks to something besides just love. The effort intimates that Mr. Little has a real understanding and empathy for Stuart’s desires to go out in the world. When Stuart goes missing and George’s search for the other end of the mouse hole takes him down to the cellar, he discovers an old rowing machine of his father’s that has been packed away. The rowing machine hints that Mr. Little perhaps possessed dreams of being an athlete one day. Finally, after Stuart and Margalo talk about the experience of flying over the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Little says, preceded by the kind of sigh given by someone who knows it will never happen, says, “some day he hoped to get away from business long enough to see all those fine things.”

Is Stuart Little a book that celebrates assimilation or individualism?

Although he clearly expresses a love for Stuart that extends to a kindly sort of envy of his adventures, Mr. Little has become a propagandist for conformity, even if unwittingly. It is out of purely good intentions that Mr. Little instructs the family to take extreme measures to avoid even saying the words mouse or mice, fearing the negative emotional toll it might take on Stuart. This concerted effort to assimilate Stuart into the human world appears to take hold, but it is a superficial success that is limited to surface appearances: Stuart becomes “an appropriately dressed” teacher, he drives a car, and he writes love letters like someone from a 19th century novel. But he is not really a teacher, his car can be hidden under a cabbage leaf, and the romance initiated by the love letters is an immediate bust. The family tries and Stuart complies with attempting to assimilate into the world of humans, but it just never quite takes. And ultimately Stuart leaves that world behind to go out on his own. Notably, Stuart heads off into a sunrise, not a sunset, suggesting that it is a lack of conformity that will lead to a happier life.

What is the significance of never finding out the species of Margalo?

When they first discover Margalo and bring her into the house, George says he thinks she is a wall-eyed vireo. Mr. Little comments that she looks more like a wren. When she disappears, Stuart sets out in search of her and gradually comes to the realization that he is not just trying to locate a lost friend, but that “something deep inside him made him want to find Margalo.” Later, just before the disastrous date with Harriet, he confides in the storekeeper: “The highways and byways are where you’ll find me, always looking for Margalo.” As the search continues, he never lets a bird fly overhead without checking to see if it might be Margalo. This obsessive search indicates a compulsion nestled much deeper in his psyche than merely finding a bird. Margalo is a bird and not a specific bird. He asks after her by repeating her poetic description of where she came from and the fact that she can whistle. Stuart’s search is for something that is not identifiable, something far too common to ever really hope to find.