The Bridge Between Mice and Men

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Imagine the utter destruction of your home, better yet imagine you just accidentally destroyed someone else’s home and are understandably upset for the grief that you have just caused. Robert Burns being a Scottish farmer very well could have committed such a crime, yet the victim was a mere mouse. His poem, ostensibly biographical, To a Mouse is his apology to this insignificant creature, for plowing over his nest. Burns is examining the way of life of this mouse in comparison to his own life, to his own problems. This “compassion for the mouse becomes pity for the poor, then pity for all existence” (Perkins 13).

The storyline begins with the ploughman, out plowing his Scottish fields on a windy November day 1785 when his plowing tool ran its course right through a tiny creature’s home. The mouse runs in terror because of her past experience with the human race. The mouse knows that she is considered a vermin and that she will be hunted as one. As insignificant as this event seems in a day of the life of a farmer, Burns continues the conversation with the mouse to express his disturbance at how “my world, has broken into your world.”

Burns elevates the status of the mouse from vermin to “fellow mortal” who is also exposed to “accident, loss, old age, and death” (Perkins 8). The ploughman feels the compassion and sympathy for the poor creature. He empathizes with the plight of living, and surviving. Burns himself has had his share of tribulations and understands that everyone must do what is necessary to battle the harsh obstacles of life.

Burns, talking to the mouse, says that he understands that the mouse must steal to live. The farmer says that as long as he takes the miniscule amount needed to survive, that he prob...

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...t place. These decisions can have an outcome completely different for my life. I can’t plan it out yet because I don’t know what the future holds, I can only “guess an’ fear."

Works Cited

Cummings, Michael J. To a Mouse (Robert Burns) a Study Guide. March 2010. 15 March 2010 .

Perkins, David. "Romanticism and Animal Rights." Perkins, David. Romanticism and Animal Rights. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 7-13.

Probst, Robert, et al. "Elements of Literature sixth course literature of Britain." Austin: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1997. 640-644.

Sibbald, David. Robert Burns, Analysis of To a Mouse. 2007. 13 March 2010 .

Webster. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language. Clevland; New York: William Collins+World Publishing Company, 1977.

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