Robert Burns's To A Mouse

In Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse”, the narrator sympathizes and takes notice of a little mouse. In this work, the mouse is a part of the outside world, while the narrator is a part of the inside world; however, they are both “fellow mortals” (Burns 12). The person’s identifying with the mouse and elevating it to the level of a human being signifies that the “inside world” and the “outside world” exist together and truly are not two separate “worlds.” The mouse is able to create an inside world within the outside world by making itself a “wee-bit housie” (Burns 19). Even the mouse, though an element of the outside world, must exist in an inside world to protect itself. The narrator says, “An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin…” (Burns 23). Against the winter, the mouse cannot survive on its own without a house. However, the mouse is not safe for long: “The cruel coulter past / out thro’ the cell” (Burns 29-30). The coulter, which is a plow, is man-made and is therefore an element of the inside world. What is man-made has no respect for nature, and crushes whatever is in its path, including the little house of the “wee, skeelet, cowran, tim’ rous beastie” (1). Despite the despair the narrator claims the mouse may be feeling, the
Like “To a Mouse”, life on the outside is far more simple: “Many have marveled wherewith the twain might support their life in this wilderness, but in truth they needed little save each other…” (Strassburg 211). On the outside world, they are not gripped with the pressures of others and society, and are allowed to simply immerse themselves in love. They make a home out of “a cave in a wild hill” (Strassburg 209). Like the mouse, Tristan and Isolt create their own inside world within the outside world. They cannot simply live out in the outside world amongst the trees; they do need some protection, but they make use out of the natural elements to do