Arabesque: The Mouse
In this psychological horror story by A. E. Coppard, an idealistic man who has withdrawn from society due to constant rebuff sits alone in a mouse-infested garret. As he watches the antics of a mouse in front of his fireplace, his mind wanders to the death of his mother and loss of the only woman he ever loved. When he comes back to reality, the mouse is sitting before a trap with its forepaws torn off. Association of this with his mother’s grisly death sends him to the brink of madness. Themes include mother-child relationships, loss, depression, despair, shame, insanity.
At a simplistic level, this story by
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Not all folktales are designed to teach or explain. Some, like this one, were popular for their entertainment value. In this story, a rich young man finds that the woman he loves and her family are not very clever. He decides that he will only marry the girl if he can find three people sillier than they are. A woman trying to push her cow up a ladder, a man who can’t get his trousers on, and a whole village trying to rescue a shadow from a pond prove that there certainly are sillier people in the world.
The term
If you take the story at face value (which is often dangerous with a first person narration), 