Abstract

COSTELLO, Peter. From confusion to love: Russell Hoban’s the mouse and his child as phenomenological novel. child.philo [online]. 2015, vol.11, n.21, pp.93-103. ISSN 1984-5987.  https://doi.org/10.12957/childphilo.2015.21118.

Russell Hoban’s famous children’s novel, The Mouse and His Child, centers around a child’s quest for family, community, and self-awareness. This paper works to describe the novel as philosophical insofar as the novel takes up themes and elements of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s essay “The Child’s Relations with Others.” Because the mouse and his father are joined at the hands, because they find their motion to be a problem, and because they work through ambiguity toward a loving community, the novel puts particular emphasis on what Merleau- Ponty calls intercorporeality and the way a child’s perception of ambiguity can lead to a nonpathological engagement with others in a loving, thoughtful way. Ultimately, this paper argues that the novel ought to be read and taught to children because it represents to them the emotion, language, and desire of a child as being a catalyst even for adult growth.

Keywords : Child Perception; Intercorporeality; Merleau-Ponty; Child-Adult Relations.

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