Richards, Charles

In 1967, Russell Hoban’s first novel, The Mouse and His Child was published and reviewed as a children’s book, despite the fact that the author considered it not to be directed towards a child audience. Since that time, it has been generally analyzed and evaluated as a work of children’s literature (specifically) and not as literature in the general sense. Because the book deals with adult subjects and concepts it has not fared well with those who have measured its success solely on the basis of its being classified as a children’s book. This thesis hopes to liberate the work from this classification by carefully analyzing the concepts which underpin its action, specifically its ontological speculations, its personification of the fall from grace and the felix culpa, the relationship of the protagonists to their complex antagonist Manny Rat, and, finally, in the symbol of “the last visible dog” which represents the infinite and what lies beyond the self (which, in fact, is actually the self). This thesis also examines how Hoban continued working with these themes and concepts in the novels he wrote after publishing The Mouse and His Child.