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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Stoat, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The story opens with the narrator discovering a terrified rabbit that has been mortally wounded by a stoat (a weasel-like creature). He imagines that the rabbit ran from the stoat all night and then finally gave up, sitting down to allow the predator to kill it. The rabbit’s failed escape suggests the futility of running from what is frightening and implies that to flee is only to prolong one’s fear and suffering. This mirrors the retreat of the narrator’s father at the end of the story, only unlike the rabbit who fears its own demise, the narrator’s father fears losing other people.
When his girlfriend, Miss McCabe, has a mild heart attack, the narrator’s father becomes convinced that he cannot marry her, specifically because she is not “rooted enough” and does not have “her feet around the ground.” Initially, these seem to be concerns about her personality. However, his certainty that she lacks these traits arises specifically in the context of her medical emergency, making these concerns seem more about her literal rootedness on Earth, or how long she might remain alive. Thus, this health scare—which likely reminds the narrator’s father of his late wife’s death—sends him running for the hills. Choosing to flee and leave Miss McCabe behind, the narrator’s father’s flight is just like the rabbit’s, in that it will not ease his fear. He cannot have relationships without risking loss, and no matter how much he fights it, death inevitably arrives for everyone. This is emphasized in the final paragraph, which repeats back to the reader the third paragraph of the story, describing the rabbit’s flight and demise. This goes to show that running truly gets the rabbit nowhere: it is trapped in an inescapable cycle, and the rabbit’s fear will always come true in the end. It is the same cycle the narrator’s father is trapped in: fear, flight, failure, repeat. And because the narrator’s father rents the same cabin every August, one could imagine that every summer from here on out might repeat this sequence of events, and that just like the rabbit, his flight will never save him from what he fears.
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Fear, Flight, and Futility ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Fear, Flight, and Futility appears in each chapter of The Stoat. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Fear, Flight, and Futility Quotes in The Stoat
Below you will find the important quotes in The Stoat related to the theme of Fear, Flight, and Futility.
The Stoat
Quotes
I was standing over the rabbit when I saw the grey body of the stoat slithering away like a snake into the long grass. The rabbit still did not move, but its crying ceased…It did not stir when I stooped. Never before did I hold such pure terror in my hands, the body trembling in a rigidity of terror. I stilled it with a single stroke.
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Then as I crossed to the next tee I saw the stoat cross the fairway following me still…As I made my way back to the cottage my father rented every August, twice I saw the stoat, following the rabbit still, though it was dead.
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All night the rabbit must have raced from warren to warren, the stoat on its trail. Plumper rabbits had crossed the stoat’s path but it would not be deflected; it had marked down this one rabbit to kill. No matter how fast the rabbit raced, the stoat was still on its trail, and at last the rabbit sat down in terror and waited for the stoat to slither up and cut the vein behind the ear. I had heard it crying as the stoat was drinking its blood.
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My father was reading the death notices on the back of the Independent on the lawn of the cottage. He always read the death notices first, and then, after he had exhausted the news and studied the ads for teachers, he’d pore over the death notices again.
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“Another colleague who was in Drumcondra the same year as myself has gone to his reward”
…I held up the rabbit by way of answer.
“Where did you get that?”
“A stoat was killing it on the links.”
“That’s what they do. Why did you bring it back?”
“I just brought it. The crying gave me a fright.”
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“Do you think she has her feet on the ground?”
“I think you are very lucky to have found her,” I said. The way he looked at me told me he was far from convinced that he had been lucky.
The next morning he looked at me in a more dissatisfied manner still when a girl came from the Seaview to report that Miss McCabe had a mild turn during the night... The look on his face told me that he was more than certain now that she was not rooted enough.
“Will you come with me?”
“It is yourself she wants to see.”
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“What are you going to do?”
“Clear out,” he said. “There is no other way.”
As if all the irons were suddenly being truly struck and were flowing from all directions to the heart of the green, I saw that my father had started to run like the poor rabbit. He would have been better off if he could have tried to understand something, even though it would get him off nothing…Because I was ashamed of him I carried everything he wanted to the car.
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