NAME:_________________________________
SOAPSTONE ANALYIS OF ____________________________________
*Give evidence (quotes) from the writing to support your analysis
 Speaker--Who is the speaker? What can you infer about his personality?
 Occasion--What is the occasion of the writing—the event or context that inspired
its creation?
 Audience--Who is the audience of the writing? (To whom the speaker/writing is
talking—it may not be stated directly) What can you infer about the audience’s
personality?
 Purpose—What is the speaker trying to accomplish through the writing? (make
audience think, feel, do?)
 Subject--What is the overall subject of the writing (a few words)?
 TONE--What is the speaker’s tone (attitude) toward his subject?
Questions
1. How does the speaker feel about scaring the mouse? Give proof from the
poem.
2. What “ill opinion” might a mouse have regarding humans?
3. What is “an odd ear in twenty-four sheaves”? How does the speaker feel
about the mouse’s theft?
4. What is the speaker describing in stanzas 4-6? Summarize in a few
sentences.
5. Stanza 7 is the most important stanza in the poem (and is the namesake of
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men). What do the last four lines of that
stanza mean? Do you think it’s true? Explain.
6. According to the speaker, how is he different than the mouse? Look at the
last stanza.