mountain and the squirrel summary
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Answer:
In the first stanza of this piece the speaker begins by stating the basic premise of the piece. There is a mountain and a squirrel and they got into a fight of some kind. It is easy enough to assume a setting for this piece as the mountain is a location in itself. There are likely forests covering and surrounding it and many places for the squirrel to live and hide.
A reader should immediately notice that Emerson used the word “quarrel” to describe the fight. This makes it seem less serious than if he had chosen to actually say fight or argument. It is a temporary upset to their normally well-balanced relationship.
The poem starts out with what seems like an aabb rhyme scheme but when the speaker gets to the fourth line and expects a rhyme for “latter” they get the word “prig,” meaning self-righteous, instead. The speaker is relaying the insult used by the mountain to refer to “the latter” or the squirrel.
Both of these characters have been heavily personified, so much so they are able to speak to one another and interpret unwelcome actions. The choice to arrange the lines in this manner and surprise the reader with the hard “g” consonant gives further emphasis to the insult. It is disrupting of what could be a pattern.
Explanation: