Mr. Mistoffelees

Fiction | Poem | Middle Grade | Published in 1938

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Wonder

Mr. Mistoffelees’s skills lie in hiding forks, chasing corks, and making fish-paste disappear. On the surface there is nothing fantastical about these activities, yet the speaker presents them to the reader as wonderful and awe-inspiring. This highlights the poem’s key theme of finding delight in the ordinary. One doesn’t need marvelous magic to be transported and moved; the illusory magic of the real, living world is enough. To be able to appreciate the beauty in nature, cats, and even average, household objects, one must possess the capacity for wonder—like most children do. Children find the ordinary delightful because each object and experience is new to them; the poem indirectly suggests if grown-ups can also find that newness in the world around them, they’d be able to see its many wonders.

In Eliot’s works, poems are seldom set in overtly beautiful settings. To the contrary, the settings are either indeterminate landscapes, a cityscape, or anonymous homes like the family residence of Mr. Mistoffelees. These deliberately mundane and often nameless settings demonstrate how a city pet can be as wonderful as any exotic animal, and the interior of a house or the enclosed space of a garden as lush with possibility as any romantic vista. Cats, as Eliot’s muse, offer endless opportunities for wonder. Mr. Mistoffelees’s lithe, black frame, his ability to walk across rails, his fading in and out of rooms, and his slipping through tiny gaps are all sources of inexhaustible joy for the poet. The poet urges the reader to find the same magic with his opening exhortation: “You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees!” (Line 1)

Magic

Intricately linked with the theme of wonder is the theme of magic. In the poem, magic doesn’t operate as fantastical magic, but the actual magic of the real world. This magic is not based on any deviation of the laws of physics, but on illusion, tricks, and sleights of hand. Mr. Mistoffelees is not a wizard but a conjurer—the master of illusions. Whatever pleasure the speaker and the audience derive from Mr. Mistoffelees’s tricks has to do with their perception of reality, as well as their willing suspension of disbelief. This is the same suspension of disbelief the audience carries into a magic show; they know magic doesn’t exist in its fantastical sense, yet they want to be tricked into believing objects can actually disappear and reappear or that they magically exist in two places. Eliot deliberately operates within the framework of real magic in the poem for two reasons: to stress the magical aspect of mundane reality, and to establish that some willing suspension of disbelief is important if one is to be entertained. A book or a movie is not real, yet the emotions its narrative elicits are very real. To feel those emotions, the audience must invest in the narrative and believe it is real, while consciously knowing it is fiction. In this sense, the poem operates as a meta-comment on the nature of art and entertainment. The importance of entertainment can seem like a trivial preoccupation for a serious artist like Eliot, but he often spoke about the importance of art being accessible and universal to all. With its showy tricks, magic is the perfect example of an accessible, entertaining art form.

The Artist as Magician

As a playful poem for children, “Mr. Mistoffelees” does not initially seem to explore deeply serious themes; in fact, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in its entirety tends to be viewed as light reading. The collection’s lightness is deceptive—much like the nature of felines. The poems of the collection use inventive words and singsong rhymes to explore many rich themes, one of which is the poet or the artist as a magician. Much as Mr. Mistoffelees makes magic out of the ordinary, Eliot the poet creates magic from words—the tools of his trade. It should be noted that the reason Pound gave Eliot the nickname “Old Possum” was because a possum is an animal that plays dead to avoid predators and is thus a trickster of sorts. Eliot’s inclusion of the nickname in the title of the collection is deliberate, suggesting that as an artist, Old Possum still has many tricks up his sleeve. He can draft poems as diverse as The Wasteland and “Mr. Mistoffelees,” and can layer even his light verse with profound meaning.

Just like Mr. Mistoffelees sneaks in and out of the frame, mysterious and aloof, the artist too pulls surprises, using words like “prestidigitation” (Line 10) in a children’s poem. And like Mr. Mistoffelees pulls kittens out of a hat, the poet creates a surprise at the end of the poem. The poem’s underlying theme suggests that art is the only magic human beings can make. In this magical world, cats populate a city, behave like outlaws, and compete in contests (all narrative turns in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats). With the tools of imagination and words at their disposal, the artist is the original conjuring cat.