69 pages • 2 hours read
Agatha ChristieThe Mousetrap
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1950A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Overcoat
The overcoat is initially presented as a clue to the murderer’s appearance, but the plethora of overcoats in the play make it a symbol of interchangeable identities and disguise. At the beginning of the play, a radio announcer reporting on the murder mentions that the police are looking for a suspect with a “dark overcoat” (2). Shortly thereafter, Mollie and Giles both enter the room, taking off their overcoats. The next time the radio comes on, the announcer again mentions the murderer’s overcoat as Mollie picks up Giles’s coat. This is the second connection between a verbal description of the item and the physical presence of it, which creates a red herring that Giles is the murderer.
The overcoat is also mentioned in the newspaper that Miss Casewell reads, and she begins to question its usefulness as a clue. She says the police description would “Fit pretty well anyone, wouldn’t it” (11). This happens shortly after Miss Casewell takes off her overcoat, throwing it to Giles, who “catches it” (11). When Trotter arrives, he mentions that there are “three darkish overcoats hanging up in the hall” (32) of Monkswell Manor. This number of coats symbolizes how the murderer can easily take on a disguise, and how people wear a variety of identities.
Monkswell Manor
Monkswell Manor itself is an important symbolic part of the play. Mollie inherited this property when her aunt passed away and decided, with her new husband Giles, to convert it into a guest house. This means the location—like the characters within it—undergoes a change in identity. Giles attempts to christen the Manor with a new painted sign but misspells the name as “Monkwell” (2), signifying how the new identity is still not settled. Mrs. Boyles repeatedly complains about the lack of amenities at Monkswell Manor, and the Ralstons admit privately that they probably should have “taken a correspondence course in hotel keeping” (4) because they are unsure of what they are doing or, in other words, still forming the identity of the place.
Major Metcalf hints at the previous identity of Monkswell Manor. After he explores the cellars, he says they look like the “Crypt of an old monastery [...] Probably why this place is called ‘Monkswell’” (37). During the Protestant Reformation, many Catholic monasteries across England were destroyed or converted. This information develops the location as a mirror of its characters in that it experienced violent change (a kind of trauma) that caused its identity to be reformed.
Overall, transient locations, like guest houses and hotels, are a literary device that allow for a wide variety of people to cross paths and for those people to construct new identities. A famous historical example of travelers discussing their life stories is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and a modern example is Italo Calvino’s Castle of Crossed Destinies.
Snow
Snow symbolizes seclusion in The Mousetrap. Early in the play, the radio announcer gives a weather report: “Motorists are warned against ice-bound roads. The heavy snow is expected to continue” (2); this report is repeated a few minutes later in the same scene. The repetition of the weather report emphasizes the conditions that the characters face. At the beginning of Scene 2, Christie’s stage directions also indicate that “snow can be seen banked high against the window” (15). This conflict with nature (snow) creates an encapsulated, or enclosed, world.
Christie uses snow to increase the tension between characters, as well as an external threat. Paravicini ends up at Monkswell Manor because his car runs “into a snowdrift” (14), and the taxis of several guests won’t come up the drive; they must walk part of the way in the bad weather. To “turn [someone] out into the snow” (10) could mean causing their death, so the characters are forced to stay in the guest house. Georgie (in his disguise as Sergeant Trotter) arrives on skis, which become the only way to escape. Metcalf eventually hides these skis, allowing him—as a genuine policeman—to regain some control.
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By Agatha Christie
