83 pages • 2 hours read
Richard Atwater, Florence AtwaterMr. Popper's Penguins
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1938A 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.
Themes
The Primacy of Family Relationships
The authors emphasize the importance of nuclear family in both the human and animal worlds throughout the book. The story is the product of the 1930s—a simpler, less diverse societal period in American history. The Poppers have a very traditional marriage: Mr. Popper is a housepainter who works hard at his trade but does not earn a high income, while Mrs. Popper is a traditional housewife who worries about cleaning, providing good family meals on a seasonally reduced income, and participating in local volunteer activities. Although Mr. Popper has the soul of an artist and an adventurer, he is never embittered by his profession as a housepainter. Rather, he is accepting of the fact that his role in the family requires him to produce income in this way, and he rejoices in the company of his wife and children. Similarly, Mrs. Popper expresses concern about unpaid bills, but she never expresses disappointment about her husband’s capacity as a breadwinner. Both individuals value each other and cherish their children.
This theme is mirrored in the family life of the penguins. Captain Cook languishes until he is provided with a mate, Greta. The pair produce 10 chicks and follow their instinct to procreate the next generation. They are both restored to health upon being given the gift of the other; their natural gleeful temperaments return as they follow the natural timelines of their lives.
Mankind and the Natural World
Mr. Popper is delighted by the arrival of Captain Cook. His initial reaction to the bird is to treat him like a long domesticated species, a dog. When he attempts a local stroll with a leash wrapped around his wrist and Captain Cook’s neck, chaos ensues. The naturally exuberant animal terrifies a neighbor by investigating her stockings with his beak and angers a barber by biting the teeth off the combs in his shop. The disaster is complete when the bird drags the tethered Mr. Popper behind him as he toboggans down three flights of stairs. Comedic though these scenes are, the message is clear: A wild penguin is not a dog.
The theme continues when Captain Cook appears to be dying despite the best efforts of the Poppers and their neighbors. Having built a rookery in his refrigerator from found household objects in lieu of the stones that would be used in Antarctica without the benefit of a mate and chicks, the bird loses all interest in living. No physical ministrations are useful; the only restorative measure is the arrival of a mate and the ensuing production of offspring. The penguins are happier when the humans conform to the Antarctic environment by providing snowdrifts in the living room and a freezing plant in the cellar, rather than expecting wildlife to adapt to a human milieu. Nonetheless, by the end of the performance tour, Mr. Popper realizes that the hostile physical environment and stress of an unnatural regimen is debilitating to his beloved pets, and he makes the decision that will best ensure their well-being.
The Virtues of Humility and Perseverance
Mr. Popper and Mrs. Popper and their children are all appreciative of the many worthwhile elements of their lives. They delight in simple pleasures such as ice cream. Mr. Popper looks forward to his winter period of unemployment because it allows him time to read and dream of locales that he recognizes he may never be able to visit. Mrs. Popper takes pride in her roles as a homemaker and volunteer at the local Ladies’ Missionary Aid Society. They are able to find pleasure in what they have available to them as opposed to envying the material good fortune of others.
When the Poppers are offered the opportunity to be well paid for touring the country with their performing birds, they are overjoyed. Mr. Popper stays up all night bathing the penguins in cold water during a New York City heatwave, and he merely regards this task as part of his responsibilities. When Mr. Klein offers Mr. Popper the chance to be “a poor man no longer” (137) by sending the birds to Hollywood, the housepainter replies that he is not poor. Mr. Klein continues on to say that he will have the family “on Easy Street the rest of [their] lives” (138); Mrs. Popper whispers to her husband that she wants to return to their home on Proudfoot Avenue in Stillwater rather than live on “Easy Street.”
Finally, Admiral Drake provides Mr. Popper with his ultimate reward—an invitation to accompany the explorer’s voyage to the North Pole. Initially, Mr. Popper protests that he is unqualified to join the expedition because he is a simple housepainter rather than an explorer or a scientist. Admiral Drake protests that Popper is the “keeper of the penguins.” Therefore, his presence is imperative to help start a new race of the birds in the Arctic.
Practical Concerns vs. Otherworldly Concepts
Mr. and Mrs. Popper work well as a couple because they balance one another. Mr. Popper is an idealistic dreamer who is often distracted from the details of his work by his visions of faraway countries and the Antarctic. He is altruistic and self-sacrificing when tending to the needs of his penguins, yet he has no real sense of the extent of the expenditures involved in the installation of a freezing plant in the basement and the transfer of the furnace to the living room. Although he advises his wife that they will purchase a refrigerator for the storage of the family’s food when he re-purposes the family’s icebox as Captain Cook’s rookery, he forgets about this promise until she reminds him of it sometime later.
Mrs. Popper, conversely, has a strong sense of economy, of the limited amount of money available to the family, and of the urgency of paying tradesmen. Even prior to the arrival of Captain Cook, she worries about providing meals for the family during her husband’s unemployment over the winter months; she plans meals of beans until his work resumes. When she finally talks to her husband seriously about their situation, he seems to have been unaware of the urgency of their plight. Mrs. Popper notes that, should they run out of funds and food entirely, they might eat the penguins to sustain themselves for a while. Her husband advises that she cannot be serious about the statement. To his credit, Mr. Popper immediately devises a creative solution to the problem by training the penguins to perform in theaters.
