Being SmallBeing small

I used to be strangely fascinated by The Tale of Despereaux, perhaps because its premise is almost ridiculous: a tiny mouse with enormous ears decides that he is going to behave like a knight.

Despereaux is small even by mouse standards. He is physically weak, constantly underestimated, and frankly not very good at being a mouse. While the others eat books, he reads them. While mice are supposed to fear humans, he falls in love with a princess. And when that princess needs saving, he somehow concludes that this is his problem to solve. The scale of his ambition is completely disproportionate to the scale of his body.

But perhaps that disproportion is exactly the point. We instinctively associate size with power: the larger animal wins, the louder voice gets heard, the person who occupies more space seems more important. Despereaux has almost none of these advantages. What he does have is a remarkably flexible mind and the slightly unreasonable courage to act before asking whether someone his size is supposed to be capable of it.

I like that his bravery never requires him to become bigger. He does not suddenly grow stronger or transform into something conventionally heroic. He remains a mouse. Being small is a fact about his body, not a prediction of his life. Maybe that was what made him so inspiring to me: sometimes the most dangerous limitation is not being small, but learning to think small because everyone has told you that you are.