Runaway Ralph

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1970

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Background

Series Context: The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Beverly Cleary’s series on Ralph S. Mouse follows Ralph from his initial meeting with Keith at the Mountain View Inn through his adventures at Happy Acres Camp and finally his stay at the housekeeper’s son Ryan’s school. All three books feature anthropomorphic animals—although only Ralph communicates directly with the people around him. In each book, Ralph has a relationship with a boy who can understand his needs and desires because of their shared view of the world. Reading all three books provides a full picture of Ralph’s development, but each stands on its own. All the Ralph books focus on different aspects of friendship and understanding, while following Ralph through his trials and growth. All three books are in Ralph’s limited third-person point of view.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle, published in 1965, introduces Ralph and explains how he gets his beloved motorcycle. He befriends eight-year-old Keith, who stays in the hotel with his parents over the Fourth of July holiday weekend. Keith has a motorcycle toy, which awakens a yearning for adventure in Ralph and leads to Ralph talking to Keith—both discovering that if the right mouse talks to the right child, they can understand each other. Keith helps Ralph with food, and when Keith gets sick, Ralph saves him by finding a much-needed aspirin. In gratitude, Keith leaves the motorcycle with Ralph and makes him a crash helmet to keep him safe. Ralph is characterized as different from any other mouse he knows, and Keith is a kindred spirit whose parents don’t really understand that he’s in the process of growing up. The help they offer one another forges a bond between them and teaches Ralph that some humans are trustworthy and better as friends than strangers.

Runaway Ralph is the sequel to The Mouse and the Motorcycle, published in 1970. The lessons Ralph learned about the potential benefits of befriending humans color his expectations when he first sees Garfield (Garf) in the lobby of the Mountain View Hotel. He associates Garf with Keith and believes Garf may represent the same shared worldview, as well as a wealth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When Ralph’s parental figures force him to share his motorcycle, he runs away to the camp where Garf has gone in hopes of finding freedom and companionship. Ralph and Garf have many shared traits, but Runaway Ralph focuses on a different stage of personal development than The Mouse and the Motorcycle. The two primary characters face challenges related to independence, fear, and the struggle to trust others.

Ralph S. Mouse is the third and last book in the trilogy. Ralph’s excursions through the hotel on his motorcycle cause the staff to discover there are mice, so Ralph’s family and his friend Matt are threatened. Ralph enlists Ryan’s help to leave the hotel and keep his family safe. At school, Ralph is discovered by the teacher and is made the class pet. He runs through mazes and interacts in various ways with the students. The primary conflict of Ralph S. Mouse focuses on Brad, who appears to be a bully, but over time, Ralph and Ryan learn that Brad is lonely because his parents have divorced, which leads him to impulsive behavior that results in Ralph’s beloved motorcycle being broken. Finally, Ryan and Brad establish a friendship helped in large part by Ralph’s ability to understand both boys. Ryan’s and Brad’s parents meet and fall in love, and Brad gives Ralph a sports car to replace the motorcycle. The series ends with Ralph learning to include and protect his relatives and his human friends, having reached yet another major step in the development of his maturity.

Authorial Context: Beverly Cleary

Beverly Cleary is one of the most prodigious and successful American children’s book authors of the 20th century. She published Henry Huggins, her first book, in 1950 and went on to write more than 40 books, which won many awards, including the Newberry Medal and the National Book Award for Children’s Books, primarily for her Ramona books about the precocious eight-year-old Ramona Quimby and her elder sister, Beezus. Before writing full-time, Cleary was a children’s librarian in her native Oregon. She died in 2021 at the age of 104 and published her final book in 1999.

Cleary’s books are praised largely for their emotional complexity. Although written in relatively simple prose that is accessible to elementary school-age children, she focuses on the emotional struggles that are universal to children throughout time and culture. She also typically writes realistic fiction—Ralph is a notable exception in that he can talk to certain special boys who understand loneliness and the attraction of toy motorcycles. Even though the Ralph books focus on a mouse, the real magic of all of Cleary’s books is contained in her ability to describe the challenges of childhood. Credited by a New York Times editorial as an author who encouraged boys to love reading, Cleary’s treatment of childhood crises and her clear understanding that childhood is full of tension without the addition of manufactured or magical conflicts sets her apart from many children’s book authors (Levithan, David. “Beverly Cleary Helped Boys Love Books.” New York Times, 2021). As Levithan points out, Cleary’s treatment of young boys in novels like Henry Huggins and Runaway Ralph presents a portrait of boyhood that resonates deeply with many boys and encourages a lifelong love of reading in a population generally underserved by much of children’s literature.

Cultural Context: The 1960s

Runaway Ralph was originally published in 1970, and many of the themes and experiences explored in the novel reflect the conflicted and rebellious aspects of 1960s America. This period in America was marked by massive innovation in technology with the moon landing and space exploration and the advancement of television, film, radio, and telecommunications. Politically, however, the 1960s were tumultuous. The Vietnam War spurred anti-war protests and catalyzed the rebellious anti-authority hippie counterculture. The civil rights movement brought attention to the massive racial problems in the American South, and the raid by the police of the Stonewall Inn in New York City in 1969 is largely considered to be the initiation of the gay rights movement. John F. Kennedy’s assassination devastated and shocked the nation while the political powder-kegs of Vietnam and Cuba loomed threateningly over American culture. Although the 1960s also introduced economic policies that sought to address problems of poverty and inequality, the problems in American society became inescapably apparent due largely to increased television technology (“The 1960s History.” History, 26 June 2020).

The turmoil and rebellion that the 1960s is so well known for was exacerbated by the gulf between the adolescent and young adult generation and that of their parents. The primary reason that Ralph chooses to run away from the hotel is generational conflict. He is at odds with the older generation, represented by his uncle and mother, and the younger generation, represented by his siblings and cousins. Like many teens and young adults in the 1960s, Ralph is caught between an old guard and a new era, which intensifies The Allure of Rebellion, a major theme throughout the book. Another major theme of the book, The Reciprocal Nature of Empathy, is a potential solution to the tumult of the political world of the 1960s. Although Runaway Ralph is a children’s book, the importance and reward of practicing understanding with those who are different presents a model for solving and avoiding the problems brought to public consciousness during the 1960s.