To a Mouse

“And all of those best laid plans”

Angela & Uncle Jerry identify 'best laid plans' as a direct literary allusion to Robert Burns' poem 'To a Mouse,' in which a farmer plowing his field destroys a mouse's home and reflects that all plans, of mice and men, end in grief and pain. Uncle Jerry argues the allusion is perfect for the song: the man has torn apart the speaker's world and left her to die like the mouse whose home cannot be rebuilt before winter. He notes that Taylor hits the allusion with just three words, and that the subtlety is characteristic of how allusions create community, 'if you know, you know.'

“My best laid plan”

Uncle Jerry identifies 'My best laid plan' as a direct allusion to Robert Burns's 'To a Mouse,' in which a farmer ploughing his field destroys a mouse's nest and reflects that the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Angela & Uncle Jerry draw a sustained connection between the mouse's fate and the speaker's situation in hoax: just as the mouse cannot rebuild before winter because its stored provisions have been scattered and its shelter torn apart, the speaker's carefully laid plans for the relationship have been destroyed, leaving her on frozen ground with no way forward. Uncle Jerry notes that the allusion is not merely decorative but interplays with the poem's diction, particularly the 'frozen ground' imagery, since the mouse in Burns's poem will starve or freeze in the coming winter.