49 pages • 1 hour read
A Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home
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Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “A Friend”
The terrified mouse fears that the human will eat her. Instead, Joseph pets her and talks to her as he works on the background of a sketch of a bird. He explains that he has been Mr. Audubon’s assistant for two years and that he was only 13 when he joined the naturalist on his travels. He recalls the day that he set out with Mr. Audubon on a flatboat. His mother cried, and he felt useless and in the way among the crew. As the boat pulled away and the figure of his mother receded in the distance, the 13-year-old found himself on the verge of tears. Mr. Audubon put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and told him, “Prepare for high adventure, son!” (87). The boy longs for home, but he knows that he could make a good living as an artist with Mr. Audubon’s training. Joseph feeds Celeste a peanut, and she is confused by this act of kindness. He puts the mouse in his shirt pocket. Joseph grows frustrated with his progress on the drawing and laments, “Mr. Audubon wants it perfect, and I can’t do it! [...] Little mouse, what am I to do?” (91).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Feet in the Gravy”
During the next several days, Joseph feeds Celeste treats, and she enjoys watching him draw. The boy castigates his own efforts as he draws, and Mr. Audubon offers frequent guidance and critiques as well. One day, Joseph puts Celeste in his shirt pocket and joins the Pirrie family for dinner. Celeste peeks her head out and marvels at the glittering tableware and mountains of delectable food on the table. Mrs. Pirrie spots the mouse, and she and her daughter flee from the room. Celeste runs across the table, narrowly avoiding the ladle Mr. Pirrie swings at her. She jumps onto the floor and is nearly eaten by the cat, but Joseph rescues her and puts her back in the birdcage in his room. The frightened mouse misses her safe, quiet home beneath the floorboards.
Chapter 11 Summary: “A Portrait”
The next day, Audubon gives Eliza a dance lesson while Joseph works hard on his botanical drawings. The frustrated boy discards his sketches on the floor. Seeking inspiration, he folds a handkerchief into a nest and sets Celeste inside. Using pencils of different shades, he draws “an exact likeness [of Celeste] with a warmth and spirit” (108). The boy uses graphite dust to capture Celeste’s pawprint next to his own signature. Then he rewards her with a peanut. Looking at her portrait fills Celeste with contentment.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Pigeons”
One afternoon, Joseph brings Celeste outside to work on his sketches. They notice a strange cloud darkening the sky even though there is no thunder or lightning to signal a storm’s approach. As the cloud grows nearer, Celeste realizes that she is seeing millions of pigeons, their feathers “mossy gray with iridescent highlights that shimmered violet, green, and copper” (116). Celeste and Joseph marvel at the beautiful birds. A group of men hurriedly pile branches in a field and set them ablaze. The smoke chokes thousands of birds, and the men kill thousands more with their guns. The men gather the pigeons into wagons so they can eat them later. Joseph is sickened by the “wholesale slaughter” (119), and Celeste tries in vain to shield her ears from the sounds of gunfire.
Chapter 13 Summary: “The River”
Joseph brings Celeste with him when he accompanies Mr. Audubon and a group of men to a river. The mouse gazes with admiration at the immense trees and cane growing on the banks. Thousands of birds congregate on and above the water. As she observes their movements, Celeste feels “strangely proud to be in [a] partnership” with Joseph (124). However, her sense of excitement and adventure comes to an abrupt end when some of the men shoot at a flock of ducks. Mr. Audubon has Joseph hold a slain teal as though it is flying so that he can sketch the bird. Disillusioned with Audubon’s art, Celeste curls up inside Joseph’s pocket.
Chapter 14 Summary: “A Close One”
As the humans ride their horses along the riverbank, Celeste admires the landscape’s sights and sounds from her perch on Joseph’s hat. Mr. Audubon shoots down an ivory-billed woodpecker, and the mouse hopes that she can assist the injured bird when they return to the plantation house. Mr. Audubon sends Joseph into a patch of tall cane to flush out wild turkey. One of the hunters’ bullets grazes the boy’s head. Joseph collapses, and his hat falls off, taking Celeste with it. The frightened mouse hurries back to her friend and climbs into his pocket. He reassures her, “It’s okay, Little One [...] It’s just a scratch” (138). After bandaging Joseph’s wound, the men take him back to the plantation. Celeste longs to go somewhere safe, but she’s no longer sure what home means for her.
Chapters 8-14 Analysis
In the novel’s second section, Celeste befriends Joseph and experiences both wonder at nature’s beauty and fear at how humans treat nature. Celeste’s first meeting with Joseph in Chapter 8 initially appears to be a setback in her Search for Home: “She hadn’t lived in her nest in the toe of the boot for long, but it had been home. Now it was out the window” (82). The mouse is terrified of the boy at first, but Cole is quick to establish Joseph’s gentleness and melancholy through his actions and his self-assessment that he is “lonely enough to talk to a mouse” (82). Joseph and Celeste’s relationship advances the theme of The Importance of Friendship because they are both badly in need of companionship. The author notes that “[i]t had been a long time since anyone had been kind to” Celeste (88), and the boy’s generosity initially confuses her after months with the cruel and greedy rats. For his part, Joseph struggles with feelings of inferiority and homesickness. He doesn’t think his artistic skills measure up to Audubon’s expectations, and he misses his mother and Cincinnati terribly. Celeste’s company is a comfort for his loneliness and anxiety. Joseph’s friendship solves a serious problem for Celeste as well. She no longer has to risk encountering the cat to acquire food.
Although Celeste begins to equate her new friend with home and safety in this section, Joseph cannot protect her from everything. The author establishes this fact in a dramatic scene in Chapter 10. The bountiful dining room table seems like a dream come true to Celeste but quickly becomes a nightmare when the Pirries spot her: “Celeste was fast and miraculously maneuvered through an obstacle course of plates and silverware and repeated swats of the ladle [...] She leaped off the tablecloth to a chair, and then to the floor. Right into the path of the cat” (101). The incident develops the theme of the search for home because it makes her miss the comparative safety of her nook under the dining room even though she was friendless there.
Celeste’s friendship with Joseph exposes her to two forms of beauty, art and nature, and the author begins to examine the relationship between the two. Cole depicts nature as a powerful source of inspiration for artists. For example, drawing Celeste helps Joseph conquer his artist’s block in Chapter 11. The mouse loves watching him draw and admires the portrait of her, suggesting that The Relationship Between Art and Nature can be mutually affirming. However, humans’ sense of ownership over the natural world and their disregard for animals’ lives threatens that balance. In Chapter 12, Celeste gazes in awe upon a flock of passenger pigeons: “The sight of it so exhilarated and amazed her, she wanted to be a part of it” (117). This atmosphere of peace and wonder descends into one of frenzy and fear as the hunters kill as many birds as they can. This slaughter is all the more grievous when the reader is aware that passenger pigeons are now extinct. Experiences like this deepen Celeste and Joseph’s protective love for nature and their horror at the way it is taken for granted.
A similar scene plays out in Chapter 13 during the trip to the river. Cole uses auditory imagery to capture the liveliness of the landscape before the hunters ply their trade: “The air was filled with the din of quacks and honks and whistles” (124). Unlike the pigeons in the previous chapter, the ducks aren’t killed for food but rather for Audubon’s paintings. This is one example of how birds serve as a motif for the relationship between art and nature. Although Celeste thinks of herself as Joseph’s partner, she grows disillusioned with the artists’ project because of the birds’ deaths. The cost of Audubon’s methods becomes even steeper when Joseph is grazed by a bullet while trying to flush wild turkey out of the grass. Joseph’s injury develops the themes of home and friendship by forcing Celeste to realize how much he means to her and how quickly she could lose the sanctuary he offers. As the novel continues, Celeste and Joseph grow closer and seek to mend the relationship between nature and art.
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