A Nest for Celeste: A Story About Art, Inspiration, and the Meaning of Home

From the title to the resolution, nests serve as a motif for the theme of The Search for Home. Celeste’s childhood home is an idyllic place, “a nest made of grasses in a tangle of timothy hay and wildflowers” (158). The various nests that Celeste lives in over the course of the story represent her efforts to regain the safety, warmth, and comfort she experienced in this original nest. When the novel begins, the mouse lives in a dusty nook under the floorboards where she experiences bullying and loneliness. Significantly, the narrator never refers to this place as a nest, which reveals that it provides some refuge but is ultimately unfit as a home. In Chapter 6, Celeste constructs “a satisfactory nest” in the toe of a boot (66). Although short-lived, this temporary home represents an improvement in the protagonist’s circumstances because she is actively seeking a place where she feels safe rather than stagnating in the dim and inhospitable space under the house due to fear and inertia. The nest in the boot leads to Celeste meeting Audubon’s apprentice. During her time with Joseph, the mouse rests in his pocket and in a bandana that he folds into “a bowl-shaped nest for Celeste” (106).