The Shaman and the ISness of TO BE

Russell Hoban has compared himself as a writer to a shaman—willing to admit the unseen and making himself a medium for the quality of the unseen in his novels. This article explores Hoban’s highly-regarded The Mouse and His Child (1967) with this comparison in mind. The writer interweaves Mircea Eliade’s study of shamanism with an examination of the experiences of the protagonists of the novel—The Mouse and His Child. In so doing, she reveals many elements of shamanism in the text which, it is argued, reaches a conclusion which is consistent with the central tenets of the Indian philosophical system of Advaita