Stone Yard Devotional

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal death and death.

Mice are a plague in Stone Yard Devotional, overwhelming the protagonist and the sisters at the abbey. As their numbers grow and their violations of the abbey increase, these mice become a symbol that represents the COVID-19 pandemic and the chaos unleashed on the world by environmental collapse. Stone Yard Devotional occurs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and references to it are made throughout, but the protagonist is protected and removed from it because of the isolation of the abbey. However, the mice, and the responsibilities that come with disposing of them, mirror the experiences and scenes of the pandemic happening in the world outside: “We wore latex gloves and surgical masks. A macabre job: the smell, the soft bodies tumbling by the shovel load. I closed my eyes as I pushed the shovel into the pile” (147). Even though none of the sisters suffer from the virus, and their lack of contact with the outside world keeps them safe, the ever-rising pile of mouse corpses mirrors events happening in the wider world.

The mice’s presence and deaths reflect the pandemic in more ways than just the cleaning of the traps.