The Trumpet of the Swan Literary Elements

Children's novel, Bildungsroman tradition

Rural Canada, Billings, Boston, and Philadelphia

Third-person omniscient narrator

The tone is hopeful overall, as is characteristic of most Bildungsroman novels.

Louis the Swan is the protagonist. There is no major antagonist except to the extent that people's interests misalign with those of Louis. The zookeeper who tries to pinion Serena is an antagonist.

Louis, having been born mute, must somehow learn to communicate to function in the swan world. He must also repay the debt incurred by his father, who stole a trumpet to help Louis make noises similar to the voices of others of his species.

The climax of the book comes when Louis physically defends the exhausted Serena from being pinioned by the zookeepers.

The cob, Louis's father, breaks into a store successfully once. This foreshadows his serious injury when he returns to pay for the trumpet he stole.

"To get lost in the woods or swamps of western Canada would be a serious matter." For an eleven-year-old child like Sam, it would probably be fatal.

Many of the characters make reference to the jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, whose style Louis strives to imitate.

The bird imagery throughout the book is striking: there are details about wings, webbed feet, and the long white necks and black bills.

To communicate with his fellow swans and live among them happily, Louis must live for an extended period of time among humans.

Louis's growing financial success and his fame within the human world parallel his need to return to his own. He is not truly happy until he finds Serena and wins her heart.

The frog, buried in the mud, knows that spring is near. This frog represents the multitude of animals in the forest.

The swans are personified, or in fact anthropomorphized, when the narrator gives them human motivations and emotions. The remorse felt by the cob after having stolen the trumpet is more characteristic of what a human being might feel.