Mr. Popper's Penguins

Mrs. Popper is kindhearted, but practical and pragmatic. She has great affection for her absentminded husband and tolerates his artistic dreaminess; however, she is concerned with keeping the house tidy, planning economical family meals, and attending meetings of the Ladies’ Aid and Missionary Society. Mrs. Popper appears to handle the family’s finances, and she worries about meeting expenses during Mr. Popper’s annual period of unemployment during the winter months. Conversely, she adapts to the idea of sharing her home with one penguin, who is then followed by an additional 11 birds. She relinquishes her refrigerator and acquiesces to Mr. Popper’s renovation of the family home to create an elaborate, penguin-friendly environment.

Mrs. Popper is a more forthright and decisive personality than her husband. She suggests that the penguins perform before a large audience in order to replace entertainers who are absent rather than audition in private for Mr. Greenbaum. When Mr. Popper is overcome with anxiety and indecision about the correct course of action when his penguins invade the orchestra pit, Mrs. Popper boldly stands and retrieves the animals.

When it becomes clear that the penguins can no longer thrive while living in the Popper’s home, she is sensitive and intuitive when Mr. Popper discusses the situation with her. She helps him to evaluate the options of giving the penguins to Admiral Drake or sending them to Hollywood, but she knows that he must reach the decision on his own. Finally, when Admiral Drake gives Mr. Popper the opportunity of a lifetime in the form of an invitation to join a very long voyage to the North Pole, Mrs. Popper responds with generosity. She loves her husband, a housepainter with the soul of an artist, enough to allow him to join in the adventure.

Admiral Drake is one of Mr. Popper’s heroes. The Admiral is an Antarctic explorer, and Mr. Popper has written him a letter expressing admiration of the photos of his last expedition. Almost magically, Admiral Drake responds to Mr. Popper via short wave radio transmission to Stillwater when his expedition starts broadcasting from the Antarctic. He expresses his appreciation of Mr. Popper’s admiration by sending him the gift of a live penguin. The bird’s arrival alters the lives of the entire Popper family and results in a series of long awaited adventures for Mr. Popper.

Admiral Drake embodies some of the qualities of a guardian angel and is initiated in the form of a disembodied voice over the radio in the Popper’s living room. He lifts Mr. Popper’s spirits by acknowledging his fan letter; he arrives at a critical juncture to bail Mr. Popper and the penguins out of jail after a misunderstanding in New York City; and he brings Mr. Popper on an expedition to the Arctic to assist in the founding of a penguin colony. While the Admiral’s adventurous expeditions represent the antithesis of Mr. Popper’s parochial, small-town life, he ultimately rewards the humble housepainter by involving him in the creation of a new species in a region that was only available to Mr. Popper in his dreams.

The Popper children are generally depicted as well-behaved and fond of their parents, but they are not fully developed as characters. They assist with the care and training of the penguins and delight in playing with them in the snow drifts in their living room. The children are overjoyed when their parents take them out of school in Stillwater for 10 weeks to tour the country with the performing penguins, and they are supportive when their father wishes to leave for a voyage to the North Pole that will last for a year or two.

Mr. Greenbaum owns a national chain of theaters. Mr. Popper brings the penguins to meet him when he visits the local Stillwater theater. The theater owner is very impressed with the trained birds and offers the Poppers a 10-week contract at the rate of $5,000 per week. He is a very benign businessman and finds Mr. Popper in New York City after hearing about his incarceration due to a misunderstanding about the location of the theater where his act was to perform. Mr. Greenbaum introduces Mr. Popper to Mr. Klein, who offers the birds very lucrative work in the film industry.