The Wind in the Willows (28 page)

12
(p. 140)
“And they’re telling the tradespeople and everybody that they’ve come to stay for good”:
Toad’s adventures and exploits as he describes them in this chapter, as well as his return home to find Toad Hall usurped by the stoats and weasels, are mock heroic in tone; they recall Odysseus and his return from the Trojan War to Ithaca, where suitors of his wife have moved into his house. See Lois R. Kuznet’s
Kenneth Grahame
for an in-depth analysis of the mythical element in Grahame’s book.

13
(p. 152)
The Return of Ulysses:
Toad is humorously compared to Ulysses (Odysseus) in his return to Toad Hall. Grahame underscored the mock-heroic element in this title and in the way Rat, Badger, Mole, and Toad arm themselves (p. 152) and then enter the banqueting hall: “The four Heroes strode wrathfully into the room!” (p. 154). Grahame uses the language of heroism in his description of the fight that ensues.

INSPIRED BY THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS

Sequels

William Horwood, whose popular Duncton novels also feature moles as main characters, wrote four successful sequels to
The Wind in the Willows
:
The Willows in Winter
(1993),
Toad Triumphant
(1995),
The Willows and Beyond
(1996), and
The Willows at Christmas
(1999). Horwood ably captures the rhythm, style, and spirit of the original story, taking Grahame’s beloved characters on new rounds of comical misadventures. Horwood’s first sequel,
The Willows in Winter,
maintains Grahame’s emphasis on adventure and loyalty. Toad has settled calmly on the river after the mishaps of
The Wind in the Willows,
but his reformation lasts only until he discovers the joy of flying airplanes. Toad’s dangerous new obsession coincides with the disappearance of Mole, who vanishes while searching for friends lost in a blizzard.

Toad Triumphant
features the first female animal character in the adventures of Mole, Toad, Rat, and Badger—a French sculptress whom Toad falls in love with. While the irascible hero ponders the advantages of matrimony, Mole and Rat stretch the boundaries of their provincial lives by rowing far upstream in search of “the mystery we have called Beyond.” In
The Willows and Beyond,
modern society encroaches upon the inhabitants of the Wild Wood. When upstream residents pollute the waters and housing developers target the river bank, the heroes relocate to Toad’s property in Lathbury Forest, a bittersweet ending that underscores the dubious benefits of human progress.

Horwood’s final sequel takes place in the span of time between
The Wind and the Willows
and
The Willows in Winter. The Willows at Christmas
has Toad disconsolate as he awaits the arrival of Mrs. Ffleshe, the annual houseguest who protects him from his own excesses and at the same time utterly ruins the holiday season. Mole’s attempt to aid Toad goes predictably awry, landing the former in jail and setting the stage for a thrilling escape. All of the Horwood sequels feature delightful cross-hatch illustrations by Patrick Benson, appropriately adding to the magic of Horwood’s text.

In Wild Wood (1981), Jan Needle takes a less benign view of Grahame’s seemingly innocent story. In a Marxist twist, Needle retells
The Wind in the Willows
from the point of view of the working-class weasels, stoats, and ferrets that populate the river community. The proletariat heroes of
Wild Wood
take over Toad’s manse and rename it Brotherhood Hall, an event that transcends the simple politics of
The Wind in the Willows
and demonstrates that there are two sides to every tale.

Theater and Film

The Wind in the Willows
was dramatized in 1929 by A. A. Milne, author of the animal classic
Winnie-the-Pooh
(1926). Milne’s play formed the basis for the first film adaptation of
The Wind in the Willows,
the black-and-white television movie
Toad of Toad Hall
(1946).

There have been many other cinematic adaptations of The Wind in
the Willows,
most of them animated and many made for television; animated made-for-TV versions appeared in 1984, 1987, and 1995. Fans particularly appreciated a 1983 animation directed by Mark Hall and Chris Taylor, one of two adaptations to appear that year. The Disney animated film
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
(1949) is a two-part featurette depicting the separate stories of Ichabod Crane, the schoolmaster from Washington Irving’s
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,
and the characters from The Wind in
the Willows.
The thirty-minute segment about Toad and his pals captures the humor and frenetic energy of the novel; many consider this warm-hearted and thoughtful short one of Disney’s finest achievements.

Terry Jones, best known for his work in the wacky Monty Python comedy troupe, directed the only live-action film based on The Wind in the Willows. Small, surreal details give this light, classically British adaptation—released in the United States in 1996 as
Mr. Toad’s Wild
Ride—much of its charm. In one segment a crew team of rabbits rows down the stream; in another a tweed-clad Toad chomps down on a fly. Director Jones, covered in green makeup, stars as Toad; Steve Coogan is Mole, and Nicol Williamson is Badger. Two of Jones’s Monty Python mates round out the cast: Eric Idle as Rat and John Cleese as Toad’s lawyer; veteran actor Stephen Fry plays the judge.

Animals in Literature

The tradition of using animals to dramatize truths about humanity dates back at least to the sixth century B.C. with the fables of Aesop. In the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the rise of industrialization and the rapid growth of modern cities seemed to create an appetite for stories about animals and an older way of life grounded in a natural world unspoiled by man.

History’s best-selling children’s book, Beatrix Potter’s
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
(1900), preceded
The Wind in
the Willows by several years. It tells story of Mrs. Rabbit and her four bunny children, one of whom is the impish Peter. When he sneaks into a forbidden garden, Peter faces not only the wrath of his mother and the scorn of his siblings, but the threat of being made into rabbit pie by the angry Mr. McGregor.

The hero of Jack London’s
The Call of the Wild
(1903) is an animal without human qualities. Buck is a dog reared on an estate in California. Kidnapped and sold to Alaskan gold-hunters, Buck must learn the way of his wolf-ancestors in order to survive the bitter conditions of his harsh new environment. A companion piece, London’s
White Fang
(1906), tells the story of a half-wolf, half-dog nearly destroyed by human cruelty.

The occasional barge-woman notwithstanding, Grahame’s novel excludes human characters. In contrast, Rudyard Kipling’s
Jungle Books
(1894, 1895) and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan
of the Apes
(1914), while romanticizing animals and nature, primarily focus on orphaned humans who become exemplary figures after they are adopted by animals. The two
Jungle Books,
set in India, center on Mowgli, raised by wolves after his family is killed by the tiger Shere Khan.
Tarzan of the Apes
describes the African adventures of an orphaned British nobleman who is raised by the gentle ape Kala and becomes king of the jungle.
Tarzan of the Apes
was immensely popular, and Burroughs wrote more than twenty sequels. Unlike Grahame’s and Potter’s stories, the novels by London, Kipling, and Burroughs are not written for children.

Winnie-the-Pooh
(1926), by A. A. Milne, one of Grahame’s biggest supporters, has become a children’s classic. Inspired by the imaginary conversations of the toys of Milne’s young son, Christopher Robin, the story follows the adventures of the lovable bear Pooh, who can’t get enough honey, his bouncy friend Tigger, the anti-social donkey Eeyore, and shy little Piglet. Like
The Wind in the Willows, Winnie-the-Pooh
has inspired many successful animated adaptations.

Notable animal stories for children published later in the twentieth century include Stuart Little (1945),
Charlotte’s Web
(1952), and
The Trumpet of the Swan
(1970), all by E. B. White;
Where the Wild Things Are
(1963), by Maurice Sendak; the stories of Arnold Lobel, including
Frog and Toad Are Friends
(1970) and
Fables
(1980); and Mrs.
Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
(1971), by Robert C. O’Brien, and
Racso and the Rats of NIMH
(1986), by his daughter Jane Leslie Conly.

COMMENTS & QUESTIONS

In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse
as
reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the
work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Kenneth
Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows through
a
variety of points of view and bring about
a
richer understanding of this enduring work.

Comments

THE ATHENÆUM

A simple-hearted Mole, a Water Rat of a poetical temperament, and a wealthy, boastful, and extravagant Toad, with a fine Tudor mansion and a passion for motor-cars, are the principal personages in Mr. Kenneth Grahame’s
The Wind in the Willows.
There is also a didactic Badger who is made at times the medium for conveying information that may be edifying to youthful readers; and, indeed, all the animals are capable of unusually serious moments, notably in the case of the vision of Pan beheld by the Mole and the Rat. The story rambles along in a vein of delightful extravagance, the misfortunes and ultimate reformation of the wayward Toad being among its most pleasant and stirring episodes; but the author seems not to have given himself up whole-heartedly to his fantasy, and is apt to hinder the charm of his incongruities by spasmodic efforts to make them congruous. These cavillings apart, the book, with its scenes of river, forest, and field, and its whimsical incursions into the human world, forms an all but perfect blending of idyll and inconsequence.—November 21, 1908

—November 21, 1908

THE NATION

It is difficult to describe the impression made by this beautifully written book, or to determine whether it was intended for children, for grown people, or for grown-up children—perhaps it was meant for all. It is full of dewy nature, breathes the open air of field, winding river, and forest. The pipes of Pan are in it, the lure of far blue distances, strange whiffs from gypsy-land. There is wood magic and melody enough in it—apart from the sprinkled songs—to set up a minor poet for life. Yet it tantalizingly fails in its total effect. It goes at times as far over the heads of children as at others it descends beneath the heads of adults. It seems as if the author had set out to write a kind of poetical journal of a group of high-spirited collegians in their Wanderjahr. When he had done, it seems, in an odd whim he blotted out the names of human characters and wrote in their stead Water Rat, Toad, Mole, Badger, and Otter. Aside from their names, there is nothing to connect their adventures with the lower animal world. The result is neither a naive animal story nor evenly sustained allegory—it is a sort of puzzling medley with many happy lucid intervals and promise of better things.

—December 24, 1908

WALTER CLAYTON

There aren’t very many people who can sing out to us, “Come and play!”, with that right alluring utterance that makes us cast aside our workaday concerns and fare forth again adventurous as in the wonder-years before we left off trailing clouds of glory. When Tusitala died, and the swarthy-skinned Samoans buried him beneath the wide and starry sky on the summit of that mountain, aloof above the huge pacific seas, whose pines are evermore made musical by singing birds, it looked for a while as if nobody was left to play with us. Of course there remained that Barrie fellow who knows all the ducks in Kensington Gardens and agrees with us that it is very foolish to grow up; but he obstinately made up his mind to play only in a play-house thenceforward, instead of telling us stories as of yore. Then along came a chap named Kenneth Grahame, who had the true miraculous voice and reminded us of the dream days of our golden age. Surely he knew how to play! He had not forgotten that everything on earth is wonderful, that the commonest action is romance, that all work rightly undertaken is good fun, that hardship is adventure, that sorrow is poetry, and that happiness is religion....

The Wind in the Willows
is a poem in praise of the glory that can never really pass away from earth, unless we allow ourselves to grow up and forget—which, you may be sure, we shall never, never do, until what time the birds shall cease to sing about the tomb of Tusitala. It reveals anew the miracle of out-of-doors. The romance of the river, the allurement of the open road, the tremulous ecstatic terrors of the wild wood, the sad sweet tug of heart-strings by the sense of home, the poignant wander-longing, the amusement of adventure,—all these moods of simple wonderment are told and sung in its enchanting pages....

In the original and undefiled sense of the word, Mr. Grahame’s work is worthy mainly because it is irradiated by the spirit of the amateur. He writes because he loves to: he is too child-like and playful to subside into the mere professional man of letters.
The Wind in the Willows
is fun to read because the author wrote it for fun. It ranges through all the moods of natural enjoyment: it is humorous and beautiful, it combines satire with sentiment, it is serious and jocund. An uproarious chapter, which satirizes the modern subservience to the latest fads, is followed by a chapter in which, mystically, we are brought face to face with the very God of out-of-doors. Mr. Grahame talks in whatever mood most enchants him at the time: his range is as various and as free as the aeolian breathing of the wind in the willows.