The Wind in the Willows
The Wind in the Willows is a 1908 British children's novel written by Kenneth Grahame. The book follows the adventures of four anthropomorphized animals: Badger, Mole, Rat and Toad. The Wind in the Willows is considered by many to be a classic.
Plot
On a warm spring morning in rural England, the Mole is busy spring-cleaning his home. He grows tired of it and digs a tunnel up to the surface, where he marvels in the beauty of springtime. After arriving at the river, he befriends the Rat (who is actually a water vole), who makes his home beside the river and spends his time in boats. They become fast friends during a picnic and get to meet some other characters in the story: brave Otter, solitary Badger, and eccentric Toad. Rat invites Mole to live with him for a little while as he teaches him how to row and swim.
Summer comes, and Mole wants to properly greet Toad, who is rich and owns a manor called Toad Hall. Toad is shown to be friendly and jovial but is also aimless and arrogant. becoming obsessed with a fad one day and skipping to the other the next. On this day, Toad has given up boating and has decided to travel in his horse-drawn carriage, inviting Mole and Rat to join him on a journey throughout England. They haven't gone long and far when they run afoul of some people speeding along in their motorcar, upsetting the carriage and startling the horse. Toad is fascinated with the motorcar and abandons carriages to go to the next fad: motorcars.
Mole has wanted to pay a visit to Badger for some time. Rat, however, knows that Badger doesn't like visits because he's not a fan of society and advises against going to find him. On a cold late fall day, Mole goes off on his own to the Wild Wood, where Badger lives. He gets lost, frightened by the less welcoming residents of the Wild Wood, and hides in a hole in a tree. Rat gets an idea where Mole may be and heads off to the Wild Wood, with a pistol and a cudgel on hand. He does find his friend hiding in a hollowed-out tree and waits until Mole recovers.
While finding their way home, they literally stumble across Badger's house; Mole had tripped over a boot scraper on Badger's doorstep. Badger has been ready to go to bed and is at first irritable at being disturbed, but he recognizes Rat and Mole and welcomes them warmly, inviting them to spend the night in his large and cozy underground home. The two travelers are provided warm food and dry clothes, and the three have a good time talking with each other. It's also when Mole and Rat reveal that Toad has been very reckless with his obsession with motorcars, crashing a lot and wasting money with lots of hospital visits and more motorcars. Badger promises that when summer comes around, he'll help Mole and Rat make Toad come to his senses.
In the cold winter days of December, Mole senses his old home nearby and wants to find it. Rat - at first not understanding the situation - decides to help his friend out, first with finding the home and then tidying it up so that it becomes livable again. They invite some mice singing Christmas carols into Mole's house for dinner, when they have a good time. Mole isn't ready to give up his life of adventures with Rat, but he's at least happy to have his old home to come back to.
Summer arrives, and Badger arrives at Rat's house to announce that it's time to snap Toad out of his reckless behavior. They head over to Toad Hall, where Badger tries talking Toad out of his obsession with motor cars. When Toad refuses to give up his mania, his friends place him under house arrest, guarding his room until he sees the error of his ways. Soon, Toad pretends to be sick and successfully tricks Rat so that he can escape. Rat is scolded for being gullible, but Badger and Mole relent and are at least happy to not waste more time with Toad.
Toad comes across a motorcar in the village and decides to drive in it. He crashes it and is arrested, thrown into the dungeon for twenty years. It's thanks to kindness from the jailer's daughter that he's able to break out of prison in the guise of a washerwoman. He asks for help from an engineer and a horse-drawn barge. He briefly gets hired by the barge woman, but he gets thrown into the river after botching up the recent load of laundry. In revenge, Toad steals the woman's horse and sells it to a gypsy. He comes across the same motorcar that he stole and got arrested for, won over by his passion and ends up stealing it. This gets the attention of the police, who chase him until he falls into the river with the motorcar.
While Toad has his adventures, there are two other stories about his riverside friends. The first has Mole and Rat looking for Otter's lost son Portly, Otter worried that Portly never goes missing for too long. Fortunately, they do find him unharmed and in the presence of the Greek satyr Pan. Pan removes their memories of this meeting "lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure". This inspires Rat for his latest poem while he and Mole are on their way home. The second story tells of Rat feeling restless one late summer day, as if something is missing from his life. He meets a sea rat who tells him about his adventures out at sea, exploring places like Greece and Italy. Tempted and going crazy, Rat tries to abandon his riverside home, but Mole snaps him out of it. To Rat's credit, he does come to his senses and decides to stay by the river, but he does get inspired by the stories that the sea rat has told him and decides to try some poetry about it.
Back with Toad's adventure, Toad drifts a while before coming to the home of Rat, who brings him to his house. Mole and Badger had stayed at Toad Hall and have been keeping things there in order until the weasels, stoats, and ferrets from the Wild Wood chased them out. Hearing this, Toad tries confronting the Wild Wood residents, but they destroy Rat's boat in the process, leading to Rat calling out Toad for all his misdeeds. Toad regrets what he has put his three friends through and promises to make it up to them, and the four friends come up with a plan to drive the Wild Wood animals out and take back Toad Hall.
Once the Wild Wood animals are driven out, Toad is to host a feast for all of his neighbors, to herald his return. He is discouraged from singing songs or making speeches during this, which at first disheartens the amphibian before he composes himself. Toad sings one song to himself and confidently attends the feast, becoming a more humble animal; he even makes up for his wrongdoings by seeking out and compensating those he had wronged. After this, he, Mole, Rat, and Badger live peacefully and happily ever after in the English countryside.
Characters
Mole: Mole is a quiet, ordinary fellow who gets caught up in huge adventures and arguably shares the role of spotlight character with Mr. Toad. Soft-spoken and a dedicated homebody, he nonetheless sometimes gets wild urges to go out into the wild and "hang spring cleaning!" At first in total awe of the hustle and bustle of the world above his home, he adapts to a busier and eventful life, and he later shows that he's good with children (such as welcoming mouse children singing Christmas carols to feast with him and Rat in Mole's newly refurbished home). He is also best friends with Rat and calls him "Ratty".
Rat: Rat is Mole's best friend - often addressing him as "Moley" - and is fiercely loyal to his other friends. He feels at home by the river and stubborn when it comes to doing things outside his riverside lifestyle ("What it hasn't got is not worth having, and what it doesn't know is not worth knowing.") and happily messing about in boats. He's also fond of writing poetry and looks for inspiration. Whenever Badger isn't present, Rat acts as the voice of reason and is somewhat annoyed by the fast pace of modern living. In spite of being called a rat, he's actually a water vole (which is also called a water rat, hence his name).
Toad: Toad is one of the spotlight characters in the book, living a fancy rich life in Toad Hall (which he had inherited from his father). He is most famous for throwing himself to the latest fads one day and then dropping that fad to go to another fad the next; for example, the story begins with him taking to boating and then to carts and then to motorcars (his latest obsession). While he can be spoiled, conceited, and impulsive, he does value his friends and wants to do right by them, admitting at times when he's slipped up and done something stupid. Several chapters in the book chronicle his latest fad getting him into trouble with the law, being thrown into prison, and escaping.
Badger: Badger is a hermit living by himself in the middle of the Wild Wood, in an underground set. He's a large and fearsome animal who hates going into society (and doesn't approve of things like not putting elbows on tables, though it's shown that he took too narrow a view on this), but he can be welcoming to his friends and is kind to children. Like Mole, he has a fondness for living underground since they're both burrowing animals; in fact, his home had been built by the Romans when they lived in Great Britain before being claimed by badgers. He is also a friend of Toad's late father, uncompromising with Toad yet remains optimistic that his good qualities will prevail.
Otter:: While not a main protagonist, Otter is a friend of all four animals. A brave and boisterous animal, he is perfectly at home on the river with his son Portly. He is also one of the few animals besides Badger to go through the Wild Wood by himself and not be scared.
The Weasels: The weasels of the Wild Wood are a rowdy group of animals that take over Toad Hall while Toad is in prison. They eventually get overthrown by the four friends and have become mostly reformed.
The Seafarer: This is a ship's rat who takes a short break from his seafaring ways and talks to Rat about his adventures at sea, going to places like Constantinople. His stories briefly lull Rat into trying to leave the river, but Mole brings him back to his senses.
Pan: Pan is a satyr from Greek mythology who is said to watch over the wild animals, who see him as a god. Mole and Rat see him when they find Otter's son Portly, and he wipes the memory of this encounter out of their minds.
Film adaptations
In 1949, Walt Disney released his version of The Wind in the Willows in his film The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, sharing this with Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He has done some changes like Toad being framed for stealing the motorcar instead of actually stealing it himself and changing Rat from a sailor with a Bohemian streak to a stuffy yet caring Englishman.
1983 saw the release of a stop-motion animated movie with more musical numbers than what the book contained. This soon gave way to an animated TV series, two which contain stories from the book: Mole and Rat encountering Pan and Rat wishing to go sailing.
An animated film was adapted in 1995 that follows the book almost faithfully, which is then followed in 1996 by a sequel called The Willows in Winter.
External links
- The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame - Audiobook at LibriVox
