The Wind in the Willows

The children and I recently finished Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. I first read this book while I was in the fourth grade, and I remember how my mind would wander and wander, and when I finally came back around to the meaning of the words and chapters before me, I had obviously missed significant details of the plot and narration. The children felt this same meandering spirit as we worked our way through the novel, and I reminded them that their moving attentions mirrored the river that similarly wandered throughout the novel itself. What would The Wind in the Willows be without the river and its muddy banks, its flowing currents, its rushing energy? In many ways, the river is *the* central character of this beautiful story: it is the place that beckons all of the animals into its friendly habitation; it is the place that can finally tame Toad of his vainglorious ways when he emerges soggy and defeated after a spill into its waters; it is the place that embodies the seasons in its frozen surface in winter, its green life-brimming capacity in the summer; it is the place where Rat and Mole and Toad can return after an unsure path into the Wild Wood, pleased to be home.

How surprising that Grahame's animal-centric novel captures the definitive moments of the human experience: nostalgia, homesickness, loneliness, the terror of the night, ego, pride, the passage of time, sublimity in the encounter with the divine, the grace of a sunrise, restlessness, homecoming, forgiveness, friendship.

The most sublime chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," gives us also the novel's title when Rat, hearing the wind in the willows, becomes transfixed by the beauty of the sound and the lush surroundings, "O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us!" And then, after rowing a considerable distance, Rat whispers, "This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me…Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!" "Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror---indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy---but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near." Clearly a reference to the pagan god, Pan, the Rat and the Mole worship the deity in their midst with fear and trembling in their hearts, but with sincerity, awe, and devotion. And as instantly as they were summoned by this spirit of nature, the vision vanished and the pair struggled to articulate, nay even remember, their encounter with the divine. Grahame writes, "For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before."

Another sweet and good chapter, aptly titled, is "Dulce Domum" in which Mole returns to his humble home however cozy and small it is in comparison to Toad's beautiful hall or Badger's great house. "Never for a moment did [Mole] dream of abandoning [Rat]. Meanwhile, the wafts from his old home pleaded, whispered, conjured, and finally claimed him imperiously. He dared not tarry longer within their magic circle. With a wretch that tore his very heartstrings he set his face down the road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him for his new friendship and his callous forgetfulness." Once Rat realizes how he had selfishly neglected his friend's longing for home, Rat and Mole turn back toward Mole's "dulce domum." Once settled back into his dust-covered home of yesterday, Mole (in free indirect discourse) "saw clearly how plain and simple---how narrow, even---it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun and air and all they offered him and creep home and stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to come back to, this place which was all his own, these things which were so glad to see him again and could always be counted upon for the same simple welcome."

In the chapter, "Wayfarers All," Grahame describes the urge toward migration with its push toward Southern climes and its eventual pull back toward familiar surroundings: so says the swallow, "First, we feel it stirring with us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us…" and another swallow resounds, "In due time, we shall be homesick once more for quiet water lilies swaying on the surface of an English stream. But today all that seems pale and thin and very far away. Just now our blood dances to other music."

And, in many respects, the Wayfaring Rat describes his Southward adventures not unlike the passage unto death as an ancestor who has experienced it before: "And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithe some step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company. You can easily overtake me on the road, for you are young, and I am aging and go softly. I will linger, and look back; and at last I will surely see you coming, eager and light-hearted, with all the South in your face!"