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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.

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