Second Section of Wind in the Willows (chapters 5 – 8)
1) In Chapter 5, Mole and Rat go by Mole’s house and Mole is reminded, “but it was my own little home--and I was fond of it--and I went away and forgot all about it--and then I smelt it suddenly--on the road, when I called and you wouldn't listen, Rat--and everything came back to me with a rush--and I WANTED it!” – what did you think about Mole’s reaction to his home?
3) In Chapter 6 despite everyone else’s best efforts, Toad escapes, steals a car, and a Wild Ride ensues. What did you think of this episode, and did it confirm or change your opinion of Toad?
4) In the next chapter Badger’s son goes missing and is found by Mole and Rat with Pan. What did you think of the description of Pan and of their meeting?
5) Chapter 8 finds Toad jailed (or gaoled ) for his crimes. Ulimately he befriends the gaoler’s daughter and escapes. Does this episode teach Toad anything? Do you think this was a reasonable punishment?
6) Anything that I’ve missed or anything you’d like to mention?
Thank you for coming along, I’m greatly enjoying the story and everyone’s comments and thoughts. I learn so much from these. Read-a-longs.
(photo credit)
posted by Mimi @ 8/09/2010 07:38:00 PM
18 Comments
18 Comments:
1) Oh poor Mole! I love how KG uses all the imagery of bleak midwinter to get us thinking about the peace and pleasure of our own cosy fireside while we're still outside with the weary travellers. I'd forgotten that even when the scent of his old home takes hold so strongly, Mole will not forsake Rat, and trudges on miserably after him. The flip side to that loyalty is that he just can't assert himself. Even when they do eventually stop, it has to be Rat who says it's all right to go back. Mole's courage keeps failing him, even when his paw is back on his native heath - 'the tactful Rat' has to convince him several times that it's a 'capital little house' with everything they need. Rat even has to make sure they eat (indeed buys some of the food), and engineers Mole into a festive mood, for his own sake and everyone else's. it doesn't reflect very well on the emotional Mole really, makes him seem a bit self-centred when he is so overcome - but then, what are moles other than short-sighted?
2) I think Rat takes pleasure in seeing his friend happy and at ease back in his old home - he is evidently also interested to see how Mole used to live. (Perhaps it's about time for a little reciprocal hospitality, too?) He's a trump for making the best of what might have been an awkward situation, but he likes a challenge. Mole of course has all the home comforts of past Christmases with the added delight of sharing them with his friend, to whom (he assumes) they are new. Don't the fieldmice carol on the river bank?
3) The Wild Ride is a glorious piece of naughtiness, and somehow I can't take it seriously as a Terrible Crime - though really, it is. Badger and the Forces of the Law are so pompous, I have to be on Toad's side as he 'sullenly but stoutly' refuses to reform. But it does confirm my opinion of Toad as totally selfish and incorrigible.
4) I never liked this part - I always thought the Pan episode was something KG should have kept to himself. If possible in this most nostalgic of stories, I felt it was too sentimental! But reading it again I enjoyed yet another passage of lovely description, and I think it marks a change in the relationship between Rat and Mole - though Rat is more sensitive to the new music, their shared and it seems to me equal experience of the Friend and Helper puts them on a more equal footing as true friends and not so much novice and initiate.
6) The escape from jail teaches Toad only that, yet again, money and a silver tongue can get him out of anything - the ultimate spoiled brat. On the other hand 20 years for cheeking the magistrate was obviously ridiculous, so in a way I had to be pleased that Toad managed to get away. I suppose it's heartwarming that Toad's world is peopled largely with kind and well-meaning persons. Those who see through him are seldom as sympathetic as the lovely characters who are taken in!
1)I loved how Mole remembered his house and how he missed it. The last line of the chapter was so amazing about how we feel about our home, I loved it: “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." This was a very satisfying chapter.
2) I loved the caroling – I think that’s something that is quintessentially English (amongst other traditions) and I liked how Rat helped to make the feast for the field mice. I like what Anna said about how it ties in with the riverbank too.
3) Ugh. Toad. Although I did laugh at how everyone was trying to keep him from himself, and he had to sneak out of the window to steal the car.
4) I think it had to be Pan, because they are animals. But, there was the most amazing scene about their being in the presence of the divine that I found really applicable to the spiritual life: “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.” And the ending of the chapter where they have this memory, but it is too searing to be a strong memory, “But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can re-capture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.”
5) I also thought that his sentence was over the top for the crime, but I also think that Toad is needing a good comeuppance. This is another place where I think the fact that he’s not human sized, but is fooling people by being dressed as a washer woman is a big disconnect. Maybe I have the hardest time with the anthropomorphizing of Toad.
6) I really think that the story is zipping along in this section, and these vignettes are wonderful.
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Sorry, it told me that it was too big, and then took it all. Grrrr.
1 -- Chapter 5: All right, am I the only one who *still* can't get through that chapter without crying? All of Grahame's abilities come to bear -- he writes so effectively of the things that live in your deepest heart, and you end up wanting Mole's home almost as much a he does.
2 -- Don't we love these Dickensian-sounding Yuletide scenes? I could be the Christian grump and notice that by this time, Christmas seems to be more about winter and the pleasures of the hearth than anything religious, but I think I'll just lighten up.
3 -- What an immoral little bugger Toad is! I think this was the point when I really became kind of turned off by this character, and I know that sounds stupid. But there's something incredible about stealing a car and wrecking it with NO discernible pangs of conscience.
4 -- I hadn't remembered this chapter, and I didn't really care for it. The Annotated Wind in the Willows mentions that Grahame was sympathetic to the organized Pagan movement that had been going on, but probably not a die-hard supporter. This quasi-religious chapter probably owes more to the fact that for some reason, the god Pan had undergone a sudden revival of interest and some English felt him to be a sort of ancient English deity. So in eulogizing Pan this way, Grahame may still be really eulogizing the idyllic and perfect England that he envisioned.
6 -- Toad's jailtime: I thought it was obvious that Grahame was playing the whole thing for laughs. I mean, what's with that archaic dialect that the sergeant of police suddenly adopts ("Oddsbodikins! ... mark thee well, greybeard, should aught untoward befall...")? If you have a version of the book that has Ernest Shepherd's delightful illustrations, it's a big help in picturing the British absurdity conjured up, with the Toad being marched into a dungeon by two armored guards with halberds. I mean, it was 1905 when this was written, not 1605, for goodness sake.
8 -- What happened to 7? Well anyway, only other thought of mine -- did you notice that until the gaoler's daughter, we had nothing by way of female characters? Did that impact the appeal of this book, I wonder? I honestly hadn't noticed until recently, and I'm not sure I missed the female element, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
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Whoops -- sorry about the repeat. Mimi, can you delete those last two comments of mine. Blogger told me my answer was too long, so I thought it hadn't published.
Whoops. Sorry about that. I fixed the numbers.
Grace - will do. I think that Blogger is having some issues, I had the exact same thing happen. Bizarre.
Oh dear, I've missed another interesting reading discussion.
once again, I answered these on my blog.
This is the greatest book! And the illustrations...am I the only one who wants to fall into them?!
Ann Nichols
Grace, thanks so much for this note about Grahame's interest in the then-resurgent neo-paganism - really helps to make sense of this episode, which I always felt rather jarred with the rest.
In German, the Water Rat is 'die Ratte' - feminine - which makes for a rather different dynamic!!
I agree, Ann, the illustrations are beautiful. I'm surprised that in German Rat's name is feminine. I thought about that as I posted the last set of questions, and that'd require quite a change in the whole book to have him be a female character.
Which actually brings to the forefront the fact that there are very few female characters in the book (the gaoler's daughter and the woman on the boat are the only two I can think of)
Grace - I wonder if Graeme is neo-Pagan in the way it is used now, or more in that Renaissance way - you know how you see Jove referenced in Shakespeare, etc. And, in the more playful, cute pan that is seen in drawings (like cupids, with horns) and Fantastia.
In that case, is it due to a yearning for a bucolic country life, or an interest in a pantheistic world view? I'm pondering that now.
I love Ch. 5
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