The Wind in the Willows

A beloved 1908 children's novel by British author Kenneth Grahame, set in an idealized England of the late Victorian to early Edwardian Era. It details the adventures and misadventures of four variably anthropomorphic animals living around the banks of "The River".

• Mole: A quiet, ordinary fellow who gets caught up in huge adventures who arguably shares the role of spotlight character with Mr. Toad. Softspoken and a dedicated homebody, he nonetheless sometimes gets wild urges to go out into the wild and "hang spring cleaning!" Eventually, he adapts to a busier life. He's good with children.
• Ratty: The Water-Rat (aka Water Vole). Somewhat of an odd friend for Mole, but fiercely loyal to his friends. Says that "There is nothing — absolutely nothing — half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats," and owns a Cool Boat to row down The River. Acts as the voice of reason when Badger isn't present, and is somewhat annoyed by the fast pace of modern living. A bit of a Bohemian, and an amateur poet.
• Mr. Toad: A great example of an Upper-Class Twit, living in Toad Hall and throwing himself enthusiastically at every passing fad. First it's boats, then caravans, then "Motorcars! Poop-poop!" A Kleptomaniac Hero who Drives Like Crazy. All the while he fancies himself a Gentleman Adventurer and sings hilariously conceited songs.
• Mr. Badger: Something of a British Hermit Guru, he lives alone in the middle of the Wild Woods. Huge and terrifying, and at the same time rather nice, sheltering guests and being fond of children. He can — if necessary — be deadly in defense of his friends.

Chapter 7, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (where the name of Pink Floyd's debut album came from, if you ask) and Chapter 9, "Wayfarers All" are sometimes cut from publications of the book.

The whole text of the book is available for free here.

For a list of adaptations and works inspired by this novel, see here.

This novel contains examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: The Greek God Pan's more ... adult passions are left out, instead focusing on his love for nature and animals.
• The Alleged Steed: The barge-horse stolen by Toad from the bargewoman, being an old work animal, is a downplayed version, as it can't gallop for very long and soon slows down to a trot. A traveller Toad passes offers him four shillings total for the beast — "shillin' a leg" — which Toad rightfully considers a very paltry sum, but when paying back the woman for the theft at the end, the local assessors consulted by both parties admit it's actually quite fair.
• Alliterative Title: "The Wind in the Willows"
• Anachronism Stew: As Toad goes into the jail we time-travel from the turn of the century into the Middle Ages, walking past "men-at-arms" and "ancient warders" with halberds and a room with racks and thumbscrews, and by the time we've stepped into the "grimmest dungeon... in the heart of the innermost keep," the Edwardian police sergeant is starting to say things like "Oddsbodikins!" and "a murrain on both of them!"
• Anthropomorphic Shift: The animals seem to alter their status several times over the novel, moving back and forth between Civilized Animal, Partially Civilized Animal, and Funny Animal. Seemingly they become more or less humanlike as the plot demands. The anthropomorphic line gets so uncertain that at one point Toad is said to have "combed the dry leaves out of his hair". It's probably best to think of it with the MST3K Mantra.
• Arcadian Interlude: "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Toad is convicted for stealing a motor-car, dangerous driving and cheeking the police. Ironically, the Clerk is more lenient with the first two crimes. Although never specified, Toad's cheek is described as "imaginative" and "gross impertinence". Given his flamboyant, conceited attitude, it's not hard to believe.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Mole quite often gets this portrayal, mostly due to having the least experience with the world outside his home. Toad sometimes takes this trope from Mole, if only because his immature and flamboyant personality often require his friends to keep him in line.
• Barbarous Barbary Bandits: Discussed by Rat at one point when he and Mole are entertaining a bunch of Christmas guests, one of whom was a mouse who starred in a play in which his character was held captive by Barbary corsairs, after which he escaped only to find his love had left him to live in a convent.
• Bedsheet Ladder: How Toad escapes after being locked in his bedroom.
• The Big Bad: Although the weasels, stoats and ferrets are usually grouped together as a whole, The Chief Weasel is usually given this status.
• Big Brother Mentor: Water Rat largely plays this role toward Mole, especially early in the story when Mole's just starting to learn his way around the outside world.
• Big Eater: Rat is apparently one on picnics. See Food Porn below.
• The Big Guy: Otter is a Boisterous Bruiser and Gentle Giant 2; while the main four confront The Big Bad, Otter and his posse keep the guards off their backs.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Latin title of the chapter "Dulce Domum", where Mole rediscovers his old abandoned house, means "Sweet Home", obviously meant to evoke "Home Sweet Home".
• Break the Haughty: Toad's humiliating arrest and imprisonment, during which he attempts to starve himself to death, but decides to live after all thanks to a kind jailer's daughter and a bit of bubble-and-squeak. Not to mention being chased by the police after escaping, and all the indignity he receives for his washerwoman disguise.
• Broken Record: After Badger tells him off for correcting Toad's grammar ("teach 'em" vs. "learn 'em") because it's the same grammar Badger uses, Rat retreats into a corner and begins repeating the two phrases alternately until told to stop.
• Carnivore Confusion: The narrative says it's against animal etiquette to actually discuss it, but the subject is touched upon by Rat, when he describes the inhabitants in the Wild Wood:
  "Weasels — and stoats — and foxes — and so on. They're all right in a way — I'm very good friends with them —pass the time of day when we meet, and all that — but they break out sometimes, there's no denying it, and then —well, you can't really trust them, and that's the fact."
  • The stew Toad feasts on late in the book contains rabbit meat, despite a couple of talking rabbits in the first few chapters.
• Casual Danger Dialog: When Otter enters Badger's house, Mole asks him, "Weren't you at all-er-nervous?" Otter laughs and says, "I'd give 'em nerves if any of them tried anything," then talks over breakfast about how much fun he could have in the Wild Wood.
• Character Development: Over the novel, Mole comes out of his shell, and Toad settles down to become serious and respectable by the end. Badger also becomes a little bit less reclusive, shown in the epilogue. Grahame pointed out in a later interview that Toad would eventually turn back to his old ways. Mole is the only character whose development would stick.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mr. Toad, at times. "A motorcar! Poop-poop! Poop-poop!" (Or, in some editions, "Beep-beep!")
• Classical Anti-Hero: Mole before Character Development.
• Cool Boat: It's just a rowboat, but Ratty's boat is described as beautifully painted and gaily decorated, and there's always a picnic basket on board. Unfortunately, it gets sunk near the end of the novel thanks to the stoats.
• Conspicuous Consumption: Toad lives in a luxurious manor house and is always spending lavishly on his latest craze.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Pan, who is in fact the Savior, but for animals instead of humans. Interestingly enough, the chapter "Dulce Domum" has young field mice singing a Christmas carol that invokes and pays homage to Mary, Joseph and the Christ child. ^note Animal religious practices of this world must be quite fascinating.
• The Darkness Before Death: When Mr. Toad pretends to be dying, he says, "Is it dark in here?!".
• Dirty Coward: The Weasels who pick on any animal weaker than them, but scurry when someone stands up to them. When Mole enters the Wild Wood they scare him out of his mind. When Rat with his cudgel and brace of pistols enters the Wood to look for Mole, they don't dare pull any of the same nasty tricks.
• A Dog Named "Dog": All the principal characters are either this or Species Surname; since they only appear to have one name apiece, it's hard to tell which.
• Drives Like Crazy: Mr. Toad's second defining characteristic; he wrecks five cars a week, on average, and has to be locked into his room to try and dissuade him.
• Establishing Character Moment: Mole is introduced getting frustrated with housework and going outdoors to explore; Rat idly messing about on his boat; Toad eagerly greeting his friends and announcing that he's given up boating in favour of caravaning; and Badger being annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of the night before letting Mole and Rat into his house.
• Fake Faint: Mr. Toad pulls a prank on Ratty and Moley by asking, "Is it dark in here?!" and demanding a doctor and a lawyer before collapsing on the couch with his eyes shut.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Mr. Toad's prison sentence. Stealing the motor car is twelve months (which according to the court clerk is mild), while his reckless driving warrants three years (quite lenient) and cheeking the police warrants fifteen years which adds up to nineteen years, which the judge then makes an even twenty, and he thinks he's being soft on Toad.
• Fiction 500: Averted with Mr. Toad, he may be rich but as Rat points out "he's not a millionaire". ^note  Keep in mind a £1000 during the Edwardian era would be roughly worth over £57,000 in today's money. And the average price of a motor car back then was £340 which is £20,000 in today's money. And if Toad did have at least a £1,000,0000 that would £57,000,000 in today's money.
• Fleeting Passionate Hobbies: A defining aspect of Mr Toad, who keeps throwing himself at every new fad only to quickly get bored with it and move on to something new. It's to the point that Ratty discussing it with Otter forms part of Toad's Establishing Character Moment in Chapter 1:
  Ratty: Once, it was nothing but sailing. Then he tired of that and took to punting. Nothing would please him but to punt all day and every day, and a nice mess he made of it. Last year it was house-boating, and we all had to go and stay with him in his house-boat, and pretend we liked it. He was going to spend the rest of his life in a house-boat. It's all the same, whatever he takes up; he gets tired of it, and starts on something fresh.
• Food Porn:
  • The stew Toad dines on from the Romani man's stewpot while on the run, which contains no less than seven animals, is lovingly described. Toad's expression of rapture in the accompanying illustration doesn't help.
  • The contents of Ratty's picnic basket on his first outing with Mole.
  "What's inside it?" asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.
  "There's cold chicken inside it," replied the Rat briefly; cold-tongue-cold-ham-cold-beef-pickled-gherkins-salad-french-rolls-cress-sandwidges-potted-meat-ginger-beer-lemonade-soda-water–"
  • The hot buttered toast the jailer's daughter serves to Toad: "cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in it in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb."
  • The Mediterranean-inspired picnic Ratty packs for the Sea Rat: "a yard of long French bread, a sausage out of which the garlic sang, some cheese which lay down and cried, and a long-necked straw-covered flask wherein lay bottled sunshine shed and garnered on far Southern slopes. "
• Forbidden Zone: Don't go into the Wild Wood by yourself. The only ones who do are — Badger (who lives in the heart of it and nobody would dare cross) and Otter. Ratty manages it only by going in armed to the teeth, and making sure anyone who sees him knows so at a glance.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Mole is the Optimist, Rat is the Realist, Toad is the Apathetic and Badger is the Cynic.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Mole is Phlegmatic, Badger is Choleric, Toad is Sanguine and Rat is Melancholic. That said, Badger is a pretty Melancholic character as well.
• Funny Animal: The whole cast, except for the humans that Toad interacts with.
• Furry Confusion:
  • Not particularly strong, but in a lot of the artwork, the main cast are much, much bigger than the stoats and weasels. Also, while the main cast wears clothing, Otter wears none.
  • Also: Toad has a horse called Alfred. While he is an actual quadrupedal horse who pulls the caravan, he does seem to be sentient. Strangely, this is one of the few animal characters not named after his species.
  • Mole's "black velvet smoking jacket" is a joke on a mole's fur.
• Gentle Giant: Both Badger and Otter are as friendly as they are big and powerful.
• Gilligan Cut: Toad steals a motorcar and roars off in triumphant splendor. Cut to him in court being sentenced to twenty years in prison, Grahame doesn't even bother to depict the trial, he just goes straight for the sentencing.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Mole and Water Rat.
• The Hermit: Badger lives alone in the Wild Wood and doesn't like visitors. However, he's not really antisocial, just a bit cantankerous and fond of solitude. He is shown to be fiercely loyal to his friends.
• I Lied: Toad says this after supposedly agreeing with Badger's long anti-car lecture. He gets locked up under guard.
• Idle Rich: Toad's a deconstruction of this trope - he has way too much time and money to devote to whatever Fleeting Passionate Hobbies take his interest. It doesn't really become a problem until he takes up motoring and destroys a half-dozen cars in a row.
• Jerkass Realization: Rat has a mild one of these when he ignores Mole's pleas to come back, since the latter had just smelt his old home, and the poor Mole breaks down into hysterical sobs over it.
• Karma Houdini: Toad is guilty of stealing a car and escaping prison, and yet once he returns to the River and with the help of his friends retake Toad Hall from the weasels he's able to resume his life without fuss or consequence.
• The Leader: Badger is the de factor authority figure amongst the River Bankers by virtue of his seniority, strength, and sheer force of personality.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Zig-zagged. Most of the animals live in burrows (albeit in very human-like comfort) and have little or no interaction with humans. Mr. Toad, on the other hand, lives in an actual house, drives cars, is put on trial in a human court, held in a human prison, and escapes by disguising himself as a human washerwoman. During his escape no one suspects that he's Mr. Toad until he actually announces it when he rides off with a barge woman's horse. And he also interacts on a more-or-less equal basis with all the other animals.
• The Load: Mole becomes this during the "Wild Wood" chapter; he recklessly goes off to visit the place in the middle of a winter snowfall, and proceeds to be absolutely useless while Rat is trying to save both their lives.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: There appears to be an ancient ruined human city abandoned and buried beneath the Wild Wood (heavily implied to be Roman). Badger cynically comments how its builders thought that they were building for eternity.
• Loveable Rogue: Toad is considered an epitome of this. Although conceited, reckless and even kleptomaniacal at one point, he genuinely cares for his friends and shows great humility and distress upon learning of the hardships they suffer on his account.
• Lower-Class Lout: The Wild Wooders are treated this way, a product of Grahame's class-based mistrust of the English working class whom he saw as lazy, idle, prone to theft rather than honest labour, ill-educated and vicious to their social betters. (And, unlike the more selective middle-class house-owning voles, moles and badgers, breed uncontrollably). It is no accident the heroes are all members of the stout English yeomanry.
• Make It Look Like a Struggle: The washerwoman who sells her clothes to Toad so he can escape the prison asks to be left bound and gagged so she can make out that he took her clothes without her consent.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's unclear whether Water Rat's sudden desire to board a ship with Sea Rat in Wayfarers All is due to Sea Rat putting some sort of charm on him or due to Sea Rat being a good storyteller and playing on Water Rat's natural, buried desire to travel.
• Mundane Fantastic: While Toad is the only animal to have extensive interaction with humans, no one seems surprised at the sight of a bipedal talking toad who wears clothes. And then Pan shows up in one chapter.
• Must Make Amends: Badger forces Toad to compensate the Bargewoman for her stolen horse. It's a fairly small amount but Toad really hates her that much.
• Not Helping Your Case: Mr. Toad is fairly unconvincing when he stands trial for auto-theft, destruction of property and cheeking the police.
• Nouveau Riche: It's implied that Toad's family bought their way into squiredom rather than inheriting it. Toad inherited his money from his father and is rather cavalier towards spending his inheritance on whatever takes his fancy — he also conspicuously lacks any kind of title or honorific; not even "the Honorable" or "Esquire". Badger's comments implies that Toad Hall belonged to somebody else before Toad's father came to live there.
• One-Hour Work Week: It's never established what the animals do for a living — they don't seem to need to work at all, though Mole seems to be the least well-off, though he can still afford a velvet smoking jacket. Rat never seems do to anything except boating, fishing, and poetry writing.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After reclaiming Toad Hall, Toad makes an unconvincing pretense that he has learned from his past hubris, though Badger and Rat make clear they don't buy into it. At the celebration banquet however, Toad acts genuinely modest and gentlemanly, not grandstanding the slightest, with the two left dumbfounded the whole evening.
  • In Wayfarers All, after the Sea Rat left to sail again and while Water Rat is preparing to follow him, Mole walks into Water Rat's house and is alarmed at his sudden desire to leave all he has ever known to hop on a ship, his mechanical behavior, and his strange-looking eyes. Mole ends up tackling Water Rat to the ground until this behavior stops.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Toad's washerwoman outfit.
• Pride: Mr. Toad's defining characteristic.
  The Queen and her ladies-in-waiting
  Sat at the window and sewed.
  She cried, "Look! Who's that handsome man?
  They answered, "Mr. Toad."
  The clever men at Oxford
  Know all that there is to be knowed,
  But they none of them know one half as much
  As intelligent Mr. Toad!
• Playful Otter: Otter is this in spades—just don't mess with his friends.
• Pride Before a Fall: Toad's pride is eventually his undoing; see above under Break the Haughty.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Mr. Toad. He has more than enough money to throw away on all the luxury cars he wants, but can't seem to grasp that driving recklessly is a bad idea that will crash them and land him in jail.
• Science Is Bad: Not science, exactly, but the rush of new fads for the rich, such as automobiles and aeroplanes.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: In Chapter 11, Ratty tells Toad that Mole and Badger fully expected him to buy his way out of his prison sentence.
• Silence of Sadness: When Mole is homesick, Ratty notices how quiet his friend is, and how he is dragging his feet.
• Snap Back: Averted, in that Ratty mentions that if Toad keeps buying all these new cars, he's eventually going to use up his whole fortune.
• Spoiled Sweet: Despite his faults, Toad is as Rat says "So simple, so good-natured, and so affectionate."
• Staging an Intervention: Mole, Rat, and Badger have a rather forceful one to stop Toad from his self-destructive behavior before he squanders his whole fortune on motor-cars he'll inevitably wreck to bits and ruins the reputation of the animals in the process.
• Storming the Castle: "When the Toad came home..."
• Taking the Veil: Mole recounts how the young mice had put on a play about a sailor lost at sea and how when he returned, his beloved had done this.
• Uncle Pennybags: At the end of the book, Toad gives The Gaoler's Daughter a locket for her kindness and the Engine Driver financial compensation for his help in his escape.
• Upper-Class Twit: Toad is quite rich and also rather fat-headed.
• Wardens Are Evil: Downplayed. The Gaoler isn't evil or abusive, but he does make repeated overtures to make Toad's stay in the dungeon more comfortable .... for a price.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The weasels, and the related ferrets and stoats, are all nasty little buggers, sneaking into Toad Hall to take it over while Toad is out. They're eventually let go with a warning, though, as they promise to be good after being thrashed by Badger.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: In a humorous incident, Toad escapes prison disguised as a washerwoman with clothes from the jailer's daughter, and manages to wind up disguised on a train outrunning the police.
• Wicked Weasel: One of the most iconic examples in literature! Ratty is very evasive about them telling Mole flat out that they can't be trusted, and then they invade Toad Hall while Toad's away, fully prepared to protect their conquest by lethal force.
• Wistful Amnesia: After their encounter with the god of the forest in "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", Rat and Mole are left with a feeling that something amazing and wonderful has recently happened, but they can't recall quite what. As the book said it's the gift that Pan bestows on all animals who see him, "lest the awe should dwell and turn [their] frolic to fret".
• Your Size May Vary: The animals at first seem to be about the size you expect, until they get affected by Toad's Anthropomorphic Shift, and are suddenly the right size for operating a horse-drawn caravan. Then later, Ratty and Mole can both comfortably fit inside a hollow tree, while Toad is crashing motor cars and having extensive adventures in the human world. Some editions also have artwork of a human sized and anthropomorphic main cast and rodent-sized, non-anthropomorphic weasels.