Cars symbolize Toad’s immaturity and his total lack of regard for anyone but himself. They also symbolize the modern, industrialized world, which the novel frames as being in opposition to the idyllic natural setting it presents. Toad first sees a car when he, Mole, and Rat are out in Toad’s caravan (a large horse-drawn carriage). The car zooms up behind the party quickly, making noise and raising dust, and it frightens the horse so badly that the horse dumps the caravan into the ditch. This is a dangerous experience—but rather than see the car’s driver as a menace, Toad is entranced. Thus begins his love of cars and of driving, which results in Toad purchasing and then crashing seven cars in a short amount of time. He spends weeks in the hospital for injuries sustained in crashes, and he gets in trouble regularly for being rude to policemen who try to check his poor behavior on the road. But Toad doesn’t care at all—he cares only for himself, and for the freedom and excitement that only a car can provide. His friends, namely Badger, frame Toad’s love of cars as akin to an addiction or an illness, describing it as an “affliction” that’s negatively affecting Toad’s ability to be compassionate and considerate. Ultimately, Toad’s friends are able to make him see that cars are going to be Toad’s undoing: if he wants to both survive and stay out of prison, he must give up cars. In the end, Toad does just that, which symbolizes his choice to mature and think of others, as the novel suggests a good gentleman should.
More broadly, cars symbolize the modern world that the novel implies is encroaching on areas like the idyllic riverbank and surrounding rural areas. While boats and even Toad’s caravan (that is, non-mechanized modes of transportation that suggest an earlier, simpler time before the car’s invention) are framed as positive or neutral entities, the car is portrayed as nothing but a menace. Toad’s selfishness is certainly an issue—but more than that, it’s that his selfishness causes him to fall in love with a modern machine that so violently threatens his and his friends’ simple, pastoral way of life.
Cars Quotes in The Wind in the Willows
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. […]
“In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don’t; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.”
“What dust clouds shall spring up behind me as I speed on my reckless way! What carts I shall fling carelessly into the ditch in the wake of my magnificent onset! Horrid little carts—common carts—canary-coloured carts!”
His two friends assented, quite understanding his point. No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.
“You’ve disregarded all the warnings we’ve given you, you’ve gone on squandering the money your father left you, and you’re getting us animals a bad name in the district by your furious driving and your smashes and your rows with the police. Independence is all very well, but we animals never allow our friends to make fools of themselves beyond a certain limit; and that limit you’ve reached.”
“Toad, I want you solemnly to repeat, before your friends here, what you fully admitted to me in the smoking-room just now. First, you are sorry for what you’ve done, and you see the folly of it all?”
There was a long, long pause. Toad looked desperately this way and that, while the other animals waited in grave silence. At last, he spoke.
“No!” he said, a little sullenly, but stoutly; “I’m not sorry. And it wasn’t folly at all! It was simply glorious!”
It is all very well, when you have a light heart, and a clear conscience, and money in your pocket, and nobody scouring the country for you to drag you off to prison again, to follow where the road beckons and points, not caring whither. The practical Toad cared very much indeed, and he could have kicked the road for its helpless silence when every minute was of importance to him.
“Now, Toady, I don’t want to give you pain, after all you’ve been through already; but, seriously, don’t you see what an awful ass you’ve been making of yourself? On your own admission you have been handcuffed, imprisoned, starved, chased, terrified out of your life, insulted, jeered at, and ignominiously flung into the water—by a woman, too! Where’s the amusement in that? Where does the fun come in? And all because you must needs go and steal a motor car.”
Cars Symbol Timeline in The Wind in the Willows
