The Wind in the Willows follows four animal friends—Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad—who live lives of luxury along an English river. As the seasons pass, the friends explore the river, go on picnics, tell stories, and venture into the nearby Wild Wood. But the novel also focuses on a more serious matter: the intervention Mole, Rat, and Badger stage when Toad (who’s wealthy and conceited) develops what his friends deem a dangerous and distasteful interest in cars. Particularly as Rat and Badger discuss Toad’s flaws, they insist that it’s their duty as Toad’s friends to essentially mentor him—to set him straight and help him become a better, kinder, more thoughtful person. With this, The Wind in the Willows proposes that friends have a responsibility to help one another make good choices and fit in with the rest of society.
Toad’s relationship with his friends at the beginning of the novel shows that when friends don’t try to encourage good behavior in one another, they can end up enabling or even encouraging bad behavior. From the moment Toad comes up in conversation in the novel’s first chapter, Rat and Otter frame him as someone who’s conceited, selfish, and entitled. Rat explains that Toad has an annoying habit of picking up expensive hobbies and then dropping them when they no longer interest him—and also forcing his friends to join him on his various escapades, whether his friends want to or not. And Rat suggests that most of the time, he and Toad’s other friends don’t want to join in: when Toad was interested in living in a houseboat last year, nobody wanted to visit Toad in his new abode. But everyone did anyway, just to appease him. And the friends’ unwillingness to say anything about Toad’s entitled behavior means that Toad never gets feedback that he’s being rude and obnoxious to his friends—indeed, he sees nothing wrong with later bullying Rat and Mole into going with him on a trip in his caravan. So, because Toad’s friends are never explicit that they find him entitled and conceited, Toad never changes his behavior.
When Toad’s friends do begin to intervene, Toad resists, and his behavior initially worsens—suggesting that accepting help is just as important a part of mentorship as offering help. At one point, Toad develops an obsession with buying (and subsequently crashing) expensive cars. When Badger arranges an intervention to stop this—he, Mole, and Rat decide to stay at Toad’s house and supervise Toad until he gets over his desire to drive—Toad’s behavior gets worse. He’s rude to his friends for the few weeks that they stay at his house, and then Toad tricks Rat into leaving him unsupervised so he can sneak out. In this way, Toad overtly rejects his friends’ mentorship by striking out on his own. And away from his friends and their mentorship, Toad’s behavior gets even worse: Toad steals a car, is imprisoned, and ultimately escapes prison and faces a difficult journey home. Toad becomes even more entitled on the trip home, without his friends to guide him. He manipulates and insults people who try to help him, and he even tries to steal the same car he was imprisoned for stealing earlier. As he travels, he composes and sings a song that the narrator deems “perhaps the most conceited song that any animal ever composed.” Toad’s behavior on this journey shows what when a person refuses mentorship: Toad becomes worse than ever without his friends to guide his behavior.
But Toad’s transformation at the end of the novel shows the profound, beneficial changes that can occur when a person finally accepts their friends’ mentorship and help. Upon reuniting with Rat at the end of his journey home from jail, Toad is at first excited to tell Rat all about his adventures. But Rat makes it clear that he doesn’t find Toad’s story amusing—and that Toad is actually hurting his friends by continuing to be reckless, conceited, and entitled. But none of this truly makes an impression on Toad until after his friends have led the charge to retake Toad Hall from the stoats, weasels, and ferrets (who took over the house when Toad was imprisoned). The following morning, Badger insists that Toad must hold a banquet—and he and Rat forbid Toad from singing any songs or giving any speeches that will feed his ego. Finally, Toad decides to listen to his friends. At the banquet, Toad gives Badger credit for the banquet itself and for retaking Toad Hall, and he throws himself into asking about others’ wellbeing instead of talking about himself. Following this, Toad compensates all the people he took advantage of on his journey home—with Badger’s encouragement and input into how to best do so. When the novel ends, Toad is a new toad: thanks to his friends’ interventions and his decision to finally listen to them, Toad is modest, generous, fair, and genuinely fun to be around. With this, The Wind in the Willows suggests that people shouldn’t give up on stubborn friends like Toad, as Toad does eventually come around.
Toad isn’t the only animal in the novel who becomes kinder, more secure, or happier thanks to his friends’ help. When Mole (who has been living with Rat on the riverbank for some time) feels a sudden pull to return to his old underground home, Rat insists they go to Mole’s home and spend the night there so that Mole can decide where he wants to live. Rat goes out of his way to make the night pleasant rather than trying to selfishly influence Mole one way or the other, and his support helps Mole decide that while he loves his underground home, he loves his life on the river even more. Mole later repays the favor by stopping Rat from leaving with a wayfarer rat headed south for the winter, something that would take Rat out of his community and deprive him of his security and friendships. With this, the novel positions friends as capable of showing people who they really are—and helping their friends make choices that support their true identities.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Friendship and Mentorship ThemeTracker
Friendship and Mentorship Quotes in The Wind in the Willows
“Ratty, my generous friend! I am very sorry indeed for my foolish and ungrateful conduct. My heart quite fails me when I think how I might have lost that beautiful luncheon basket. Indeed, I have been a complete ass, and I know it. Will you overlook it this once and forgive me, and let things go on as before?”
“That’s all right, bless you!”
“Finest house on the whole river,” cried Toad boisterously. “Or anywhere else, for that matter,” he could not help adding.
Here the Rat nudged the Mole. Unfortunately the Toad saw him do it, and turned very red. Then Toad burst out laughing. “All right, Ratty,” he said. “It’s only my way, you know. And it’s not such a very bad house, is it? You know you rather like it yourself.”
Such a rich chapter it had been, when one came to look back on it all! With illustrations so numerous and so very highly coloured! The pageant of the river bank had marched steadily along, unfolding itself in scene-pictures that succeeded each other in stately procession. Purple loosestrife arrived early, shaking luxuriant tangled locks along the edge of the mirror whence its own face laughed back at it. Willow-herb, tender and wistful, like a pink sunset cloud, was not slow to follow. Comfrey, the purple hand-in-hand with the white, crept forth to take its place in the line […]
The Rat said little or nothing, only taking care that each guest had what he wanted, and plenty of it, and that Mole had no trouble or anxiety about anything.
He was now in just the frame of mind that the tactful Rat had quietly worked to bring about in him. He 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 his new life and its splendid spaces […] 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 on for the same simple welcome.
“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!”
Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns […]
“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.”
“Well, what did I tell you?” said the Rat very crossly. “And, now, look here! See what you’ve been and done! Lost me my boat that I was so fond of, that’s what you’ve done! And simply ruined that nice suit of clothes that I lent you! Really, Toad, of all the trying animals—I wonder how you manage to keep any friends at all!”
“You don’t deserve to have such true and loyal friends, Toad, you don’t, really. Some day, when it’s too late, you’ll be sorry you didn’t value them more while you had them!”
“I’m an ungrateful beast, I know,” sobbed Toad, shedding bitter tears. “Let me go out and find them, out into the cold, dark night, and share their hardships, and try to prove by—hold on a bit! Surely I heard the chink of dishes on a tray! Supper’s here at last, hooray!”
Otter […] threw his arm round Toad’s neck, and tried to take him round the room in triumphal progress; but Toad, in a mild way, was rather snubby to him, remarking gently, as he disengaged himself, “Badger’s was the mastermind; the Mole and the Water Rat bore the brunt of the fighting; I merely served in the ranks and did little or nothing.”
