Friendship and Mentorship Theme Analysis

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.