The Importance of Setting in The Wind in the Willows

Authors choose varying levels of importance for setting in their stories. In some stories setting is merely a backdrop, while other elements, such as character and plot, hold the reader's interest; in others setting plays a strong role in advancing the story's plot. As its title suggests, in The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, setting is integral to the actions of the characters. Grahame demonstrates the importance of setting in The Wind in the Willows through the use of vivid descriptions of the characters' environment, personification of various elements of nature, and by correlating the characters' behavior with their surroundings.

Grahame opens the story with a graphic description of Mole's experience with, rather than on, a spring morning. "The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellerage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing almost like a shout" (1-2). The magnetism of this spring day is great enough to draw the typically tidy Mole from the cleaning of his dull underground home to enjoy nature. Later, when Mole ventures off into the Wild Wood alone, against the advice of Rat, the reader can sense the progression of Mole's fear through the descriptions of his surroundings. At first Mole is amused by "funguses on stumps [that] resembled caricatures" (36), but as he goes deeper into the forest and the light begins to fade, he is confronted by the "faces, . . . whistling, . . . [and] pattering" (36-37) of the "Terror of the Wild Wood" (38).

Grahame also uses personification to emphasize nature's importance in the story. Often this results in nature's shift from setting to character. This is apparent in Mole's first reaction to the river.

Never in his life had he seen a river before-this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. (2-3)

No longer merely flowing water, the river has taken on the personality of a child, constantly looking for new things with which to occupy its time. The river captivates Mole with its stories, "sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea" (4). In the chapter "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", the sun is personified, along with the wind and the sound that the wind makes blowing through the reeds. The sun is described "shooting across the level water-meadows, [taking] the animals full in the eyes and [dazzling] them" (115), and the breeze dances across, tosses, and shakes its surroundings. Applying such human characteristics to these elements of nature stresses their significance in the story.

Perhaps the strongest argument for the importance of setting in The Wind in the Willows is that the characters all behave irrationally when they are not in their natural settings. Mole, who knows nothing about rowing, takes control of Rat's oars and capsizes the boat, spilling both riders and nearly loosing Rat's picnic basket in the process. Whenever Toad tries to fit into an environment other that his own, he brings disaster upon himself. Whether through wrecking motorcars or pretending to be a washerwoman, he always manages run into trouble when doing things that respectable animals would never dream of doing. Finally, when Rat is tempted to go South with the Sea Rat, his unnatural urges to leave home are quelled only by Mole's descriptions of the comforts of Riverbend life. Mole describes the pleasantness of the ongoing harvest and of the coming winter, and then urges Rat to write some poetry to help him return to his normal mental state.

The events in Charlotte's Web could have taken place at most any middle-American farm; Christopher Robin's adventures in Winnie-the-Pooh could have happened in most any place that children usually play. Unlike these stories, the events that occur in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, could only have occurred at Riverbend and in its surrounding areas. The lessons learned by the fictional characters in The Wind in the Willows can be applied to reality, in that animals and people alike tend to function best when they are familiar with their surroundings. Grahame clearly demonstrates that the characters do not behave the same when they are away from their usual surroundings. He stresses the importance of setting through precise descriptions and personification of nature, and by showing the abnormal behavior of the animals outside of their normal environment.

Works Cited

Grahame, Kenneth. The Wind in the Willows. New York: Bantam, 1982.