Grahame's The Wind in the Willows

I am winding down a longish day at work and thought I'd indulge in a quick post about Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. First off, I should say that I am completely biased here, in that this is probably my all-time favorite book. I absolutely LOVE it. It's like good comfort reading for me. The difficulty is that my students don't seem to get into it, and I can never quite figure out what to do about it. I began discussing it just this morning with my 20th Century Children's Literature class, and I faced the problem that I've faced too often before with regards to this work. The students see it as difficult (and I suppose it's not the easiest thing, stylistically speaking on our syllabus) and boring and disjointed. And I just don't see it that way at all. Stylistically, I think it's brilliant and wonderful. And to attempt to demonstrated that, I read passages, sometimes long passages, aloud. For example, the opening paragraphs are particularly lyrical and suck us into Mole's awakening, and I so want my students to see (or hear!) it, but I am just not sure that they do.

And they cite all these apparent inconsistencies--in the passage of time, in the assumed size of the animals--inconsistencies that I think just don't matter. I mean, trying to make some sort of literal, logical sense out of it destroys the whole thing. In the end, it doesn't matter if we ever really figure out how big Toad is--it's about Toad's character. And I seem to have trouble moving my students beyond all of it.

And yet, still I love The Wind in the Willows. I love the characters, and I love Ratty's leisurely lifestyle of boating and writing poetry. I love Mole for his loyalty to Rat. I love Grahame's treatment of friendship; I think we could even call it "fellowship" in a Tolkienesque kind of way. I love Grahame's obvious love of nature and of language. And I keep feeling frustrated at my apparent inability to convey all this to my students--it's as though my own enthusiasm for the topic just isn't quite enough this time. And this concerns me. I mean, what are we coming to if college students think The Wind in the Willows is not just "boring" but "too hard." It's not "hard." And where is Spencer when we need him? They should be thankful that we're not reading The Faerie Queen or some such. Grahame isn't "hard." And I suppose that if students think it's boring, they have themselves, like Mr. Toad, succumbed to the temptations of the motor-car, the desire for speed--"here to-day--in next week tomorrow." They seem maybe incapable of slowing down and enjoying the luxuriousness of Grahame's language, just as Toad is unable to enjoy the natural world that Ratty and Mole so love. My students (maybe!) have become the products of industrialization that Grahame warns us about in the character of Toad. Alas!

Well, I didn't start out intending this to be some sort of rant, which seems to be what it's become. Maybe I needed the rant. Maybe it will be catharsis enough that I can read Grahame with pleasure!