In every case Grahame provides, the "hero" always fails - Mole is terrified and must be rescued and brought back to his starting point, Rat is never allowed to embark at all, and Toad - while venturing far and wide - does not come home any wiser and must be put in his place at tale's end. Unlike the mythological archetypes Joseph Campbell would later explore, these Hero's Journeys are thwarted right away. The journey into the Wild Wood is also a Call to Adventure, something all the animals except for Badger will experience in The Wind in the Willows.
Ultimately, the Wild Wood is Mole's Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, only he's able to spit out the poisonous apple core before it's too late. I mean passwords, and signs, and sayings which have power and effect." Later, both animals will stumble across the home of Badger in the thick of the woods the visit will both reinforce the importance of wise awareness (Badger is unthreatened by the Wild Wood around him because he knows it so well knowledge is power) and begin to take the sting out from the location. Besides, there are a hundred things one has to know, which we understand all about and you don't, as yet. When Rat finally rescues Mole, it's with this admonishment: "If we have to come, we come in couples, at least then we're generally all right. He learns the hard way about the harshness of crossing boundaries and venturing into the unknown without anyone or anything to cling to. The Wild Wood is not just a place - it's a state of mind.Īs quickly becomes clear, Mole is simply unprepared for what he will face, and until the abstract becomes real, the realization of his limits and the Wood's danger will have no bite. What he encounters is a dark night of the soul - a journey into the depths of both a physically hostile environment and a deeply rooted terror of the unknown, which will seize his imagination and bring him face to face with "that dread thing." At any rate, Rat's subtle warning suffices for the time being, but as the seasons pass, Mole grows restless, and in the dead of winter, as his friend snoozes by the fireside, Mole gets up, throws on his scarf, and ventures forth to explore the Wild Wood.
Outside of its bounds lay the Wild Wood and the Wide World, both introduced briefly in the first chapter of Grahame's book. Mole asks his friend about the Wild Wood a few pages into the story, "waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water meadows on one side of the river." We detect a bit of unease in Rat's curt response: "We don't go there very much, we river-bankers." The conversation quickly turns to the denizens of the wood, and indeed the looming forest has a social significance as well as a geographical and psychological presence, but for now we will be focusing on the latter two.
As the last entry proved, the River Bank contains multitudes.but it does not contain everything.
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